Varying Page Lengths

Question

How can I vary the vertical page length per page?

I want to have the page breaks at essentially arbitrary locations in the document, specified by a command, like \newpage but not necessarily this command. Moreover, I want these page breaks to determine the vertical length of the page.

(This must sound crazy!)

Thanks!

Answer 1

Do you mean physical dimensions of the page? If yes, I had a talk about it at TUG'11. Our paper is in the upcoming TUGboat, but the talk itself is here: http://river-valley.tv/ebooks-and-paper-size-output-routine-hacking-made-easy/

There are snippets of code on the screen; if you are interested, let me know, and I put copies of them here.

Update: here is LaTeX example that shows the idea:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{everyshi,lipsum}
\pagestyle{empty}
\textheight500cm
\EveryShipout{%
  \pdfpageheight=\pagetotal
  \advance\pdfpageheight by 2in
  \advance\pdfpageheight by 2\topmargin
  \advance\pdfpageheight by \textheight
  \advance\pdfpageheight by -\pagegoal}
\begin{document}

\lipsum[3-5]
\pagebreak

This line has a footnote\footnote{\lipsum[6-8]}.
\lipsum[1]

And this line too\footnote{\lipsum[12]}.
\pagebreak

\end{document}