Figures on left pages, text on right ones with class book, numbering only on right pages

Question

My problem is that I would like to have either blank or figures on the left pages, and text on the right ones, with the numbering of the right pages to be 1,2,3,4,5 and not 1,3,5,7.

It means, in a book-derived class, to have right pages, with the odd layout, but with also an even number half the time.

It also means that I would like to have, by default, a blank page everywhere on a left page, except if a picture has been defined somehow before on the previous page.

---

Update:

I've tried it. There is a little \makeatother missing, but I spotted it right away. It seems to work fine alternating pages and inserting blank or figure pages. However, I have two problems:

• The class (book-derived) sometimes introduces blank pages of its own. I can tweak it, but would prefer to be able to turn on/ turn off the action of the blankpage routine along the course of the document.
• The layout of the text pages depends on the odd/even number of the page. Since my text pages have odd and even numbers (which is the intended result), the layout is now alternatively odd or even, which is not what I would like, since there they will all be on the right hand side of the doc when open...

Do you have any clue as to how to manage this? I think the second problem is way more difficult...

Thank you already for this answer both simple and effective for achieving the result.

EDIT 2 (19/12/2011) : The answer from Bruno Le Floch seems to me more complete and I recommend it.

Answer 1

This is an enhancement of code that I have found on c.t.t. It uses the afterpage package to skip every second page and then if you add a figure with the \addfig command it will output it on the next page. It seems to work reasonable well (to my own surprise also ;-)

\documentclass[english,oneside]{book}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage{afterpage}

\makeatletter
\newcommand\@addfig{\relax}
\newcommand\addfig[1]{\global\long\def\@addfig{#1}}
\newcommand\@putfig{\@addfig\addfig{\relax}}
\newcommand\blankpage{%
    \null
    \vfill
    \@putfig%
    \vfill
    \thispagestyle{empty}%
    \addtocounter{page}{-1}%
    \clearpage
    \afterpage{\blankpage}}
\makeatother

\usepackage{blindtext}

\begin{document}
\afterpage{\blankpage}
\blindtext[2]

\addfig{%
    \begin{figure}
    \centering
    \fbox{\rule{0pt}{3cm}\rule{6cm}{0pt}}
    \caption{Test figure}
    \end{figure}}

\Blindtext
\Blindtext

\addfig{%
    \begin{figure}
    \centering
    \fbox{\rule{0pt}{3cm}\rule{12cm}{0pt}}
    \caption{Test figure 2}
    \end{figure}}

\Blindtext
\Blindtext
\Blindtext
\end{document} 

Answer 2

I hope I got parity right. It seems that the OP wants the figures to come on the page following the one which references them, and that pages of text should be odd-numbered and on the right, which I would call recto, but Village asked for verso. I went for the OP's requirements. Also, it would make more sense I think to put figures on the page before they are referenced, so that the reader can see them as he reads the corresponding text, but I didn't manage to do that.

I use Heiko Oberdiek's atbegshi package to capture pages just before they are output to the pdf file (at "shipout" time), and add one page of figures per shipout. In order to keep the correct even/odd layout, I increase the page counter for each page of figures (this way, \value{page} is always the true page number in the pdf), but I change \thepage to display the number of text pages (total minus figures).

The figures are collected as we go in \sos@figures, which flushes itself when used (\sos@rest@figures). Each figure added with \addfig is placed in a \vbox, with \vfill between them, so that figures are nicely distributed along the page's height.

Somehow, \shipout\vbox{...} does not simply send the \vbox to the pdf centered on the page, so I move the box by \sos@top and \sos@right to put it at a place which looks like the left-page layout. Any better solution is welcome.

The mechanism can be turned on and off using \SOStrue and \SOSfalse (global switches). The example uses \lipsum, but with paragraph breaks disabled, so that \lipsum[1-10] builds one big paragraph.

