[Tex/LaTex] Install and use pdfcrop on windows

pdfcrop

first of all I have to admit I'm definitely not an expext with tex stuffes ; I have found several post related to perl script not working with latex but I can't figure out what is happening on my computer.

So, I try to use pdfcrop https://www.ctan.org/pkg/pdfcrop. I downloaded the pdfrcrop.pl file but the documentation for windows was pretty blurry to me.

I have been able to run perl pdfcrop.pl and now I have :

MikTex\miktex\bin\x64\pdfcrop.exe
MikTex\scrips\pdfcrop\pdfcrop.pl
MikTex\tex\latex\scrips\pdfcrop\pdfcrop.pl

When I type in the command prompt:

pdfcrop –version, I get: pdfcrop 2012/11/02 v1.38
perl –version, I get This is perl 5, version 22, subversion 0 <v5.22.0> ...

Now I am using pdfcrop through knitr and I get the error message :

cropping figure/pyfig.pdf
pdfcrop: The Perl interpreter could not be found.

When I try to run directely pdfcrop in the Terminal, it stops at the second steps:

*Copy input file to temporary file
!!!Error copy failed, <No such file or directory/Access denied>

Thanks a lot for the help !

Best Answer

You need first to install Perl support for Windows (for example https://www.activestate.com/activeperl) and after that use Miktex package manager to install pdfcrop.

Then you should be able to use command pdfcrop on Windows Powershell or Command prompt.

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] pdfcrop generates larger file

Here is my version of an improved pdfcrop.

Default operation is to remove white margins from the pdf input, optionally leaving a user defined extra-margin (option -m ...).

Alternative operation is to trim the page edges by user defined amounts (option -t ...).

pdfcrop.sh uses gs (Ghostscript) for page-wise determination of the tightly enclosing bounding box, pdftk for uncompressing/compressing the PDF files and getting the order of pages (which doesn't need to be linear), and perl for replacing original page dimensions by the tight bounding boxes found.

Unlike original pdfcrop the bash script below preserves the original interactive parts of the PDF (links, annotations etc.). The output file size is about the same as before.

Update: Option -two added for two-sided page layout

Usage examples:

#getting help
pdfcrop.sh -help

#default operation
pdfcrop.sh orig.pdf cropped.pdf
pdfcrop.sh -m 10 orig.pdf cropped.pdf
pdfcrop.sh -hires orig.pdf cropped.pdf

#trimming pages
pdfcrop.sh -t "10 20 30 40" orig.pdf trimmed.pdf
#same for two-sided layout
pdfcrop.sh -t "10 20 30 40" -two orig.pdf trimmed.pdf

Content of pdfcrop.sh:

#!/bin/bash

function usage () {
  echo "Usage: `basename $0` [Options] <input.pdf> [<output.pdf>]"
  echo
  echo " * Removes white margins from every page in the file. (Default operation)"
  echo " * Trims page edges by given amounts. (Alternative operation)"
  echo
  echo "If only <input.pdf> is given, it is overwritten with the cropped output."
  echo
  echo "Options:"
  echo
  echo " -m \"<left> [<bottom> [<right> <top>]]\""
  echo "    adds extra margins in default operation mode. Unit is bp. A single number"
  echo "    is used for all margins, two numbers \"<left> <bottom>\" are applied to the"
  echo "    right and top margins alike."
  echo
  echo " -t \"<left> [<bottom> [<right> <top>]]\""
  echo "    trims outer page edges by the given amounts. Unit is bp. A single number"
  echo "    is used for all trims, two numbers \"<left> <bottom>\" are applied to the"
  echo "    right and top trims alike."
  echo
  echo " -two"
  echo "    to be used for documents with two-sided page layout; the meaning of <left>"
  echo "    and <right> changes to <inner> and <outer> for options -m and -t"
  echo
  echo " -hires"
  echo "    %%HiResBoundingBox is used in default operation mode."
  echo
  echo " -help"
  echo "    prints this message."
}

