Feature request: Support trimming

[viktoriasee]

Background

Professional printshops are not restricted to «normal» paper formats the average user knows. They print on large sheets or rolls and cut the paper to the desired format later. This has a big advantage to the users: They can place graphic elements on the paper edge. For this to work the graphics must be slightly (2-5mm) larger. This area outside of the prospected end format is called bleed. There are special paper formats defined in ISO 217 for creating such documents. The better laser printers support those formats thus you can create trimmed documents up to A4 at home.

Status Quo

Currently I havn't seen support for creating trimmed documents. Even in the case when no trimming and bleed are desired this must be specified explicitely using the pdf page attribute /TrimBox. At least that is best practice but it's not done in LaTeX right now. In geometry, you also have to specify ISO 217 paper formats in mm instead of calling them by their name.

The boxes can be specified manually but it makes your code look ugly.

minimal example

\documentclass{article}

\pdfpageattr{
/MediaBox[0.0 0.0 609.4 864.6]
/BleedBox[0.0 0.0 609.4 864.6]%pt is the unit of measure
/TrimBox[14.17 11.34 595.3 853.2]
}

\begin{document}
Text.
\end{document}

creates a PDF for RA4 media that is intended to be trimmed to A4.

proposed solution

First we need two words for the uncropped and cropped paper. The option «paper» is a bit too general for me. «Medium» would be more specific.

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[medium=RA4,trimmed=A4]{geometry}
\begin{document}
Text.
\end{document}

Much more elegant, isn't it?

other Info

While to specify a Trimbox is good practice, \TrimBox is mandatory for document compliance to PDF/X, whichever part of it. Mediabox must be present in any PDF document. It already is in pdfTeX. Bleedbox is optional but clearly indicated when Trimbox is not equal to Mediabox.

[aminophen]

Not related to geometry but I'm interested in this topic;

I maintain the package 'gentombow', which is also available from CTAN. It allows users to add TrimBox and BleedBox. You can use

\usepackage[pdfbox]{gentombow}

More information on the package interface is available from its documentation.

• By default it also prints a crop mark which corresponds to invisible TrimBox; to disable that, add 'mentuke' option.
• If you use the geometry package at the same time, please geometry needs to be loaded earlier than gentombow.

Is this package useful to you, @viktoriasee ?

[viktoriasee]

I must admit I did not know that package at time of writing of this issue. Thanks for directing me to it.

However, it does not really do what I request here. It's not possible to call a bleed paper format by it's name i.e. RA4. Then slug/cropmarks/tombow is nothing I ever needed in a LaTeX document because it is added by the printshop at the same time with imposition. Slug is obstructive in a pdf for screen view unless you are the printer. So for somone who does not need tombows, gentombow is probably not the package to go.

[aminophen]

It's not possible to call a bleed paper format by it's name i.e. RA4.

Of course I can implement such names; is the list in ISO 217 enough for you?

[viktoriasee]

If you are willing to implement such a function into gentombow this would be great! Yes this list is long enough for me. Could you also implement a function that it does not create slug just bleed?