| | <<<Back 1 day (to 2019/03/18) | 20190319 |
| inkbottle | How can I make a 2-up pdf, knowing the numbers beforehand? | 16:45.15 |
| | I tried the script there https://stackoverflow.com/questions/30545382/ghostscript-for-pdf-how-to-fit-4-pages-into-1 | 16:45.26 |
| | but had huge white areas, even though I had done a successful cropping before. | 16:46.21 |
| chrisl | inkbottle: You might want to try adding either -dUseCropBox or -dUseArtBox to the command line, with that utility | 16:50.40 |
| inkbottle | chrisl: OK, I do that right now | 16:51.39 |
| | chrisl: with -dUseCropBox, I got rid of top and right margin; so definitely an improvement but still a lot of white space | 16:58.13 |
| | -dUseArtBox didn't make changes | 16:59.15 |
| chrisl | inkbottle: If I'm reading that code correctly, it just rotates and scales onto the "default" page size, it doesn't resize the output page to suit the input. You can either set the page size to something that'll work on the command line, or rewrite the utility to do something like that - I suspect the reason it doesn't do that is because there's not requirement for all pages in a PDF to be the same dimension | 17:03.07 |
| | erm, dimensions.... | 17:03.17 |
| kens | I was on #mupdf.... | 17:03.30 |
| | I have an answer to this question on SO: | 17:03.48 |
| | https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22138567/shrink-pdf-to-fit-onto-one-page-using-ghostscript/22145864#22145864 | 17:03.49 |
| | ah same program different question and answer :-) | 17:04.14 |
| inkbottle | too bad | 17:05.34 |
| kens | Its a PostScript program and it even has debug output so you can see what its doing, it should be easy enough to alter | 17:06.04 |
| | You'll need to set Verbose to get that out, but I'd recommend doing so | 17:07.00 |
| | It clearly starts by getting the dimensions of the current media and the dimensions of the PDF file pages. It assumes all pages in the PDF file are the same size. | 17:07.37 |
| inkbottle | It's quite lengthy though; I've read it, but I'm not skilled enough to amend it usefully (also, it does do waht it says, only leaving too much white space) | 17:08.02 |
| kens | Then it tries to decide if the media is landscape or portrait, and the PDF pages are landscape or portrait, and tries to make them match | 17:08.15 |
| | The white space is part of the program, you can change it | 17:08.36 |
| | I can't see why it would be leqaving extra white space | 17:09.10 |
| | You would need to post an example somewhere | 17:09.19 |
| inkbottle | kens: that file:http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~ulfn/papers/afp08/tutorial.pdf; and all what I did: https://paste.debian.net/1073775/ | 17:11.03 |
| kens | chrisl what would be involved in trying to use clang instead of gcc to build GS ? | 17:11.13 |
| | inkbottle: give me a minute.... | 17:11.18 |
| chrisl | kens: From git? | 17:11.32 |
| kens | The latest one about Chrome OS says they are using clang | 17:11.48 |
| | I'm wondering if we cna try that | 17:11.54 |
| chrisl | ./autogen.sh CC=clang | 17:12.03 |
| kens | OK I'll tell them that I'll try that tomorrow. May have to install clang first :-) | 17:12.25 |
| chrisl | You might want to ask if they are using any other options for configure/autogen.sh - if they haven't told us already | 17:13.28 |
| inkbottle | (trying to understand something of the script...) | 17:14.00 |
| chrisl | kens: The n-up script linked above doesn't set a pagesize, that I can see | 17:14.37 |
| kens | No, it just uses the current media size I believe. It sets the scaling from that and the PDF boox | 17:15.01 |
| | The assumption is that you set hte media size you want first, then it scales/rotates the pages onto that. | 17:15.28 |
| | IIRC | 17:15.30 |
| | Sorry writing email, will be back in a mo | 17:15.44 |
| chrisl | Yes, so if the original pages don't have the same aspect ratio as the output page, you'll get "extra" white space | 17:15.53 |
| kens | The program tries to match the aspect ratios of the media and hte PDF boxes | 17:16.35 |
| | But its always possible you're going to get *some* white space, unless we scale the pages differently in each direction. | 17:17.02 |
