I want to crop main area of a PS
or PDF
file to create an EPS
file without white space. Commands of ghostrcipt
, ps2pdf
, epstools
can crop the main drawing out of the document file.
The problem is that they only crop in its original form, but I want to create an EPS file with BoundingBox 0 0 x y
; cropped and moved to the bottom left corner.
The difference i when we want to insert the resulting EPS file inside a PS document. When having BoundingBox x0 y0 x y
, the PS document inserts the EPS file at point x0 y0, instead of where we are.
EXAMPLE:
Consider a simple PS
file as
%!
/Times-Roman findfont
11 scalefont setfont
72 700 moveto
(This is a test)show
if converting it to EPS
with a command like
ps2eps test.ps test.eps
It will produce
%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0
%%BoundingBox: 72 700 127 708
%%HiResBoundingBox: 72.000000 700.000000 127.000000 707.500000
%%EndComments
% EPSF created by ps2eps 1.68
%%BeginProlog
save
countdictstack
mark
newpath
/showpage {} def
/setpagedevice {pop} def
%%EndProlog
%%Page 1 1
/Times-Roman findfont
11 scalefont setfont
72 700 moveto
(This is a test)show
%%Trailer
cleartomark
countdictstack
exch sub { end } repeat
restore
%%EOF
It has been cropped in its original coordinates, and the resulting BoundingBox
is 72 700 127 708
. Now if trying to insert this EPS
file within a PS
document, it tries to nest at this coordinate.
It will be useful if creating an EPS
file with BoundingBox: 0 0 55 8
. Of course, all drawing coordinates (here moveto) must be modified with this new reference.
NOTE: As stated, my purpose from fixing the BoundingBox reference point is to make it importable within PS document. Thus, an alternative answer to this question is: how to insert an EPS file inside PS document regardless of its BoundingBox.
For example, how to insert this EPS file at location 200 200 255 208
of a PS document. I try to insert the EPS with the following code, but it will not work unless the BoundingBox is started from 0 0
:
200 200 translate
save
/showpage {} bind def
(test.eps)run
restore
What about simply un-translating?
-72 -700 translate
Either in the eps itself, or in the prep section before the inclusion?
AWKward!
The following typescript illustrates an awk script which performs the desired modifications to the eps, guided by the DSC comments (just like Mama used to do!).
The advantage is: if you can guarantee that the input EPS conforms sufficiently to DSC to provide these markers, this approach will be orders-of-magnitude faster than passing the file through ghostscript.
Simplicity is both the advantage and the limitation of this program. It scans for DSC comments, extracts values from the BoundingBox comment, suppresses the HiResBoundingBox, and adds postscript 'translate' and 'rectclip' commnds just after the Page comment. This should produce the correct results so long as the EPS really is bona-fide. But the ghostscript approach in the other answer will produce results on input files with less reliable DSC-conformance (because it's not taking shortcuts, it treats DSC as comments and completely ignores them).
Strictly speaking the 'rectclip' shouldn't be necessary, but the question asks that the output be "cropped".
592(1)11:27 AM:~ 0> cat epscrop.awk
/%%BoundingBox: ([^ ]*) ([^ ]*) ([^ ]*) ([^ ]*)/{x=$2;y=$3;w=$4-x;h=$5-y;print $1,0,0,w,h}
!/%%BoundingBox:/&&!/%%HiRes/{print}
/%%Page /{print -x,-y,"translate"; print 0,0,w,h,"rectclip"}
593(1)11:27 AM:~ 0> awk -f epscrop.awk etest.eps
%!PS-Adobe-2.0 EPSF-2.0
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 55 8
%%EndComments
% EPSF created by ps2eps 1.68
%%BeginProlog
save
countdictstack
mark
newpath
/showpage {} def
/setpagedevice {pop} def
%%EndProlog
%%Page 1 1
-72 -700 translate
0 0 55 8 rectclip
/Times-Roman findfont
11 scalefont setfont
72 700 moveto
(This is a test)show
%%Trailer
cleartomark
countdictstack
exch sub { end } repeat
restore
%%EOF