Draw true page border

Question

Is there a way to draw a rectangle around every page?

The problem is that my document (a Ph.D. thesis) is in a funny format (16x24cm). So to print it centered on A4 paper (for reviewing) I played with the page layout.

However, I would like to have indication of the true page size with means of a rectangle drawn around each page. Is it possible? BTW. I use pdflatex.

Answer 1

You can use the crop package to place your pages on a A4 paper. It can center and frame it for you:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[paperwidth=16cm,paperheight=24cm]{geometry}
\usepackage[a4,frame,center]{crop}

\usepackage{lipsum}% dummy text
\begin{document}
\lipsum
\lipsum
\lipsum
\end{document}

It looks like this:

If you don't like the info line above the frame use the noinfo package option.

Answer 2

If you are using geometry for setting the page parameters, then add the option showframe or showcrop

Answer 3

I had a similar issue with my own thesis. The way I dealt with it issue was to use features of the PDF format. PDF allows a file to specify several different boxes: TrimBox, MediaBox, ArtBox, CropBox, BleedBox. Relevant to this situation is MediaBox: the size of the paper you are printing on (in your case A4); and TrimBox: the size of the page after trimming. Many PDF viewers (Adobe Reader for example) are able to display these boxes optionally. I don't know of any packages that make use of this feature (would make a nice modification to geometry or crop), so I did it by hand: \pdfpageattr{/TrimBox[9 9 621 801]} where if I recall correctly the units are in pts. You can see a result here, where I wanted the final page to be US Letter size, but to have a 0.125" bleed before trimming. If you are using Adobe Reader, then to show the boxes use Edit -> Preferences -> Page Display -> Show art, trim, & bleed boxes.

Answer 4

The crop packages does it for the general case. See also What is the easiest way to get borders around a page in LaTeX? and in particular the solution for the Memoir document class.

Answer 5

try using this :

\usepackage{pgf}
\usepackage{pgfpages}
%
\pgfpagesdeclarelayout{boxed}
{
  \edef\pgfpageoptionborder{3pt}
}
{
  \pgfpagesphysicalpageoptions
  {%
    logical pages=1,%
  }
  \pgfpageslogicalpageoptions{1}
  {
    border code=\pgfsetlinewidth{0.5pt}\pgfstroke,%
    border shrink=\pgfpageoptionborder,%
    resized width=.95\pgfphysicalwidth,%
    resized height=.95\pgfphysicalheight,%
    center=\pgfpoint{.5\pgfphysicalwidth}{.5\pgfphysicalheight}%
  }%
}
\pgfpagesuselayout{boxed}
\setlength{\parindent}{2cm}