[pdftex] Double MediaBox in pdflatex output

[Altmann, Michael]

Hi,

when preparing PDF files for a printing house, a bleed box has to be
included in the file, and the media box has to be increased
appropriately. If I supply a custom MediaBox with \pdfpageattr, the
MediaBox appears twice in the pdf output. It is easy to remove one
MediaBox manually, but this is error prone.

I've created a minimal example:

\documentclass{article}

\pdfcompresslevel 0

\pdfpageattr{

/MediaBox [-8.50394 -8.50394 603.77953 850.39370]^^J

/BleedBox [-8.50394 -8.50394 603.77953 850.39370]^^J

/CropBox [0 0 595.27559 841.88976]^^J

/TrimBox [0.00000 0.00000 595.27559 841.88976]

}

\begin{document}

Some text.

\end{document}


pdflatex yields:


...
<snip>
<<

/Producer (pdfTeX-1.40.17)
/Creator (TeX)
/CreationDate (D:20170209130229+01'00')
/ModDate (D:20170209130229+01'00')
/Trapped /False
/PTEX.Fullbanner (This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159265-2.6-1.40.17 (TeX
Live 2016/W32TeX) kpathsea version 6.2.2)
</snip>

...
<snip>

<<
/Type /Page
/Contents 3 0 R
/Resources 1 0 R
/MediaBox [0 0 595.276 841.89]
/MediaBox [-8.50394 -8.50394 603.77953 850.39370]
/BleedBox [-8.50394 -8.50394 603.77953 850.39370]
/CropBox [0 0 595.27559 841.88976]
/TrimBox [0.00000 0.00000 595.27559 841.88976]
/Parent 6 0 R
</snip>

...

Is this a bug or do I miss something? Is there a way to suppress the
first MediaBox?

Thanks & BR

Michael

[Heiko Oberdiek]

Hello,

Post by Altmann, Michael
when preparing PDF files for a printing house, a bleed box has to be
included in the file, and the media box has to be increased
appropriately. If I supply a custom MediaBox with \pdfpageattr, the
MediaBox appears twice in the pdf output. It is easy to remove one
MediaBox manually, but this is error prone.

pdfTeX only allows some control over the upper right corner of
the media box via `\pdfpagewidth` and `\pdfpageheight` (plus/minus
rounding issues). The lower left corner is always fixed at zero.

The workaround is to increase the output page, move the page
contents accordingly, and to recalculate the coordinates of
the other boxes. Then, the media box, written by pdfTeX,
is correct without the need to specify a second one.

Yours sincerely
Heiko Oberdiek