BoundingBox in PostScript output for A4 is too large and the co mputation with its comment are bogus

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2024-03-10 at 11:15:16 +0100, Zdenek Wagner wrote:

 > yes, dvips snaps to the nearest known paper size unless the
 > specified dimensions are too far. This functionality was there 30
 > years ago

Sure, but when someone said that the snapping range is too small I
remebered the ±5 bp limit I stumbled upon in the PDF spec a few days
before.  Thus the snapping range is not arbitrary anymore but depends
on a standard.

 > and it can cause quite an expensive problem because typographers do
 > not prepare the files for office printers but for phototypesetters
 > and the format is not equal to any known paper size. Fortunatelly
 > the snapping can be switched off.  Thus you can use the options
 > depending on the use case.

I'm aware of the problems with phototypesetters though I never used
one.  But if printers rely on PDF files, isn't it possible to specify
the appropriate boxes in your LaTeX code with pdfTeX primitives? 

 > HiResBoundingBox would be fine but for graphics inclusion you do
 > not need the declared page size but usually the tight bounding box.

At least unless you want to put an A5 page on an A0 poster, put a
tight \fbox{} around it, and want to preserve the margins.  An unusual
use case for sure.

I suggested the HiResBoundingBox because it's supported by epstopdf
(--hires option) and I thought that it's easy to implement in dvips.
But I also must admit that I never found a formal specification and
thus understand Tom's decision not to support it.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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