Use only arabic numbers in book class

Question

I am writing a book with extbook class. In the TOC frontmatter uses roman numerals, mainmatter uses arabic numbers. Publisher asked if I could use only arabic numbers everywhere including in frontmatter.

Is there easy way to do it? If I move preface into mainmatter it adds chapter numbers which is not what I want.

Answer 1

I guess your publisher wants continuous numbering: it wouldn't really make sense to have two pages numbered 1, one in the front matter and the other in the main matter.

The definitions in the book class are

\newcommand\frontmatter{%
  \cleardoublepage
  \@mainmatterfalse
  \pagenumbering{roman}%
}
\newcommand\mainmatter{%
  \cleardoublepage
  \@mainmattertrue
  \pagenumbering{arabic}%
}

so you just have to modify them

\documentclass{book}

\makeatletter
\renewcommand\frontmatter{%
  \cleardoublepage
  \@mainmatterfalse
  \pagenumbering{arabic}% <--- changed here
}
\renewcommand\mainmatter{%
  \cleardoublepage
  \@mainmattertrue
  %\pagenumbering{arabic}% <--- removed
}
\makeatother

Answer 2

Don't use \frontmatter or \mainmatter. These both reset the page numbering which, by default, is arabic.

Answer 3

Not sure if this is a best practice or not I used this method:

\renewcommand\frontmatter{%
    \cleardoublepage
  %\@mainmatterfalse
  \pagenumbering{arabic}}

And after mainmatter (to fix numbering issue in TOC):

...
\mainmatter
\cleardoublepage
..