| inkbottle | using verbose, I can see I have both PDFWidth is 483 and PageWidth is 612: the initial cropping operation was not so successful | 17:19.01 |
| | from the point of view of the script | 17:19.13 |
| | cropping arguments were: 132 174 484 724 | 17:19.50 |
| kens | 612x792 will be the default media size, that'll be US Letter | 17:20.09 |
| | OK mail sent, let me get the PDF file now | 17:21.21 |
| inkbottle | (if I am to actually print on paper, it'll be a4) | 17:22.54 |
| | gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sPAPERSIZE=a4 -dFIXEDMEDIA -dPDFFitPage -o markedA4.pdf -f marked.pdf | 17:26.43 |
| | the above line failed to change media size | 17:26.56 |
| | I cut and past the relevant part of the script to test that | 17:27.22 |
| kens | OK so my default media size is A4 not US Letter | 17:28.48 |
| | The PDF is on US Letter | 17:29.23 |
| inkbottle | gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sPAPERSIZE=letter -dFIXEDMEDIA -dPDFFitPage -o markedLetter.pdf -f marked.pdf | 17:29.59 |
| | verbose shows no differences in the concern of page size | 17:30.16 |
| kens | Fitting 2 pages on the sheet is best done by rotating the A4, and that results in the Letter pages beign shrunk to 0.7 | 17:30.17 |
| inkbottle | sure | 17:30.35 |
| kens | Sorry, teh PDF is A4 | 17:31.17 |
| | my default media is also A4 | 17:31.31 |
| inkbottle | fine | 17:31.36 |
| kens | If I chaneg to Letter the scaling changes form 0.7 to 0.6 | 17:32.08 |
| | Looking at your original file, it already has a great deal of white space | 17:33.04 |
| | Huge margins at top/bottom/left/right | 17:33.18 |
| inkbottle | L612x792 | 17:34.11 |
| | letter* | 17:34.15 |
| kens | Looking at the original tutorial file in 2 paghe side by side mode in Acrobat looks very similar to the resutl of 2-up.ps | 17:34.21 |
| inkbottle | conversion to a4 failed | 17:34.23 |
| | (yes, definitely not one'd want) | 17:35.08 |
| kens | So I'm not really sure what your problem is. | 17:35.53 |
| | If you want to trim off the white space, you need to start by doing that in the original file, the 2-up program dfoesn't attempt to do that | 17:36.19 |
| | It just shrinks the entire page, white space and all | 17:36.30 |
| inkbottle | I did make a cropping before: gs -q -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -o marked.pdf -c "[/CropBox [132 174 484 724] /PAGES pdfmark" -f "tutorial.pdf" | 17:38.58 |
| kens | Time for me to be off. If you have any questions feel free to put them here and I'll read them tomorrow and try to reply sensibly | 17:39.04 |
| | Adding a CropBox is nto the same as croppign the file | 17:39.22 |
| | By default Ghostscript uses the MediaBox, not the CropBox | 17:39.35 |
| | If you want ot use the CropBox you'll have to add -dUseCropBox | 17:39.48 |
| inkbottle | OK, how do I really change that then | 17:39.52 |
| | I did that | 17:39.59 |
| | oh, in the first line? (I can try that) | 17:40.18 |
| kens | No,. in the 2-up invocation | 17:40.30 |
| inkbottle | that I did, little improvement | 17:40.42 |
| | and still 612x792 everywehre | 17:40.59 |
| kens | If you want the 2up file on somethign otehr than Letter you need to specify it. Add -dDEVICEIWDTHPOINTS=595 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=842 for A4 | 17:41.41 |
| inkbottle | OK | 17:41.56 |
| kens | I'm serious about going now though, its late here | 17:42.06 |
| inkbottle | I'm sure I'll be able to finish it by myself | 17:42.30 |
| | I've learned a lot here: thanks | 17:42.50 |
| | Hacking the file: https://paste.debian.net/1073811/ | 18:46.48 |
| | sed -n '264,$p' 2-up.ps > SomeScript.ps | 18:48.10 |
| | Then I'm defining the parameters by hand | 18:48.26 |
| | Error: /undefined in pdfgetpage | 18:48.54 |
| | l.163: 1 pdfgetpage get_any_box | 18:49.36 |
| | seems like something called pdfgetpage is defined here | 18:50.00 |
| | but I don't understand the syntax | 18:50.10 |
| | (not /pdfgetpage ... def) | 18:50.38 |
| | so pdfgetpage is a command: but described nowhere | 19:05.32 |
| | I managed using the full script 2-up.ps, but changing some parameter values in the middle | 20:07.41 |
| | missing the first page but I've already read it | 20:09.51 |
| | The understanding things part will have to wait; otherwise satisfactory | 20:10.29 |
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