[Tex/LaTex] How to determine the actual inner and outer margins

margins

I somehow have the feeling this is a dumb question, but I just can't find anything 🙁

How can I determine the actual values of the inner and outer margins of my document, or still better: the right and left margins of the current page?

Background is that I'm working on a package to manage music examples, and one of the kinds these come are multi-page pdf files.
Additional to other methods I would like to add an option to automatically offset the included pdf pages depending on being on an odd or even page.

For this I would like to read out the margins of the current page.

Best Answer

The reference point (unless changed with \hoffset and \voffset) is 1in in and 1in down from the top left of the page.

Relative to that point the left margin in LaTeX is \oddsidemargin on odd pages and \evensidemargin on even pages. The total paper width is \paperwidth so the right margin on an odd page is \paperwidth - \textwidth - \oddsidemargin - 1in.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Is it possible to define a multicolumn environment with a background colour

enter image description here

the standard multicol can cope with the page margins being locally changed, so you just need to drop in a coloured rule at the point it is assembling the columns, something like this:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{multicol}

\usepackage{color}

\makeatletter

\newenvironment{wider}
               {\list{}{\leftmargin-1cm\relax\rightmargin\leftmargin}%
                \item\relax}
               {\endlist}

\def\foo#1\full@width#2#3\foo{%
\def\page@sofar{%
#1%
\full@width{%
     {\color{yellow}\vrule \@width \full@width}%
     \kern-\full@width
#2}%
#3}}
\expandafter\foo\page@sofar\foo



\usepackage{lipsum}


\begin{document}\color{black}
\lipsum[1]

\begin{wider}
\begin{multicols}{2}
\lipsum
\end{multicols}
\end{wider}


\begin{multicols}{3}
\lipsum
\end{multicols}

\end{document}

UPDATE

Or a minor variation, as requested in the comments, just using memoir in the example, and just making the environment wider on one side, and shifting the rule depending on the page

\documentclass{memoir}
\usepackage{multicol}

\usepackage{color}

\makeatletter

\newenvironment{wider}
               {\list{}{\leftmargin0pt\relax
                        \rightmargin-2cm\relax}%
                \item\relax}
               {\endlist}

\def\foo#1\moveright#2\full@width#3#4\foo{%
\def\page@sofar{%
#1%
\dimen@\multicol@leftmargin
\ifodd\c@page\else\advance\dimen@-2cm\relax\fi
\moveright\dimen@
\hbox to \full@width{%
     {\color{yellow}\vrule \@width \full@width}%
     \kern-\full@width
#3}%
#4}}
\expandafter\foo\page@sofar\foo

.... rest as before

[Tex/LaTex] A tool like pdfcrop2 that only reduces margins from original — as opposed to cropping and then allowing the addition of extra margins

The pdfcrop2 tool turned out to have an absolute option, which did what I needed.

However, I'm on a Mac, and I needed to install pdfinfo using MacPorts.

I should probably also record what version I'm using of pdfcrop2 (shown with the --help argument).

PDFCROP 1.5, 2004/06/24 - Copyright (c) 2002, 2004 by Heiko Oberdiek.
Patch 0.4, 2007/02/18 - Copyright (c) 2007 by Piotr Adacha.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] Is it possible to define a multicolumn environment with a background colour

[Tex/LaTex] A tool like pdfcrop2 that only *reduces margins from original* — as opposed to cropping and then allowing the addition of extra margins

Related Question

[Tex/LaTex] A tool like pdfcrop2 that only reduces margins from original — as opposed to cropping and then allowing the addition of extra margins