Footer odd/even page problem when chapters do not begin on an odd page

[Ivan Ristic <ivan.ristic@gmail.com>]

Hi everyone,

I have written a customisation layer for a book written in DocBook 5
and I've encountered one problem that I can't solve. I think the issue
is with the stylesheets. I am converting the book into PDF. I am using
the 1.74.0 ns stylesheets, but I've verified that the same problem
occurs with the latest version.

In my book I don't want the chapters to begin on odd pages, so I've
added the appropriate styling to avoid blank pages (as well as the
styling to fix the page numbering).

My book is double sided with asymmetric footers. On an odd page, the
page number is on the right. On an even page, the page number is on
the left.

However,  when a chapter begins on an even page, the footer is
rendered as if it were on an odd page. After looking at the stylesheet
code, it seems to me that the problem is with the the "sequence"
parameter (to footer.content), which can contain "odd", "even" or
"first". The default stylesheet seems to assume an odd page when the
value is "first". Hence the problem.

Is there some other way to find out if a page number is odd?

Thanks.

-- 
Ivan Ristic
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