In the book class, making the page numbers start counting at the first chapter

Question

I’m using the book class. I don’t want any page numbers (not even romans) in my document until chapter 1 starts—when the page number should start at 1. Obviously, chapter 1 should then show as being on page 1 in the TOC, but the TOC itself shouldn’t be on a numbered page.

How do I accomplish this?

Answer 1

It's quite unclear why pages shouldn't be numbered. Anyway, here's the trick:

\documentclass{book}

\begin{document}

\frontmatter
\pagenumbering{gobble} % omitting this line will number pages with roman numerals

\tableofcontents

\mainmatter

\chapter{First}
text
\end{document}