I'm happy with Plain TeX's page-numbering format, except that I want to turn it off for the first few pages of my book. I can do this with the \nopagenumbers
macro, but is there a macro with the opposite effect, to make the page numbers reappear later? Or do I have to manually re-establish the default footer?
A quick look at \nopagenumbers
shows
> \nopagenumbers=macro:
->\footline {\hfil }.
while \showthe\footline
yields
> \hss \tenrm \folio \hss .
Thus the simplest solution is by hand
\def\pagenumbers{\footline{\hss\tenrm\folio\hss}}
You could of course save the existing definition using something like
\newtoks\savedfootline
\savedfootline\expandafter{\the\footline}
and restore with
\footline\expandafter{\the\savedfootline}
or use a group within your document: \begingroup
before \nopagenumbers
and \endgroup
after.
Note that whatever approach you use, make sure you force a new page, for example
\begingroup
\nopagenumbers
<content>
\vfil
\eject
\endgroup
-
-
@YiannisLazarides You can't
\let
here as that will still point to the same toks, not the content of the toks (same for all registers). I could save the content in a macro in this case, but in general you can't be sure of that so best practice is to save toks in toks, not macros. – Joseph Wright♦ Oct 18 '13 at 6:08