[XeTeX] XeTeXpdffile media box etc

William Adams will.adams at frycomm.com
Fri Sep 10 14:46:08 CEST 2010


On Sep 8, 2010, at 11:08 PM, Will Robertson wrote (quoting me):

>> Crop, Bleed and Trim are standard printing terms and the usage reflects that. Media is used to describe the underlying page size to which one would likely be printing the file and art is what one wants people to see.
> 
> And how do these behave? In all cases, is the PDF cropped to whichever bounding box is specified? Or do they just relate to the alignment of the inserted box? Or does it vary between them?

Crop box determines what is visible when the file is opened in a .pdf viewing program, usually 0.

Bleed box determines the amount of ``bleed'' which a file has, which is what is printed beyond the trim area so as to allow printing to go up to the trim and ``bleed'' off. Given modern printing equipment 1/8" (9 bp) is typical --- the metric equivalent usually rounds down to 3mm.

Trim box determines what the publication's final size will be after it is folded (if necessary) and cut.

Here's some code which I worked out w/ the help of the list to make a file w/ a trim box:

\documentclass{minimal}

\usepackage[paperwidth=630bp,paperheight=810bp]{geometry}

\usepackage{atbegshi}
\AtBeginShipout{\special{pdf: put @thispage <</TrimBox [9.0 9.0 621.0 801.0]>>}}

\pagestyle{empty}

\special{pdf: put @thispage <</TrimBox [9.0 9.0 621.0 801.0]>>}
\begin{document}
Test
\newpage
Test
\end{document}

HTH! Please feel free to include any of the above text in any documentation / wiki where it might be useful.

William


-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.




More information about the XeTeX mailing list