Oneside cover within a twosided LaTeX document

Question

I'm writing my thesis and I'd like to have a onesided cover while the rest of the document is twoside, so to obtain the text and figures well-centered within the cover. Here is my main .tex file:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,twoside,onecolumn,openany]{book}
\usepackage{thesis}
\graphicspath{{plots/}}
\begin{document}

%\setboolean{@oneside}{false}
\include{cover/cover}
%\setboolean{@oneside}{true} 

\include{chapter1\chapter}
...

Furthermore, the default margins are too big, and so I'd like to change them. A first solution to this last problem was to change the document into a twocolumn one in the very first line of the code, and then, after the cover page, changing it into \onecolumn.

EDIT: my own answer (see below) doesn't give the exact result I wanted. Now the number of the pages are correctly put on opposite corners depending whether it's an odd or even page, but the left and right margins are the same. Actually, I would like "external" margins to be a little wider, to put there some notes (using \marginpar).

Thanks!

FYI: the thesis package is just a library I created to change a few things about layout — , Jun 01 '13 at 09:55
You don't necessarily need to use the built-in titling and cover. You can hack your own together fairly easily. Memoir has some options for this. I think the command is '\titlingpage'. See http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/24410/memoir-custom-title-page-and-twocolumns for some pointers (and the memoir manual). — Andy Clifton, Jun 01 '13 at 14:12
I gave up on workarounds, and just created a separate cover page in tex, and separate main file with the actual thesis etc. When in print, you just say that they put it together correctly when binding it ;) — dingo_d, Jun 02 '13 at 10:39
Yes, @dingo_d : sometimes it's the quickest way to solve a problem! — Orso, Jun 02 '13 at 11:17

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 02 '13 at 11:13

1

After trying all the possible permutations of the commands I know, I obtained a good result with the code below:

\documentclass[11pt,a4paper,oneside,twocolumn,openany]{book}

\usepackage{thesis}
\graphicspath{{plots/}}

\begin{document}

    \include{cover/cover}

    %change into onecolumn-twoside
    \onecolumn
    \setboolean{@twoside}{true}

    \mainpagestyle

    \include{chapter1/chapter}
    \include{chapter2/chapter}
    \include{chapter3/chapter}

    \backmatter
    \twocolumn

    \addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}{References}
    \bibliographystyle{siam}
    \bibliography{mybib.bib}

\end{document}

answered Jun 02 '13 at 11:13

Orso

85

I wouldn't use \include for the cover, but \input. Without seeing a hint of the code in it it's difficult to help. – egreg Jun 02 '13 at 14:36
See http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/108268/redefining-include, as to why. – yannisl Aug 31 '13 at 16:26

Oneside cover within a twosided LaTeX document

1 Answers1