[OS X TeX] Two unanswered questions on StackExchange

[John Collins]

Alain,

On 11/13/20 2:36 AM, Alain Schremmer wrote:
> 
> 3. What about the numbering of the sections in the Epilogue? That's got to be 
> the result of my dismal understanding of LaTeX.

That's how starred chapters (and starred sections) behave in the standard 
document classes.  They don't do anything to reset the sequence numbers.

To see why one reason that this choice is appropriate, set the section 
numbering back to the default in book.cls (i.e., remove your redefinition of 
\thesection).  Then the section numbers are of the form chapter.sec, e.g., 2.2, 
instead of just the number of a section within a chapter.  What chapter number 
is appropriate in this format for an unnumbered chapter?

As a reader, my personal strong preferences are that any chapter big enough to 
have numbered sections should itself be numbered, and that the compound forms, 
ch.sec etc, should be used.  Then it is a lot easier for someone else to cite a 
particular section, as in "For details, see Sec. 4.5 of Ref. ..."

If you nevertheless want the unnumbered chapter, a simple method is to insert 
\setcounter{section}{0} at the beginning of an unnumbered chapter.

John Collins