Merging splitted pages...

[Puffolino]

I'd like to change a document to view it on my tablet, so some of the borders needs to be cropped...
...but I've made some navigation tabs on the right paper edges, so everything is done in three steps:

Here's the original document (210 x 297mm) which should be resized to 186 x 297mm:

Original.pdf

(114.92 KiB) Downloaded 45 times

1. Splitting the document (have searched for a possibility for using mm instead of % in that dialog) and...
2. Cropping the odd pages:

Splitted.pdf

(71.01 KiB) Downloaded 48 times

3. Merging all together (looks fine in the preview):

...but not in the document...

Merged.pdf

(72.41 KiB) Downloaded 45 times

What have been done wrong here? And is there a chance to keep the navigation links active?

[Tracker Supp-Stefan]

Hello Puffolino,

Why do you need to crop the navigation and then 'stich it back' in the first place?
As for the merging - it definitely does not look right - so I will pass this for investigation to our devs!

Kind regards,
Stefan

[Puffolino]

Hi Stefan,

as I need to make the original A4 document smaller (in the width), I tried to remove one part from the left white space and one part from the right white space side. Because I want to keep the navigation tab I've done before, it gets more complicate.

Maye it will be a little bit clearer with the following representation (w=white space, c=content, tab=tab):

Original paper content:
www c c c c c c c c www tab

Target content:
w c c c c c c c c w tab

The only other possibility I could image how a single crop could work is to transform the navigation tabs (image, paths and links!) on all pages (!) some millimeters to the left before croping the document.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, Puffolino

While this would not be a perfect solution, the current easiest way I see this happening is by making use of the "resize pages" function, using a custom paper size (to only make the page thinner) then add an offset and disable scaling so that the content moves as one to the left.

It wouldn't quite achieve your desired:
w c c c c c c c c w tab

But if done right could instead appear more like a skewed version of the original with minimal whitespace on the side:
wc c c c c c c c www tab

There is simply no good way to automate removing white space between content items, this will nearly always need to be done manually. Whether that means deleting the tabs from all pages and then reapplying them with the "duplicate" tool after cropping, or something else, is up to you however.

Kind regards,

[Puffolino]

Thanks for all your efforts, I love that

Would say crop / resize can be used for getting the target paper size with no problem, now doing the tabs by the overlay function of PDF Tools instead of merge, seems to work. This is much easier than redoing all tabs by hand (as there are different images for all sections)...
...if everything works, I'll just have to make new links, but that is not such a big work (anyway it would be helpful if link boxed could be moved using the translate function)...

...if everything works, I need to play with PDF Tools, seems that there is no load PDF function, this would allow to to most of the needed steps (all except the links) with one batch:
* choose input file (original.pdf)
* save document to temp.pdf
* resize/crop temp.pdf to correct size
* save document to output.pdf
* load document temp.pdf
* crop to keep tabs only
* resize temp.pdf to correct size, tabs on the right side
* overlay output.pdf and temp.pdf

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, Puffolino

I will ask the Dev team about allowing the missing function on the "arrange tab" to be used for Link objects. For the time being however, you can select them with the "create links" tool and move them using the arrow keys to shuffle them over a set amount. Then use the "selection > duplicate" function to place copies in the new locations on each page.

I am a bit confused by what purpose a "Load PDF" function would offer that "choose input files" does not already serve? Could you not simply use the "choose input files" action in that step and proceed from there?

Kind regards,

[Puffolino]

Maybe I'm an idiot, but I can't define a specific file name using "choose input files", I can only set a directory and a file filter for the folder but not a single file. Maybe there's a simple way to do this, but not simple enough I could find it for now ...

And there's another tricky question (sorry) concerning the file size...
Here's a file with 100 pages and all pages should have some content on it's pages (like seen in page 1):

Test.pdf

(128.46 KiB) Downloaded 42 times

So please select all objects in the center and duplicate it to all pages - when saving this document it should have a size of about 1377 KB (instead of 129KB in the attachment)...

Now this 1,3MB file is what I usually have at the beginning and where my work will begin: I want to get rid of the content (what means, I'd like to get a document with zero content, so only the tabs are kept at the right position) and I expect, that the document size will decrease by removing the content (theoretically it should be around 116KB at the end).

This can be done easily by cropping and/or resizing but... the filesize doesn't get down.

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, Puffolino

Regarding "choose input files" There are three different modes for this action, if you wish to select specific files (and multiple files) ensure that you have "choose files" (and "Allow select multiple files") enabled, and not one of the other "select folder" or "select file list" options.

PDFXTools_fv9xfpVXBX.png (12.06 KiB) Viewed 1567 times

As for the file size question you asked, resizing generally will not have an impact on file size, and cropping will only remove content if the correct options are enabled. wehter using the crop function, or manually deleting the content, it appears that currently the deleted content becomes "document overhead", as you can see here:

I will have to show this to the Dev team as well and ask them why it may be happening. As a temporary measure however, you can use the "save as optimized" function to clear out the document overhead.

Kind regards,

[TrackerSupp-Daniel]

Hi, Puffolino

Okay, we have a reply from the Dev team! It turns out that in testing this, I forgot that I had incremental save enabled, which would result in exactly this happening. If you disable incremental save before you begin editing the document, the files size does return to normal upon deleting the content.

Therefore, we can safely say that this one is not a bug, its a feature!

Kind regards,

[Puffolino]

Thanks for all that efforts - I was very happy - for some minutes at least - but" incremential save" has been off the whole time (and what about PDF-Tools, which mode is used here?)

So something is different here (64 bit, build 339, Windows 8.1) because...
...cropping the pages from the example above increases the file size (remove content has been checked in the dialog).

Could it be, that the editor forgets that most of the images are identical? I am not sure, but I believe that optimizing "Discard duplicates of images" does the trick...

Here are all actions (needed?) in PDF-Tools which are doing the job (even maintaining all links )

Just two points which (maybe) could be improved (within PDF-Tools, not the Editor):
- choosing a specific file: PLEASE activate the pencil icon for "store selected file names for future use". That seems the only possibility to add a file without running the tools (actually I have to run the tool, select a file in the file selector, etc. )
- PLEASE add a little ( i ) button in the document properties directly at the "file size" information. When clicking on that button, the "Audit Space Information" dialog should be displayed.

Sorry that I don't give up...