Why don't the pager numbers match the URI string? (e.g. page 2 is ?page=1 instead of ?page=2)

You hit the nail on the head. That's one thing I don't like in Drupal.

I'm a programmer and I'm used to counting from 0, yet, to me, it looks very wrong, and confusing, that "page=1" is actually page two :-(

If you invoke the first page, you don't have $page set, that's why it is zero. If page 2 was $page=2, then you would have to send $page with every request, even if it is only one page. Every URL of your site would get an additional "$page=1". For most drupal site owners, this looks ugly, thus noone will change it, I guess. Anyway, you don't need the page attribute unless there is more than one page.

This means, if you want to change it for your site, you have to hack it yourself. I guess you could probably work with some kind of hook that decreases/increases the page number. However, the easiest method would be, to install pathauto and to create a function called conf_url_rewrite in your settings file.

$mode will either be set to outgoing or incoming. Increase page for outgoing rewrites and decrease page for incoming rewrites. This should do it.

This is the correct fix for this problem: (This is for drupal 5.x, it should be the same in 4.x/6.x as well)

Change

function pager_query($query, $limit = 10, $element = 0, $count_query = NULL) {
  global $pager_page_array, $pager_total, $pager_total_items;
  $page = isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : '';

To This:

function pager_query($query, $limit = 10, $element = 0, $count_query = NULL) {
  global $pager_page_array, $pager_total, $pager_total_items;
  $page = isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : '';
  $page--;  //Add $page-- to fix drupal's page 0 problem

Change

function theme_pager_link($text, $page_new, $element, $parameters = array(), $attributes = array()) {
  $page = isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : '';
  if ($new_page = implode(',', pager_load_array($page_new[$element], $element, explode(',', $page)))) {
   $parameters['page'] = $new_page;
  }

To this:

function theme_pager_link($text, $page_new, $element, $parameters = array(), $attributes = array()) {
  $page = isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : '';
  if ($new_page = implode(',', pager_load_array($page_new[$element], $element, explode(',', $page)))) {
//    $parameters['page'] = $new_page;
     $parameters['page'] = $new_page + 1; //Add +1 to fix drupal's page 0 problem
  }

Start page count from 1 with views pager

go to your_site.com/includes/pager.inc

and this code

function theme_pager_link($variables) {
$text = $variables['text'];
$page_new = $variables['page_new'];
$element = $variables['element'];
$parameters = $variables['parameters'];
$attributes = $variables['attributes'];

$page = isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : '';
if ($new_page = implode(',', pager_load_array($page_new[$element], $element, explode(',', $page)))) {
$parameters['page'] = $new_page;
}

replace to

function theme_pager_link($variables) {
$text = $variables['text'];
$page_new = $variables['page_new'];
$element = $variables['element'];
$parameters = $variables['parameters'];
$attributes = $variables['attributes'];

$page = isset($_GET['page']) ? $_GET['page'] : '';
if ($new_page = implode(',', pager_load_array($page_new[$element], $element, explode(',', $page)))) {
$parameters['page'] = $new_page+1;
}