[gs-devel] ps2pdf and %%BoundingBox

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

With the availability of pdftex and pdflatex, it is now possible to
insert PDF files as images inside other documents.  The LaTeX hyperref
package makes it very easy to have hot-linked cross-references in PDF
documents, so many LaTeX users would like to use pdflatex routinely.

At present, with Adobe Acrobat Distiller 3.02 on Sun Solaris, and
ghostscript pdf2ps (ghostscript 8.10 or earlier), conversion of an EPS
file to PDF loses the %%BoundingBox settings, and despite a scan
through the gs-devel mail archives on my system, and a search through
ghostscript-8.10/doc, it does not appear to me that this issue has
been addressed yet in ghostscript development.

I found that I can manually copy the BoundingBox coordinates into a
PDF file's /MediaBox setting, and get an image of the correct size
when inserted in another document.  However, doing so requires an
editor, like emacs, that can handle binary files (ASCII PDF files seem
to be rare).

Has anyone given thought to support of an option in pdf2ps (i.e.,
ghostscript with -sDEVICE=pswrite) to allow the input %%BoundingBox to
propagate automatically to any the PDF boxes that control image size?

On p. 525 of the PDF Reference Manual, 2nd ed, I find mention of
MediaBox, CropBox, BleedBox, TrimBox, and ArtBox.  I imagine that any
one of them could be reasonable recipients of the %%BoundingBox
values.

Comments?

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- Center for Scientific Computing       FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- University of Utah                    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
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