CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pdfghostscript
scee1787
scee1787

Reputation: 3

PDF Dimensions of Page Out of Range Errors from Ghostscript

I'm trying to produce new PDFs that alter dimensions only the first page (using CropBox). I used a modified version of How do I crop pages 3&4 in a multipage pdf using ghostscript

Here is what's strange: everything runs properly, but when I open the PDFs in typical applications (Preview, Acrobat, etc.), they either crash or I get a "Warning: Dimensions of Page May be Out of Range" error. In Acrobat, only one page will display, even tho page count is 2, 45, 60, or whatever.

Even stranger: I emailed the PDFs to someone to see if it was a machine-specific issue. In Gmail, everything looks fine in Google Apps's PDF viewer. So the process 'worked,' but it looks like there's something about the dimensions or page size that is throwing other apps off.

I've tried multiple GS options (dPDFFitPage, dPrinted=false, dUseCropBox, changing paper size to something other than legal), but nothing seems to work.

I'm attaching a version of a PDF that underwent this process and generates these errors as well. https://www.dropbox.com/s/ka13b7bvxmql4d2/imfwb.pdf?dl=0

Modified output is below. xmin, ymin, xmax, ymax, height, width are variables defined elsewhere in the bigger script of which GS is a part. Data are grabbed using pdfinfo

gs \
-o output/#{filename} \
-sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
-c \"<</EndPage {
0 eq {
  pop /Page# where {
    /Page# get
    1 eq {
      (page 1) == flush

      [/CropBox [#{xmin} #{ymin} #{xmax} #{ymax}] /PAGE pdfmark
      true
    }
    {
      (not page 1) == flush

      [/CropBox [0 #{height.to_f} #{width.to_f} #{height.to_f}] /PAGE pdfmark
      true
    } ifelse
  }{
    true
  } ifelse
}
{
  false
}
ifelse
}
>> setpagedevice\" \
 -f #{filename}"
`#{cmd}`

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1594

Answers (1)

mkl
mkl

Reputation: 95953

For pages after the first you set

[/CropBox [0 #{height.to_f} #{width.to_f} #{height.to_f}] /PAGE pdfmark

I.e. a crop box with zero height!

E.g. in case of your sample document page 2 has the crop box [0 792.0 612.0 792.0].

This surely is not what you want...

If you really want to "produce new PDFs that alter dimensions only the first page (using CropBox)", why do you change the crop box of later pages at all? Simply don't do anything in that case!

Why "Dimensions of Page May be Out of Range"?

Well, ISO 32000-1 in its normative Annex C declares:

The minimum page size should be 3 by 3 units in default user space

Thus, according to that older PDF specification a page height of 0 indeed is out of range for PDF!

Meanwhile, though, ISO 32000-2 has dropped that requirement, so strictly speaking a page height of zero should be nothing to complain about...

Upvotes: 0

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