c=0
mar=(0 0 0 0); tri=(0 0 0 0)
bbtype=BoundingBox
two=0

while getopts m:t:h: opt
do
  case $opt
  in
    m)
    eval mar=($OPTARG)
    [[ -z "${mar[1]}" ]] && mar[1]=${mar[0]}
    [[ -z "${mar[2]}" || -z "${mar[3]}" ]] && mar[2]=${mar[0]} && mar[3]=${mar[1]}
    c=0
    ;;
    t)
    if [[ "$OPTARG" == "wo" ]]
    then
      two=1
    else
      eval tri=($OPTARG)
      [[ -z "${tri[1]}" ]] && tri[1]=${tri[0]}
      [[ -z "${tri[2]}" || -z "${tri[3]}" ]] && tri[2]=${tri[0]} && tri[3]=${tri[1]}
      c=1
    fi
    ;;
    h)
    if [[ "$OPTARG" == "ires" ]]
    then
      bbtype=HiResBoundingBox
    else
      usage 1>&2; exit 0
    fi
    ;;
    \?)
    usage 1>&2; exit 1
    ;;
  esac
done
shift $((OPTIND-1))

[[ -z "$1" ]] && echo "`basename $0`: missing filename" 1>&2 && usage 1>&2 && exit 1
input=$1;output=$1;shift;
[[ -n "$1" ]] && output=$1 && shift;

(
    [[ "$c" -eq 0 ]] && gs -dNOPAUSE -q -dBATCH -sDEVICE=bbox "$input" 2>&1 | grep "%%$bbtype"
    pdftk "$input" output - uncompress
) | perl -w -n -s -e '
  BEGIN {@m=split /\s+/, $mar; @t=split /\s+/, $tri; @mb=(); $p=-1;}
  sub fixMB {
    if($c){
      if($two && $p%2) {
        $mb[0]+=$t[2];$mb[1]+=$t[1];$mb[2]-=$t[0];$mb[3]-=$t[3];
      }
      else {
        $mb[0]+=$t[0];$mb[1]+=$t[1];$mb[2]-=$t[2];$mb[3]-=$t[3];
      }
      print "/MediaBox [", join(" ", @mb), "]\n";
    } else {
      @bb=split /\s+/, $bbox[$p];
      if($two && $p%2) {
        $bb[0]+=$mb[0];$bb[1]+=$mb[1];$bb[2]+=$mb[0];$bb[3]+=$mb[1];
        $bb[0]-=$m[2];$bb[1]-=$m[1];$bb[2]+=$m[0];$bb[3]+=$m[3];
      }
      else {
        $bb[0]+=$mb[0];$bb[1]+=$mb[1];$bb[2]+=$mb[0];$bb[3]+=$mb[1];
        $bb[0]-=$m[0];$bb[1]-=$m[1];$bb[2]+=$m[2];$bb[3]+=$m[3];
      }
      print "/MediaBox [", join(" ", @bb), "]\n";
    }
  }
  if (/BoundingBox:\s+([\d\.\s]+\d)/) { push @bbox, $1; next;}
  elsif (/\/MediaBox\s+\[([\d\.\s]+\d)\]/) {
    @mb=split /\s+/, $1; next if($p<0);
    fixMB; @mb=(); $p=-1; next;
  }
  elsif (/pdftk_PageNum\s+(\d+)/) {
    $p=$1-1; next unless(@mb);
    fixMB; @mb=(); $p=-1; next;
  }
  print;
' -- -mar="${mar[*]}" -tri="${tri[*]}" -c=$c -two=$two | pdftk - output "$output" compress

[Tex/LaTex] pdfcrop and –bbox command line option

These coordinates are referenced as bp (or big points), which is different from TeX's pt. More specifically, 1in is equivalent to 72bp or 72.27pt.

A letter-sized paper (8.5in x 11in) consists of 612bp x 792bp, typically with coordinates gives as (0,0) and (612,792). Since these are coordinates, they are not calculated from one another. That is, coordinates of the form (100,100) and (712,892) would still represent a letter-sized paper, while (100,100) and (612,792) represents a sheet of paper that has dimensions 7.11in x 9.61in.

Conversions between units is available, as an example, from Is there a command to convert cm to bp?

Best Answer

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[Tex/LaTex] pdfcrop generates larger file

[Tex/LaTex] pdfcrop and –bbox command line option

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