pdflatex page size

Art Werschulz

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Nov 30, 2004, 2:52:20 PM11/30/04

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Hi.

Running TeXLive on a Linux box ...

The National Science Foundation requires one to use their web-based
Fastlane system to submit grant proposals. One of their preferred formats
is PDF.

After running pdflatex to produce a document for same, I attempted to use
Fastlane to upload the PDF file. Fastlane rejected the PDF file, claiming
that it was set for an A4 page size.

I did nothing to explicitly ask for an A4 page size. The document starts
out with
\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage{fullpage}
Moreover, using xpdf and acrobat, it appears that the page size was the
standard US 8.5x11 letter size.

Is there something built into pdflatex that produces an A4 page? If so,
how can one override same?

BTW, I suspect that something is broken with Fastlane, given the amount of
trouble I've had uploading files. I eventually solved the problem by using
TeXshop on my Mac at home, which produced PDF files that Fastlane deemed
acceptable.

Thanks.

--
Art Werschulz (8-{)} "Metaphors be with you." -- bumper sticker
GCS/M (GAT): d? -p+ c++ l u+(-) e--- m* s n+ h f g+ w+ t++ r- y?
Internet: a...@cs.columbia.edu<a href="http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~agw/">WWW</a>
ATTnet: Columbia U. (212) 939-7060, Fordham U. (212) 636-6325

Jerry Smiley

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Nov 30, 2004, 4:10:17 PM11/30/04

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Art Werschulz wrote:

> I did nothing to explicitly ask for an A4 page size. The document starts
> out with
> \documentclass[11pt]{article}
> \usepackage{fullpage}
> Moreover, using xpdf and acrobat, it appears that the page size was the
> standard US 8.5x11 letter size.
>

Try \documentclass[11pt,letterpaper]{article]

Hartmut Henkel

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Nov 30, 2004, 5:00:59 PM11/30/04

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But it won't help if the \pdfpagewidth/height are set up to A4 by default
(under teTeX it's done by the texconfig tool).

To isolate the case, check with the pdfinfo tool what the "Page size"
dimensions of the PDF file are. Or you might look for the MediaBox
entry in the PDF file with an editor. If it's /MediaBox [0 0 612 792]
then it's letter (8.5inx11in).

You can force dimensions by setting \pdfpagewidth and \pdfpageheight.
The hyperref package also forces dimensions to the ones given in the
[option] field of documentclass, like above.

Regards, Hartmut
--
H. Henkel, Oftersheim

Robin Fairbairns

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Nov 30, 2004, 5:22:24 PM11/30/04

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that'll have no effect: letterpaper is the default.

the problem is that pdftex has its _own_ view of the paper size, and
since tex live is created in europe, the default setup has it using
a4. to set it as you need:

texconfig pdftex paper letter
--
Robin (http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq) Fairbairns, Cambridge

John H Palmieri

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Nov 30, 2004, 5:47:38 PM11/30/04

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Or if your version of tetex is too old for this to work (like mine),
find the file 'pdftex.cfg' (on our system, it's
texmf/pdftex/config/pdftex.cfg). Save a copy to a location specified
in your TEXINPUTS variable, and edit it so that the page_width and
page_height lines look like

page_width 8.5truein
page_height 11truein

By the way, if you use the fullpage package, will the margins be big
enough for the NSF?

--
J. H. Palmieri
Dept of Mathematics, Box 354350 206-543-1785
University of Washington mailto:palm...@math.washington.edu
Seattle, WA 98195-4350 http://www.math.washington.edu/~palmieri/