Ps2pdf: save page size

Question

I have myfile.ps with the included vector image. But when I run

 ps2pdf myfile.ps 

the output page seems to be A4: the vector image is too large and cropped, so about one inch is lost.

In the output PDF, in addition to the original vector image, the following pseudo-header is printed:

 PLOT SIZE:8.02x8.62Inches Magnification:7354.21X 

Is there any option or any way to convert a PS file to a PDF file while maintaining the original paper size?

Answer 1

I doubt your quoted 2 lines are really in the PS file as indicated ... Are the % comment characters doing well?

• If they were not preceded by such characters, no PS interpreter would work, because they are not known PostScript operators.

• If they are preceding such characters, the PS interpreter simply ignores them, because ... they are just comments! :-)

If you want to convert this PS file to PDF, it is better to run Ghostscript directly ( ps2pdf is just the shell of the script shell around the Ghostscript command):

 gs -o myfile.pdf \ -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \ -g5775x6207 \ -dPDFFitPage \ myfile.ps 

Explanation:

• -g... gives the average size in pixels.
• A4 page size is 595x842pt (PostScript dots).
• 1 inch matches 72 PostScript dots.
• Ghostscript internally defaults to 720 ppi when it comes to PDF output.
• Therefore, for PDF output, 595x842pt == 5950x8420px .
• Therefore, for your case under consideration, 8.02x8.62Inches ≈≈ 5775x6207px .

Answer 2

If the input postscript has an EPS BoundingBox , this should save the page size:

ps2pdf -dEPSCrop <input.ps> <output.pdf>

Answer 3

Based on @Kurt Pfeifle's answer, I wrote this Perl script to complete the task:

 #! /usr/bin/env perl use strict; use warnings; use Scalar::Util qw(looks_like_number); use List::Util qw(all); sub ps2pdf; sub get_ps_headers; sub get_media_size; sub main; # Run the program main(); # Function: main # # Program entry point. # sub main { for (@ARGV) { # check input file if(not -r) { print "WARN: Cannot read input file: $_\n"; next; } # build PDF file name my $pdf = $_; $pdf =~ s/(\.e?ps)?$/.pdf/i; ps2pdf($_, $pdf); } } # Function: ps2pdf # # Converts a PostScript file to PDF format using GhostScript, # keeping the medium size. # # Params: # # $ps_file - (string) Input [E]PS file name # $pdf_file - (string) Output PDF file name # sub ps2pdf { my ($ps_file, $pdf_file) = @_; my $cmd = "gs -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dPDFFitPage "; # try to find the media size my ($width, $height) = get_media_size(get_ps_header($ps_file)); # keep media size if(defined $height) { $cmd .= "-g${width}x${height} "; } # set input/output $cmd .= "-o $pdf_file $ps_file"; print "Running: $cmd\n"; system($cmd); } # Function: get_media_size # # Computes the size of a PostScript document in pixels, # from the headers in the PS file. # # Params: # # $hdr - (hash ref) Parsed PS header values # # Returns: # # On success: Two-element array holding the document width and height # On failure: undef # sub get_media_size { my ($hdr) = @_; # we need the DocumentMedia header return undef if not defined $hdr->{DocumentMedia}; # look for valid values my @values = split(/\s+/, $hdr->{DocumentMedia}); return undef if scalar @values < 3; my ($width, $height) = @values[1, 2]; return undef if not all { looks_like_number($_) } ($width, $height); # Ghostscript uses a default resolution of 720 pixels/inch, # there are 72 PostScript points/inch. return ($width*10, $height*10); } # Function: get_ps_header # # Parses a PostScript file looking for headers. # # Params: # # $ps_file - (string) Path of the input file # # Returns: # # (hash ref) - As expected, keys are header names, # values are corresponding header values. A special key # named `version' is included for headers of the type # `PS-Adobe-3.0' # sub get_ps_header { my ($ps_file) = @_; my %head; open my $fh, "<$ps_file" or die "Failed to open $ps_file\n"; while(<$fh>) { # look for end of header last if /^%%EndComments\b/; # look for PS version if(/^%!(\w+)/) { $head{version} = $1; } # look for any other field # Ex: %%BoundingBox: 0 0 1008 612 elsif(/^%%(\w+)\s*:\s*(.*\S)/) { $head{$1} = $2; } # discard regular comments and blank lines elsif(/^\s*(%.*)?$/) { next; } # any other thing will finish the header else { last; } } return \%head; }