[pdftex] crop marks

[Ross Moore]

[Charset iso-8859-9 unsupported, filtering to ASCII...]
> 
> Sorry if this information was already given on this list, but I can_t
> found it anywhere.
> 
> I need to put crop marks in a document produced by pdflatex. To do
> that, I_m using the crop package by Melchior Franz.
> 
> I also need to define the size of the page to 15x21 cm (the final
> sheet size), with a mag=750. I_m using the geometry package to do that.
> 
> The problem is that the crop marks are out of the page, and it dont apper
> both in the screen or printed version. How can I solve it?

I faced the same problem recently when producing the insert for the
TeXLive CDs. This is how I solved it:

Basically you need two different page-sizes;
  one is for the material that you want,
  the other is for that material, including crop-marks.

Since you can have only one page-size at a time, then you need
at least 2 runs of pdflatex to achieve the desired result:
 

 A.
Firstly, run your job, using  geometry.sty , to create a PDF
with pages tightly cropped to your layouts, at the desired page-size.


 C.
Create a 2nd job having a larger size that will include the crop-marks.
For this 2nd job, use \includegraphics[page=???]{your_first_job.pdf}
to pull in the pages one-at a time, and place crop-marks around them.



You may be able to use an existing package to help draw the
cropmarks, or you can do some lower-level TeX programming
with \vbox, \hbox, \vrule and \hrule to draw the crop marks.

Any package which draws the crop-marks based upon the global
values of  \paperwidth and \paperheight is of no use,
for the reasons that you have already discovered -- unless you
recode some macros to adjust these parameters locally.
(But if you are going to do this, you might as well code your
own drawing of crop-bars instead, as this figures to be easier
work, requiring less understanding of someone else's TeX
programming style.)


In my example, I was placing the images 4-up on a page,
so there was a 3rd step, coming between A. and C. above:

 B. 
using  pdfpages.sty , include each page 4 times, in 4-up layout.
The resulting PDF will provide the pages as images for step C.



Maybe someone knows of a package that helps with step C.


Hope this helps,

	Ross Moore


> The commands I_m using are
> 
> \usepackage[pdftex]{geometry}
>   \geometry{mag=750,
>             truedimen,
>             paperheight=28cm,
>             paperwidth=20cm,
>             left=2cm,
>             right=2cm,
>             top=1.0cm,
>             bottom=1.0cm,
>             twosideshift = 0pt}
> 
> \usepackage[a4,center,cross,pdflatex]{crop}
> 
> thanks
> 
> Ronaldo
> 
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