Draw true page border

Question

Is there a way to draw a rectangle around every page?

The problem is that my document (a Ph.D. thesis) is in a funny format (16x24cm). So to print it centered on A4 paper (for reviewing) I played with the page layout.

However, I would like to have indication of the true page size with means of a rectangle drawn around each page. Is it possible? BTW. I use pdflatex.

Martin Scharrer · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-14T14:30:49.853

42

You can use the crop package to place your pages on a A4 paper. It can center and frame it for you:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[paperwidth=16cm,paperheight=24cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[a4,frame,center]{crop}

\usepackage{lipsum}% dummy text
\begin{document}
\lipsum
\lipsum
\lipsum
\end{document}

It looks like this:

Result

If you don't like the info line above the frame use the noinfo package option.

edited May 14 '11 at 14:30

answered Apr 05 '11 at 17:57

Martin Scharrer

262,582

Ui, the package works great, but synctex gets confused... Any idea how to make both crop and synctex-pdf-linking to work together? – ronszon Apr 11 '11 at 16:28
@ronszon: Sorry, I can't help you here. I never used synctex so far. You might ask this as a follow-up question. – Martin Scharrer Apr 11 '11 at 16:30
1

@MartinScharrer is there a way to change color and thickness of this borer? – Dion Jul 25 '14 at 22:06
I can use the command without the center as it appears above, which I would like: \usepackage[a4,frame]{crop} This way I can make the border to appear as a single line at the bottom. Is it possible to place just a single line below for cutting (instead of a complete square border) ? – nilon Mar 03 '17 at 19:27
@nilon: Well, please check the manual of crop if it support such a thing. All I could do is doing the exact same thing. – Martin Scharrer Mar 15 '17 at 21:34

score 11 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 05 '11 at 17:56

11

If you are using geometry for setting the page parameters, then add the option showframe or showcrop

answered Apr 05 '11 at 17:56

egreg

1,121,712

1

geometry doesn't seem to have a showcrop option. – Faheem Mitha Oct 02 '11 at 05:52
1

@FaheemMitha Version 5.6 has it. – egreg Oct 02 '11 at 09:07
egreg: Ok. I am using 4.2 (Tex Live 2009). – Faheem Mitha Oct 02 '11 at 13:18
This way is excellent to remove (large amounts of) badboxes from the draft of a (large sized) document. – MattAllegro Aug 05 '14 at 07:32

score 11 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 06 '11 at 03:47

I had a similar issue with my own thesis. The way I dealt with it issue was to use features of the PDF format. PDF allows a file to specify several different boxes: TrimBox, MediaBox, ArtBox, CropBox, BleedBox. Relevant to this situation is MediaBox: the size of the paper you are printing on (in your case A4); and TrimBox: the size of the page after trimming. Many PDF viewers (Adobe Reader for example) are able to display these boxes optionally. I don't know of any packages that make use of this feature (would make a nice modification to geometry or crop), so I did it by hand: \pdfpageattr{/TrimBox[9 9 621 801]} where if I recall correctly the units are in pts. You can see a result here, where I wanted the final page to be US Letter size, but to have a 0.125" bleed before trimming. If you are using Adobe Reader, then to show the boxes use Edit -> Preferences -> Page Display -> Show art, trim, & bleed boxes.

score 4 · Answer 4 · edited Sep 30 '22 at 23:25

4

The crop packages does it for the general case. See also What is the easiest way to get borders around a page in LaTeX? and in particular the solution for the Memoir document class.

edited Sep 30 '22 at 23:25

David Carlisle

757,742

answered Apr 05 '11 at 17:57

Christian Lindig

14,627

score 2 · Answer 5 · edited Oct 12 '14 at 14:19

2

try using this :

\usepackage{pgf}
\usepackage{pgfpages}
%
\pgfpagesdeclarelayout{boxed}
{
  \edef\pgfpageoptionborder{3pt}
}
{
  \pgfpagesphysicalpageoptions
  {%
    logical pages=1,%
  }
  \pgfpageslogicalpageoptions{1}
  {
    border code=\pgfsetlinewidth{0.5pt}\pgfstroke,%
    border shrink=\pgfpageoptionborder,%
    resized width=.95\pgfphysicalwidth,%
    resized height=.95\pgfphysicalheight,%
    center=\pgfpoint{.5\pgfphysicalwidth}{.5\pgfphysicalheight}%
  }%
}
\pgfpagesuselayout{boxed}
\setlength{\parindent}{2cm}

edited Oct 12 '14 at 14:19

Johannes_B

24,235
10
93
248

answered Oct 12 '14 at 14:16

user64157

21

Can you extend the question by some explanations and maybe a screenshot? – Johannes_B Oct 12 '14 at 14:23
1

Ideally, write up a minimal working example (MWE) to show its use, rather than just code snippets. – Werner Oct 12 '14 at 14:35
This solution causes page numbers in the table of contents to be off by 1 – Jonathan E. Landrum May 13 '20 at 21:52

Draw true page border

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