Producing PDFs to non-standard page sizes (fwd)

[John Hodgson]

Christina

Yes, we've had authors who've been caught by this before, but its not the
problem I'm trying to solve. Using conventional DTP packages like Pagemaker
the page size in the PDF (the one that Acrobat reports at the bottom of the
screen) can be set to the finished size of the book,  in this case I need
216x138mm. The problem is when the file is processed ready to go onto the
printing presses.

John

-----Original Message-----
From: Support for users of Y&Y's TeX system [mailto:YANDYTEX at LISTS.UCC.IE]
On Behalf Of Christina Thiele
Sent: 10 June 2004 17:13
To: YANDYTEX at LISTS.UCC.IE
Subject: Re: Producing PDFs to non-standard page sizes (fwd)

Sorry ... I replied to Sue's post and it went back only to her. Sorry, Sue
-- you'll be getting duplicates of this one ;-)

Ch.

======

>From cthiele Thu Jun 10 12:10:48 2004
Subject: Re: [YANDYTEX] Producing PDFs to non-standard page sizes
To: jcm at lms.ac.uk
Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 12:10:48 -0400 (EDT)
In-Reply-To: <no.id> from "LMS journals" at Jun 10, 2004 04:49:22 PM
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.5 PL5]
Content-Length: 1459

LMS journals writes:
>
> ...
>
> But I reckon the basic steps are to
> 1. make sure your latex is generating the size you want 2. use printer
> options to select paper size 3. use the command line to put it where
> you want on the page.
> 4. set up a page of appropriate size in distiller.
>
> All the best
>
> Sue
>
> ...


I'd like to add one more point -- and you may already be aware of it.

I've been caught by a `feature' in Acrobat Reader's printer dialogue box.

In v.5.0 (on unix), you'll find a section called `PostScript Options'. In
here, you want to turn OFF the `feature' of `Shrink oversized pages to paper
size' --  and I'd probably also check that `Expand small pages to paper
size' should also be DEactivated.

On my NT laptop, I seem to have v.4.0, and there, the most I can find in the
printer dialogue box is an entry (top right area) that reads `Fit to page'.

And in v.6, it's probably been stuck somewhere else again ;-) In any event,
I found I had to tell a UK client to deactivate this feature to ensure that
his CJL article came out at the correct size (that is, on North American 8.5
x 11 in paper), and not resized for printing on A4 paper.

You may want to give this end of the process a check as well, once you get
your file to produce the right dimens.

Oh, and of course, print a hardcopy sample page from the .dvi, .ps, and .pdf
files, to ensure that what you're starting with is what you end up with ;-)

Ch.