Re: Determining paper size of PDF via command-line tools?

[Alexander Kobel]

On 01/21/2014 08:27 PM, David Kastrup wrote:
> Jim Long <address@hidden> writes:
>
> > I have been lax in enforcing a paper size in my engraved files.
> > This has been invisible to me, since apparently XPDF prints A4
> > files on a US letter-sized printer without complaint.
> >
> > But some folks that I send PDFs to have noticed (and indeed I've
> > noticed it sometimes when I print in an unfamiliar environment).
> >
> > Rather than re-engrave *everything*, I'd like to use a
> > grep/awk/whatever command pipe to determine the paper size of
> > certain PDF files.  I'll then re-engrave only those which are
> > identified as A4.  Is this possible, and if so, can anyone please
> > provide me a suitable UNIX command line that can identify the
> > paper size referenced by a given PDF filename?
>
> pdfinfo is a good bet.

+1. Though from time to time it's harder to parse than GhostScript's 
output (see 
<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6250064/ghostscript-boundingbox-values>), 
because it adds some human-readable interpretation. And you need to take 
care if you have different page sizes in the PDF (not an issue for 
LilyPond output, most probably). It's much faster, though, but this will 
be negligible if you spare some LilyPond runs...


Best,
Alexander