Removing white spaces via cropping feature

[Peter 123]

My aim would be to view a pdf file without big white spaces at the bottom of the upper page and the top of the following page. In another thread I have written that it would be fine if it were possible to establish in the PDF-XChange Editor a similar option as it exists in MS Word, namely a comfortable way of hiding the white space (see https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/ ... 81&p=96945).

Now I have discovered a method with which I could achieve my aim in another way too:

The software offers an option to definitely remove white spaces.

The feature requires the licensed version of the XChange Editor in order to use it without stamps. The purchase would not be necessarily the problem but I have the impression that there is a small problem if the feature is used in combination with another modification of the white spaces.

Here what I mean:

After clicking "Documents" ---> "Crop Pages" the option is shown at the bottom of the opening window (button "Remove White Spaces"):



First step:
Klick on "Remove White Spaces".
The removing works extremely quickly and comfortably (even in big files). Here an example for the result (with the stamps displayed, as I used the feature only in evaluation mode):



The result is correct.

But I do not like the optical appearance of a file when the white space is removed not only at the bottom and the top of a page (= the place where you can see the small black line) but also on the left and right side. There I would like to see at least some space.

So I made a second step:
After using the "Remove White Spaces" option I added manually again a little bit of space on the left and right side (which can be done either by dragging the vertical lines in the preview window or by changing the values "Left" and "Right" in the Margin Control area).

In general the result was o.k. again. But something strange happened: At some page breaks (not at all of them) a white space reappeared too on the bottom of the upper page, and even a quite big one. See for example the same part of the file as above after executing step 2:



This is definitely an undesired white space.

It appeared on pages where nothing extraordinarily had be done concerning formatting, neither in the MS Word file (.doc) that was converted into the pdf file nor in this file itself.

I assume that this is a bug. So could you please take care about this issue? Or something that would even be better:
Could you modify the feature "Remove White Spaces" in the way that the user has the choice to remove only the spaces left/right or the spaces on top/bottom of a page?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Peter 123,

So if I understood you correctly - if you try to crop the page and just click the "set to white margins" - it works correctly, but then if you add some space to the left and right - white space also appears at the bottom of some pages?
Can you please include the original file and the two separate crop results, as well as screenshots of the settings used to crop each of them so that we can try and reproduce this here.

Regards,
Stefan

[Peter 123]

Hi Stefan,

So if I understood you correctly - if you try to crop the page and just click the "set to white margins" - it works correctly, but then if you add some space to the left and right - white space also appears at the bottom of some pages?

Not exactly: I did not refer to the option "set to white margins" but to the option "Remove White Spaces" (at the bottom of the window "Crop Pages"). Apart from this, yes, it was as you write.

But when preparing now a (smaller) file to show you the situation I saw that more or less the opposite problem occurs too:
In case of this file white space at the bottom of some pages was not added but the page became shorter at the bottom, that means that space (not only the white one) was removed there. And this is even worse of course because text gets lost.

Here the situation:

1. The original file (converted from a MS Word .doc file), called test.pdf:

See the zip file attached there: https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/ ... 108#p97108

2. The crop result after using the feature "Remove White Spaces" (the file is called RWS.pdf ["Removed White Spaces"]):

See the zip file attached there: https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/ ... 108#p97108

And here a picture of the window "Crop Pages" with the values for margin control (after removing white spaces):
Left / Right / Top / Bottom: 24,6 mm / 19,1 / 20,1 / 38,1




3. Now I added manually white space to the left and the right side of the RWS.pdf

I tried it with two methods, and in both cases it has undesired effects at the bottom of some (or rather all) pages:

Method a) I changed the values under "Margin Control":
"Left" from 24,6 mm to 20 mm and "Right" from 19,1 to 16 mm:



Here the crop result, the file LRWSA.pdf [= Left-Right white spaces added]:

See the zip file attached there: https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/ ... 108#p97108

You can see at almost every page break (the black horizontal line) that (on the upper page) something of the text is missing (for example especially clear between pages 5 and 6).

