[DVIPDFMx] About \Rotate 90 command in PDF files

Jin-Hwan Cho chofchof at ktug.or.kr
Mon Jun 2 21:18:24 KST 2008


On Jun 2, 2008, at 4:56 PM, Matthias Franz wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 02, 2008 at 10:36:32AM +0900, Jin-Hwan Cho wrote:
>> On Jun 2, 2008, at 1:53 AM, Matthias.Franz at ujf-grenoble.fr wrote:
>>>
>>> 1) I'm not sure that I understand the purpose of \Rotate.
>>> The PDF 1.2 spec says that it is for rotating on displays.
>>> I understand this. Later specs say it's also for printing.
>>> In this case, what is the difference to a rotated bbox???
>>
>> What do you mean with "rotated bbox"? Is it in the PDF spec?
>> Anyway, I understood that "\Rotate" gives an information how
>> many degree the page must be rotated. That's quite simple.
>
> I mean the following: What is the difference between
>
> \MediaBox [0 0 100 200]
> \Rotate 90
>
> and
>
> \MediaBox [0 0 200 100]
> plus rotated content in the content stream ?

They are same, I think.

> If \Rotate is respected for viewing _and_ printing,
> it seems like a feature which does not add new
> functionality.

However, it is more simpler to give "\Rotate 90" than
to add rotated content and change the media box.
I think this is the reason why they make \Rotate.

>>> 3) As you've written, it's not a problem of dvipdfmx, but
>>> of the graphics driver. What should the driver do?
>>> I think one needs a new option for \includegraphics
>>> because there are situations where one wants to respect
>>> \Rotate (inclusion of a wide table which uses landscape
>>> format instead of portrait format) and situations where
>>> one doesn't (pdfpages putting 2 pages onto 1 page, like
>>> psnup. Here one cannot rotate one page, but not the others.)
>>
>> My opinion was not to use any extra option. So if one includes
>> a PDF image with /Rotate 90, then the LaTeX graphics driver
>> must notice this information. How? I thought that the only way
>> is to add the information on the ".xbb" file. Then the driver makes
>> a rotated box. In this case the driver does not need to give this
>> information to dvipdfmx, because dvipdfmx can check this information
>> by itself. The critical part is the driver's one, not dvipdfmx's.
>
> My idea was to have an option to enable or disable the rotation
> of pages. Think of the example given above (many A4 pages, one
> plus rotation). If you just want to include the rotated page,
> then \Rotate should be taken into account. If you include _all_
> pages (for example, with pdfpages to put 2 pages onto 1), then
> you do _not_ want to rotate one page because it disturbes
> your overall page layout.

Maybe I do not want to rotate in the case of pdfpages. However, even  
in this
case, the pdf creator must keep the rotate information, I think. In my  
opinion,
pdfpages can ignore the rotate information, but dvipdfmx cannot  
because of
consistency.

>>> 4) What does pdflatex do?
>>
>> Of course pdflatex does well because it can read the "/Rotate"
>> information directly and make an appropriate box.
>
> So, does pdflatex _always_ respect \Rotate entries or not?

All my tests with pdftex show that it respected the rotate information.

Best, ChoF.



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