[pdftex] MediaBox?

[Otfried Cheong]

 > I am not an expert at pdf or pdftex nor at any evolving standards and I
 > can't appreciate all the consequences of making some change especially
 > when /ArtBox is a new feature in an evolving pdf standard. Having said
 > that it strikes me that /MediaBox in pdf corresponds to %%DocumentSize
 > in ps and /ArtBox corresponds to %%BoundingBox in ps. Hence when
 > \includegraphics looks for %%BoundingBox for (e)ps inclusion it should
 > look for /ArtBox for pdf inclusion.

I agree.  This all sounds very much as if pdftex should check the
ArtBox, and fall back on the MediaBox if it's not defined.  The only
question is whether this should replace the current CropBox check, or
whether it should be an additional level.

 > Yesterday I ran a little experiment and changed all occurrences of
 > /MediaBox in various support macros and pdf configuration files
 > (those that I could "grep" through) to /ArtBox and it made no
 > difference. Hence the reading of /MediaBox (never mind the
 > definition of Gin at read) is controlled someplace outside these
 > macros.

"MediaBox" is defined in the pdftex binary, so you cannot fix the
problem that easily.

Otfried