Wow. No new topics for 3 years. I don't give this much hope.
I'm using pdfshuffler to crop pages before sending them to the iPad. Sometimes (not often) I get a page that is cropped on the home computer (viewed via okular on Linux) but all apps on the iPad display the full page with no changes and nothing cropped.
Any ideas where the problem might be and how I can work around it?
-jvh
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"Cropping" a pdf does not actually remove any information, it just changes the view area or whatever it is called.
So I guess the apps on the iPad have a bug and are ignoring the view area / page size in the PDF.
Normally if you wanted to remove the "cropped" information you would "print" the "cropped" pdf to a virtual pdf printer to create a new PDF. But this would remove bookmarks, hyperlinks, etc.
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Anonymous
-
2012-09-18
Thanks for the information. Good to know. It still leaves me puzzled as to why 9 times out of 10 (or 19 out of 20) there are no problems (i.e. what pdfshuffler crops appears cropped on both platforms).
My guess (and it's only a guess) is that there might be some property of the original (i.e. pre-cropped) PDF that is rare, but when encountered either pdfshuffler doesn't handle it properly, or the iPad rendering agent doesn't handle it properly.
Pdfshuffler doesn't offer a print option but okular does so I did a print-to-file. In this case the resulting PDF is rendered the same on both plaforms: some side-content whited out but the border dimensions are unchanged so, alas, not a viable workaround.
-jvh
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And it seems to work! I'll have to give pdfscissors a try to see if I like it better (if it also works) but it looks like I have a fix for this nagging little problem. Much thanks.
-jvh
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> As expected, it looks cropped with any/all of the tools I have on the Linux box, but not on the iPad.
Yes, it displays correctly in Epdfview, Foxit, and Adobe Reader. So I think the iPad apps have a (major!) bug.
If I import it into inkscape I can see the cropped page number as expected.
But if I print it to a virtual printer and then import the new pdf into inkscape, the page number has been discarded. Are you sure that method doesn't work for you?
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But just to confirm, did page_briss.pdf display correctly on the iPad without first printing to a virtual printer? That is interesting.
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Anonymous
-
2012-09-21
Yes, the page_briss.pdf file displays the same (and correctly) on both platforms. No virtual printer involved.
As I mentioned (posting #3 above), when I did a print-to-file from okular, the resulting PDF does display the same on both platforms, and what had been cropped out (page number and some of the title) was indeed gone, but that just left more white-space between the content and the display edge. That's not what I'm after.
What I usually get after cropping is less white-space, not more. The content is expanded to the edge of the display, thus making it easier to read on the tiny iPad screen.
And just to be clear: When I bring up page_shuffl.pdf on the iPad, the page number is still there. It has not been whited out.
I hope you get it figured out. It is a bit of a head-scratcher: Why is this file different from all the others that I've successfully cropped with pdfshuffler?
Good luck,
-jvh
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but that just left more white-space between the content and the display edge.
Oh, right. I misunderstood what you were saying the first time. So in theory it would have worked if you have either printed to a custom page size the same size as your cropped page, or maybe had scaled it to fit some standard size.
And just to be clear: When I bring up page_shuffl.pdf on the iPad, the page number is still there. It has not been whited out.
Yes, I'm pretty confident it is a bug with the iPad software - if possible I think you should report the issue to Apple or whoever makes the software. Pythonpdf (which is the upstream library project that PDF shuffler uses) might be interested too.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
Wow. No new topics for 3 years. I don't give this much hope.
I'm using pdfshuffler to crop pages before sending them to the iPad. Sometimes (not often) I get a page that is cropped on the home computer (viewed via okular on Linux) but all apps on the iPad display the full page with no changes and nothing cropped.
Any ideas where the problem might be and how I can work around it?
-jvh
"Cropping" a pdf does not actually remove any information, it just changes the view area or whatever it is called.
So I guess the apps on the iPad have a bug and are ignoring the view area / page size in the PDF.
Normally if you wanted to remove the "cropped" information you would "print" the "cropped" pdf to a virtual pdf printer to create a new PDF. But this would remove bookmarks, hyperlinks, etc.
Thanks for the information. Good to know. It still leaves me puzzled as to why 9 times out of 10 (or 19 out of 20) there are no problems (i.e. what pdfshuffler crops appears cropped on both platforms).
My guess (and it's only a guess) is that there might be some property of the original (i.e. pre-cropped) PDF that is rare, but when encountered either pdfshuffler doesn't handle it properly, or the iPad rendering agent doesn't handle it properly.
Pdfshuffler doesn't offer a print option but okular does so I did a print-to-file. In this case the resulting PDF is rendered the same on both plaforms: some side-content whited out but the border dimensions are unchanged so, alas, not a viable workaround.
-jvh
Are you able to provide a sample (of the original PDF and of the cropped PDF before printing to file)?
It would be interesting to see if you get the same results using tools which don't use pypdf. e.g.
http://www.pdfscissors.com/
http://sourceforge.net/projects/briss/
http://www.pdfsam.org/
Actually, maybe pdfsam doesn't do crop yet… the author's new library does, anyway.
I cut the first page from the original problem PDF: page.pdf
I used pdfshuffler to crop it to my liking: page_shuffl.pdf
As expected, it looks cropped with any/all of the tools I have on the Linux box, but not on the iPad.
I decided to give briss a try: page_briss.pdf
And it seems to work! I'll have to give pdfscissors a try to see if I like it better (if it also works) but it looks like I have a fix for this nagging little problem. Much thanks.
-jvh
> As expected, it looks cropped with any/all of the tools I have on the Linux box, but not on the iPad.
Yes, it displays correctly in Epdfview, Foxit, and Adobe Reader. So I think the iPad apps have a (major!) bug.
If I import it into inkscape I can see the cropped page number as expected.
But if I print it to a virtual printer and then import the new pdf into inkscape, the page number has been discarded. Are you sure that method doesn't work for you?
But just to confirm, did page_briss.pdf display correctly on the iPad without first printing to a virtual printer? That is interesting.
Yes, the page_briss.pdf file displays the same (and correctly) on both platforms. No virtual printer involved.
As I mentioned (posting #3 above), when I did a print-to-file from okular, the resulting PDF does display the same on both platforms, and what had been cropped out (page number and some of the title) was indeed gone, but that just left more white-space between the content and the display edge. That's not what I'm after.
What I usually get after cropping is less white-space, not more. The content is expanded to the edge of the display, thus making it easier to read on the tiny iPad screen.
And just to be clear: When I bring up page_shuffl.pdf on the iPad, the page number is still there. It has not been whited out.
I hope you get it figured out. It is a bit of a head-scratcher: Why is this file different from all the others that I've successfully cropped with pdfshuffler?
Good luck,
-jvh
Oh, right. I misunderstood what you were saying the first time. So in theory it would have worked if you have either printed to a custom page size the same size as your cropped page, or maybe had scaled it to fit some standard size.
Yes, I'm pretty confident it is a bug with the iPad software - if possible I think you should report the issue to Apple or whoever makes the software. Pythonpdf (which is the upstream library project that PDF shuffler uses) might be interested too.