Method b) I dragged the vertical sides of the frame in the preview window with the mouse: The result is the same as with the other method: Space/text at the bottom of the pages is cut off.
(As in the consequences there is no substantial difference to method a) I do not upload the file.)

But there is another strange behaviour: I start to drag the left side of the frame, and the value for "Top", "Bottom" and "Right" under "Margin Control" changes automatically too! (The same applies when dragging the right side of the frame.)

For example:
I drag the left side of the frame a little bit to the left, for example from 24,6 mm also to 20 mm (= the same value as with method a) ).
At the same time the value for "Top" changes to 19,9 mm (from 20,1), the value for "Bottom" to 37,8 mm (from 38,1) and the value fore "Right" to 19,3 mm (from 19,1):



[With method a) this undesired change of all values does not occur.]

4. In the meantime I have the suspicion that all the undesired modifications of spaces perhaps have some geometrical reasons?
Because I tried the same as described in Nr. 3, but this time ticking the box "Constrain Proportions" ("Seitenverhältnis beibehalten" on the German interface):



Now fortunately nothing is cut off from the text at the bottom of a page. But I have again a quite big white space at the bottom which I wanted to get rid of by the operation.

Here the result, the LRWSACP.pdf [= Left-Right white spaces added, constrained proportions]:

See the zip file attached there: https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/ ... 108#p97108

Nevertheless I think it should be (geometrically) possible to remove/eliminate the white space only at top and bottom and retain (respectively add) some white space to the left and right.


[Edit: Concerning the pdf files I removed the links to the filehoster as the download there did not work. Instead I refer to the posting where I have attached now these files as zip files.]

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the info. and post, however, I'm afraid that after multiple download attempts, using different browsers, I'm only getting an empty, 0 byte file. Can you please try emailing the file to us directly at support@pdf-xchange.com, or attaching the file to this thread?

Thanks,

[Willy Van Nuffel]

I think you are making it needlessly complicated...

Just open your PDF in PDF-XChange Editor.

Click the Document-menu > Crop Pages...
The "Crop Pages" dialog box will show up.

Make sure that "Constrain properties" is NOT checked/activated.

On the Preview Page at the right, drag the top border downwards and drag the bottom border upwards, to what you desire.
If necessary or if you like, you can also drag the left and right borders.

Now finally, do NOT click "Remove White Spaces", but click "OK".

That should be it.

N.B.: The goal or upset of the different behavior between "OK" and "Remove White Spaces" is not really clear to me.
Maybe people at Tracker Support can give us some 'clarification' about it ?

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Willy,

I'm not purposely trying to make this complicated at all, but I don't see the issue here, otherwise I would not have asked for the file. Without some working sample, or a video showing the process (preferably both), I'm not personally able to help.

Thanks,

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Hi Will,

May I ask you to just check with whatever PDF. Via the Crop Pages tool, crop the top and bottom border.

Do one test by clicking on "Remove White Spaces" and do a second test by clicking on "OK".

You should also see a difference, no ?

Best regards.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Willy,

That's exactly what I mean - I see no issues at all, with any PDF's that I have, be it a new document that I've just created, or any of the dozens that I have locally.

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Attached a ZIP with my test results:
- the Crop Pages dialogbox
- result after OK
- result after Remove White Spaces

[Willy Van Nuffel]

Will,

Still to give you some more information about the fact that you see no difference.

I suppose you just leave the same cropping (of "Set To White Margins") in both tests, i.e. clicking "Remove White Spaces" and clicking "OK". I agree, in those circumstances, the result is equal in both situations.

But just make that the cropping rectangle on the Print Preview page is set equal with the left and the right border of the page, and that the top and bottom border are set to cut pieces of the top and the bottom of the pages.
In those circumstances, you should see the difference between the two button actions.

Maybe the buttons should better be called "Remove the white margins" and "Remove the selected margins" (or something like that).

Regards.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

Hi Willy,

Thanks for the screen-shots, but those results look correct. The Remove White Spaces feature will, quite literally, only remove blank white spaces. Given that there is text at the bottom left and right of the document, the Remove White Spaces feature will not remove that content.

These white spaces were removed previously because you specified custom margins.

Hopefully I'm not missing something here?

