Re: PDF: visible registration marks

[Dan Emory <danemory@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 01:01 PM 2/9/99 +0100, Peder Axensten wrote:
>On a Macintosh I want to generate a pdf document with visible registration
>marks. The actual printing area is A4, so to get room for the marks I need
>something bigger: A3. I print it to ps file with Generate Acrobat data on.
>I then distill the file and open the resulting pdf in Acrobat Exchange.
>Thanks to Shlomo Perets I know that I must "uncrop" the document to see
>anything more than the A4 printed area after generating a ps file with
>Acrobat data on.
>
>Using the Exchange plug-in Super Crop I make the hole A3 area visible (in
>Acrobat Exchange) and voila: registration marks! ...And a lot of white
>space. Now I want to crop it to just outside the marks and I draw my
>cropping-box acordingly. I do the Crop command on "all" and the document is
>cropped, but not to my box but to something rather completely else...
##################################################
I don't use the registration marks produced when you select Registration
Marks in the print dialog box. Instead, I perform the following steps to
create and use my own crop marks embedded in each master page:

1. In FrameMaker, create a new empty document having the A4 page size. Then,
choose Format > Page Layout > Page Size, and change the page size of the new
document so that it is 0.5" larger in height and width than the A4 page size.

2. In the new empty document created in step 1, create a new empty master
page (no text frame). In this empty master page, use the FrameMaker drawing
tool to create a crop mark just like the one produced at the upper left
corner when you turn on registration marks in the print dialog box. Adjust
the position and length of the bottom horizontal line, and the position and
height of the vertical line at the right, so that, when all of the objects
in the crop mark are grouped, the height and width of the grouped object
will be EXACTLY 0.25"

3. Group the objects that make up the crop mark created in step 2, and
position this grouped object so that it has zero offset from the top and
left page edges.

4. Make a copy of the grouped crop mark object created in step 3, select the
new copy, and flip it left/right. Move this flipped copy of the crop mark to
the position where it has zero offset from the top and right page edges.

5. Make another copy of the grouped crop mark object created in step 3 (the
one at the upper left), select the new copy, and flip it up/down. Move this
flipped copy of the crop mark to the position where is has zero offset from
the left and bottom page edges.

6. Make a copy of the grouped crop mark object created in step 5 (the one at
the bottom left), select the new copy, and flip it left/right. Move this
flipped copy of the crop mark to the position where it has zero offset from
the right and bottom page edges.

7. Select all four of the grouped crop mark objects created in steps 2 thru
6, and group them into a single object. Then, copy the grouped crop marks to
the clipboard.

8. Now, open the actual document (having the exact A4 page size) in which
you want to add the crop marks, and make the page size 0.5" larger in height
and width than the A4 page size.

9. On each of the document's master pages, select all objects (text frames,
etc.) on the master page, group them, and move the grouped master page
objects 0.25" left and 0.25" down from their present position. Then, ungroup
them. This action adjusts the master page positions to compensate for the
additional 0.25" of margins at the left and top page edges produced by the
increased page size accomplished in step 8.

10. After completing step 9, go back to each master page, and paste in the
crop marks that were copied to the clipboard in step 7. Be sure that the
pasted crop mark object has zero offset from the left and top page edges.

11. When you print the A4 document to a postscript file, specify a custom
paper size that is the same size as the new size of the document (i.e., 0.5"
larger in height and width than the A4 page size).

12. Distill the postscript file, and open the resulting PDF file in Acrobat.
Observe that the crop marks appear without having to uncrop the document,
and that no white space appears outside the crop marks. Now, use the crop
tool to move the crop lines to coincide with the crop marks. Voila!

You can now use the new document with crop marks created in steps 1 thru 7
to copy the grouped crop marks into any other A4 document by performing
steps 8 thru 10.
     ____________________
     | Nullius in Verba |
     ********************
Dan Emory, Dan Emory & Associates
FrameMaker/FrameMaker+SGML Document Design & Database Publishing
Voice/Fax: 949-722-8971 E-Mail: danemory@primenet.com
10044 Adams Ave. #208, Huntington Beach, CA 92646


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