Bates numbering
Legal and archival work needs every page to carry a unique, citable identifier — ABC-000001, ABC-000002, on and on. Set the prefix, the starting number and how many digits to pad to, and each page gets stamped in the corner.
First number: ABC-000001. Fixed-width digits are what make a set sort correctly everywhere — unpadded numbers sort 1, 10, 100, 2.
The document is read locally. For a whole production, merge the files first so the numbering runs continuously.
A prefix such as ABC-, a starting number, and the digit count to pad to. Six digits is the usual convention.
Any of six corners, with the margin, font, size and colour under your control. Bottom-right is standard.
The result tells you the first and last number stamped, which is what you record in the production log.
Padding to six digits means ABC-000042 and ABC-001337 sort correctly as text, in a file manager, a spreadsheet and a database. Unpadded numbers sort 1, 10, 100, 2 — which is how document sets get lost.
Increment by more than one when a physical exhibit or a redacted page occupies a number in the sequence that no PDF page corresponds to.
The number is drawn into the page content, not attached as an annotation, so it cannot be toggled off, and it prints and photocopies with the page. That permanence is the entire point of Bates numbering.
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