Problems with the crop tools

This Forum is for the use of End Users requiring help and assistance for Tracker Software's PDF-Tools.

Moderators: TrackerSupp-Daniel, Tracker Support, Vasyl-Tracker Dev Team, Chris - Tracker Supp, Sean - Tracker, Tracker Supp-Stefan

Post Reply
jean-luc mittner
User
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:20 am

Problems with the crop tools

Post by jean-luc mittner »

I want to crop the left half of a multipage landscape A4 PDF document so as to produce an A5 one with just these left halves. So I use the crop tool with margins (left = 0, top = 0, bottom = 0, right = 148.5mm)

This works like a breeze. As I have many more PDFs on which to do this operation, I export the crop tools with its settings as crop-left.pdtex.

However, when I try later to re-import crop-left.pdtex, its settings turn out to be: (left = 0, top = 0, bottom = 148.5mm, right = 0), which means that I have to reset the settings manually for each PDFs one at a time - and defeats the point of being able to export a tool.

Has anyone got any idea. I would be thankful for any help!
User avatar
Patrick-Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 1645
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2014 6:14 pm
Location: Vancouver Island
Contact:

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by Patrick-Tracker Supp »

Hello jean-luc mittner

I am not seeing this issue here. Could you please go to Help> About and let me know what version and build you are running?

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

Cheers,

Patrick Charest
Tracker Support North America
jean-luc mittner
User
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:20 am

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by jean-luc mittner »

Hi!

The about box says: version 6.0 (build 318.1)

Thanks!
User avatar
Patrick-Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 1645
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2014 6:14 pm
Location: Vancouver Island
Contact:

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by Patrick-Tracker Supp »

Hello jean-luc mittner,

Thank you for confirming that you are using the latest build. Could you please export the tool, as well as export all settings and send the resulting file to me in a zip archive?

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

Cheers,

Patrick Charest
Tracker Support North America
jean-luc mittner
User
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:20 am

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by jean-luc mittner »

Hi!

Here's the zipped files. I did try to make sense of them in case I could just edit them manually, but I couldn't make any sense of them.

Hope you can find a clue..

JLM
Attachments
PDF-Tools-crop-left.zip
(37.64 KiB) Downloaded 120 times
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Jean-Luc,

Thanks for that - I'm also not able to reproduce the issue and cannot reproduce the problem with the file that you have sent either. Is it possible for you to send us a short video demonstrating the problem?

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

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
jean-luc mittner
User
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:20 am

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by jean-luc mittner »

Hi!

This message may end up being a duplicate. But when I saved the first version as a draft to do something else, and then finished editing it and submitted it, it did not appear in the forum. So, anyway, here we go again.

Unfortunately I don't have the means to do the video you suggested. But I may have found an explanation: the rotation factor of the PDF. I discovered that although all my PDFs display as A4 landscape, their rotation factor was either 0 or 90 (using the Coherent PDF tool cpdf with the -page-info command line switch). Those with a 0 rotation factor work without any problem as expected. The problem occurs with those with a rotation factor of 90.

The question then is: how can we "trick" PDFTools into thinking that the rotation factor is 0. Or else, can you see any method of programmatically changing this rotation factor (I have to make cropping and merging operations with hundreds of such files).

Thanks for your time.

JLM
User avatar
Will - Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 6815
Joined: Mon Oct 15, 2012 9:21 pm
Location: London, UK
Contact:

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by Will - Tracker Supp »

Hi Jean-Luc,

Thanks for that - I was able to reproduce this with a rotated file, so I've created an internal ticket to help track the issue (RT-3719).

I'm afraid that I'm not aware of any way to reset the rotation flags in the document. For now, I'm afraid that you'll have to manually enter the values for these documents.

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

Best regards

Will Travaglini
Tracker Support (Europe)
Tracker Software Products Ltd.
http://www.tracker-software.com
jean-luc mittner
User
Posts: 10
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2014 6:20 am

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by jean-luc mittner »

Hi!

I've found a temporary workaround, until the next release of PDFTools. Coherent's old command line tool cpdf makes it possible to reset the rotation flag without upsetting the PDF (by using the -upright option). On certain files it takes quite a bit of time, but it allows me to use PDFTools cropping facility. I hope this can help some users.

In any case, thanks for your good work. I make heavy use of your products and have been quite happy with them so far.

JLM
User avatar
Patrick-Tracker Supp
Site Admin
Posts: 1645
Joined: Thu Mar 27, 2014 6:14 pm
Location: Vancouver Island
Contact:

Re: Problems with the crop tools

Post by Patrick-Tracker Supp »

Thank you for posting this temporary workaround, and for your cooperation and understanding :)

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

Cheers,

Patrick Charest
Tracker Support North America
Post Reply