[pdftex] MediaBox?

[Heiko Oberdiek]

At 11:05 14.06.2001 +0200, Martin Schröder wrote:
>On 2001-06-13 13:08:34 +0200, Heiko Oberdiek wrote:
>> PDF does not know a BoundingBox. With PDF the MediaBox
>> is used. For example, a pdf file with the image without
>> margins and the correct MediaBox can be generated from
>> a eps file with correct BoundingBox via epstopdf.
>
>Wouldn't it make more sense to use the ArtBox? We are "placing
>the content of a page in another application" (p. 526f of pdfref
>1.3), aren't we?

* /MediaBox is known in all PDF versions and is required.
  Why to use funny values? With translation and size of
  the BoundingBox the user can load the file in a pdf viewer
  and check, whether it is correct.
* /ArtBox is optional and a PDF-1.3 feature. The default
  is the value of the CropBox, whose default is the value
  of the MediaBox. With the correct (see above) MediaBox
  adding the ArtBox with the same values would be a waste,
  it is already implicitly given.
* pdfTeX does not know the /ArtBox.

Yours sincerely
  Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>