\documentclass{book}
\usepackage{atbegshi}
\makeatletter
\newlength{\sos@top}
\newlength{\sos@right}
\newcounter{sos@pages}
\newif\ifSOS
\renewcommand{\thepage}{\the\numexpr\value{page}-\value{sos@pages}\relax}
\newcommand{\addfig}[1]{\g@addto@macro\sos@figures{\vbox{\centering#1}\vfill}}
\newcommand{\sos@reset@figures}
  {\gdef\sos@figures{\sos@reset@figures\vfill}}
\sos@reset@figures
\newcommand{\sos@shipout@figures}
  {%
    \begingroup
      \stepcounter{page}%
      \stepcounter{sos@pages}%
      \let\protect\relax
      \setbox\z@\vbox to\vsize{\sos@figures}%
      \let\protect\string
      \AtBeginShipoutOriginalShipout\vbox
        {\vbox to\sos@top{}\moveright\sos@right\box\z@}%
    \endgroup
  }
\AtBeginShipout{%
  \ifSOS\ifodd\c@page
    \begingroup
      \let\protect\string
      \AtBeginShipoutOriginalShipout\box\AtBeginShipoutBox
      \global\AtBegShi@Discardedtrue
      \sos@shipout@figures
    \endgroup
  \fi\fi
}%
\newcommand{\SOSshipout}{\clearpage\sos@shipout@figures}
\renewcommand{\SOStrue}{\clearpage\global\let\ifSOS\iftrue}
\renewcommand{\SOSfalse}{\clearpage\global\let\ifSOS\iffalse}
\setlength{\sos@top}{2cm}
\setlength{\sos@right}{2cm}
\makeatother

% Test example
\usepackage{booktabs,caption}
\usepackage{lipsum}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\begin{document}

\title{Hello world}
\author{Bruno Le Floch}
\maketitle

\tableofcontents
\listoffigures
\listoftables

\part{Abc}

\SOStrue
\chapter{Hello}

\addfig{\begin{tabular}{p{5cm}p{5cm}}
    \toprule
    Abc def & ghijk lmno pq \\
    \midrule
    \lipsum[1] & \lipsum[2] \\
    \bottomrule
  \end{tabular}
  \captionof{table}{\label{tab:atable}A table}}

\addfig{%
  \rule{8cm}{3cm}%
  \captionof{figure}{A figure}}

\lipsum[1-10]

\addfig{\rule{1cm}{3cm}\captionof{figure}{Another figure}}
\addfig{\rule{8cm}{3cm}\captionof{figure}{A figure}}
\addfig{\rule{1cm}{3cm}\captionof{figure}{Another figure}}

\chapter{Bye}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\lips@par}{ } % now \lipsum[1-10] makes one big par
\makeatother

\addfig{\rule{8cm}{3cm}\captionof{figure}{That should be figure 5.}}
\addfig{\rule{1cm}{3cm}\captionof{figure}{Perhaps the sixth}}

\lipsum[1-10]

\addfig{\rule{8cm}{3cm}\captionof{figure}{Yet another one}}
\addfig{\rule{1cm}{3cm}\captionof{figure}{One last figure for now.}}

\SOSfalse

\chapter{Back to normal}

\addfig{\rule{8cm}{3cm}\captionof{figure}{That figure won't be lost.}}

\lipsum[11-15]

\addfig{\rule{4cm}{5cm}\captionof{figure}{Nor will that one.}}

\lipsum[16-20]

\lipsum[21-30]

See Table~\ref{tab:atable}.

\SOSshipout
\SOStrue

\chapter{Figures, again}

\addfig{\rule{5cm}{2cm}\captionof{table}{Let's pretend it's a table}}

\lipsum[21-25]

\addfig{\rule{5cm}{2cm}\captionof{table}{Let's pretend it's a table}}

\lipsum[26-30]

\addfig{\rule{4cm}{1cm}\captionof{table}{Last table}}

\end{document}

EDIT: the other advantage of leaving \c@page alone is that hyperref and references work. (Added to the example.)