[Peter 123]

Hi Will,

I'm afraid that after multiple download attempts, using different browsers, I'm only getting an empty, 0 byte file.

I apologize for the troubles. I did not use this file hoster until now and did not realize that obviously it does not work as it should. Indeed the pdf.files have disappeared and they write something about technical problems.

But I am even more sorry that I did not think of something by myself that I read now in your signature, Will:

If posting files to this forum, you must archive the files to a ZIP, RAR or 7z file or they will not be uploaded.

Of course this is the correct solution for smooth uploading here directly in the forum.

So you will find now attached the following 4 files (archived to Zip):
- test.pdf
- RWS.pdf
- LRWSA.pdf
- LRWSACP.pdf
(For the description please see my above posting: https://forum.pdf-xchange.com/ ... 013#p97013 )

Sorry again for my mistakes.

Hi, Willy, too.

I think you are making it needlessly complicated...
[...]
On the Preview Page at the right, drag the top border downwards and drag the bottom border upwards, to what you desire.
If necessary or if you like, you can also drag the left and right borders.

Now finally, do NOT click "Remove White Spaces", but click "OK".

Yes, that's the method I started with: a purely manual cropping of the page(s). Its' surely a sufficient solution if you have only one page or a few. So you can adjust the cropping and you can control the result for every page. But in case of pdf files with dozens or hundreds of pages this is impossible (because of the large amount). Of course you can adjust the measurements for one page and give the command that this should be applied to all of them. I tried it - but as every page (at least when the pdf is being converted from a .doc file) has a little bit different appearance at the margines, on several pages something of the text will be cut off (the first or the last lines of a page respectively the first or last letters in a line); and on other pages perhaps you will see the opposite: that they still have more white space than the page for which you made the adjustment. That means: you will have no reliable result for every page of your file.

In other words: The feature of the XChange Editor that removes the white spaces in an automated (and exact!) way is extremely useful (and comfortable). The problem arises when it is combined with a following manual adjustment of the left and right margins.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Peter 123,

Maybe something like a dropdown menu from the "Remove Whitespaces" button will work (a small arrow in the right part of the button)?
As I see it, there would be two elements there "Remove Vertical Whitespaces" and "Remove Horizontal Whitespaces" (or something like that).

[Peter 123]

Hello Sasha,

Maybe something like a dropdown menu from the "Remove Whitespaces" button will work (a small arrow in the right part of the button)?
As I see it, there would be two elements there "Remove Vertical Whitespaces" and "Remove Horizontal Whitespaces" (or something like that).

You mean if I miss it and I would like it?

It would be the perfect solution, I think.

That's exactly what I had in mind when I wrote in my first post:

Could you modify the feature "Remove White Spaces" in the way that the user has the choice to remove only the spaces left/right or the spaces on top/bottom of a page?

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello Peter 123,

Ok, I'll add it to my tasks and will let you know when it's ready

[Peter 123]

You are great, Sasha! Thanks a lot to you and all the team of Tracker.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Here you go =)
This will be available from the next build
https://plus.google.com/106988693604882 ... CmAmLoxAWC

[Peter 123]

Excellent! Thanks again! With this feature I will be one more buyer of a license.

[Will - Tracker Supp]

[Peter 123]

Though I had to criticize version 6 of the PDF-XChange Editor in another thread (concering the slow search speed), I would like to give some positive feedback too:

This will be available from the next build
[...]

I tried this new feature and it works excellently.

Thanks for implementing it.

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Glad that works as you wanted

[HaPe]

Yes the cropping tool works quite nicely but I have one question regarding the preview.
There are 4 cropping options available and the default is "Manual Control of Margins". If I change this to any other option shouldn't that be visually reflected in the preview window?


HaPe

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Hello HaPe,

That is a know issue - the feature was redone from the original button to the combo box thus the preview control wasn't updated for this. This will be fixed in one of the future builds.

Cheers,
Alex

[HaPe]

It's not a big deal for me.Just saw it when I was playing with the new version. I'm not gonna die because of this....

[Sasha - Tracker Dev Team]

Nevertheless that would be fixed