[poppler] page sequence + page spreads in PDF

[Michael Howard]

Leonard,

Thank you very much for your prompt response.

On Wed, Feb 2, 2011 at 8:52 PM, Leonard Rosenthol <lrosenth at adobe.com> wrote:
[snip]
> Each of the spreads is DUPLICATED in the PDF - and then cropped (CropBox != MediaBox)  to the right
> or left accordingly.   That's why it renders as single pages, because that's what is defined as the viewable area.

Ha! I guess that makes sense.

> Apparently the commands you are using with ImageMagick aren't respecting that cropbox.
> Start by making sure you are current with IM and also Ghostscript.

Yes, I am at latest on both.

 [mth at localhost ~]$ convert -version
Version: ImageMagick 6.6.7-3 2011-01-28 Q16 http://www.imagemagick.org
Copyright: Copyright (C) 1999-2011 ImageMagick Studio LLC
Features: OpenMP

[mth at localhost ~]$ gs -version
GPL Ghostscript  9.00 (2010-09-14)
Copyright (C) 2010 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
[mth at localhost ~]$


Looks like they are not respecting the CropBox.

I'll post messages to magick-users and see what they say. Actually ...

*** 2 minutes later ***

I found the following at:

http://www.imagemagick.org/script/formats.php

PDF 	RW 	Portable Document Format 	Requires Ghostscript to read. By
default, ImageMagick sets the page size to the MediaBox. Some PDF
files, however, have a CropBox or TrimBox that is smaller than the
MediaBox and may include white space, registration or cutting marks
outside the CropBox or TrimBox. To force ImageMagick to use the
CropBox or TrimBox rather than the MediaBox, use -define (e.g. -define
pdf:use-cropbox=true or -define pdf:use-trimbox=true). Use -density to
improve the appearance of your PDF rendering (e.g. -density 300x300).

*** 5 minutes later ***

Ha! That did the trick!

I followed the instructions and added the following to my ImageMagick
convert command line before the .pdf filename

 -define pdf:use-cropbox=true

and it did the right thing.


Leonard, thank you *very* much.


Michael