# Crop A4 to specific paper size

I want to send a document to a publisher. The publisher prints books with the dimensions of the pages being 16.5cm x 23.5cm. Thus I am now layouting the final document with the help of the crop package. I am trying to tell KOMA Script & crop that the resulting PDF needs to be DIN A4 (physical page) with the 16.5cm x 23.5cm page centered on the physical page. Crop gives my crop marks and (using the option "frame") a thin, black frame which is very useful during the final layouting process.

But the problem is that the dimensions of the framed page resp. the dimensions of the page enclosed by the crop marks are not what I am trying to specify (16.5cm x 23.5cm). It's smaller, actually something like 16cm x 22.9cm.

Why is that -- I guess I am doing something wrong? Is this maybe related to this 'bleed correction' which I have stumbled across at some point?

Here is a minimal working example:

\documentclass[paper=16.5cm:23.5cm,11pt,BCOR=5mm,twoside,DIV=12]{scrreprt}
\usepackage[a4,center,cam]{crop}
% Needed?
\recalctypearea

\begin{document}
Foo.
\end{document}


What's the correct way to specify such non-standard dimensions precisely? In case this is important, I am using KOMA Script (scrreprt).

Thanks!

• How exactly are you measuring this? Note that issues like this often stem from PDF viewers shrinking the contents prior to printing it. – daleif Jul 17 '15 at 13:39
• I print out the PDF on A4 paper and measure with a state of the art measuring device: a ruler! Once I have printed the file with 'lp' and once with evince, the result is the same. – mfuglos Jul 17 '15 at 13:44
• You still need to verify that what you print actually corresponds to the correct sizes. Is a printed \rule{6cm}{2cm} actually 6cm by 2cm? – daleif Jul 17 '15 at 14:04
• Wow. I did not expect this. According to measurements on paper the box is not 6cm x 2cm, but rather 5.8cm x 1.95cm. This roughly agrees with the scaling factor of post: 6/5.8 is approx. 1.034 and 16.5/16 is approx 1.031 2/1.95 is approx 1.025 and 23.5/23 is approx 1.021 This is strange. I didn't know that there is such a scaling involved in printing PDF A4. – mfuglos Jul 17 '15 at 14:16
• In evince (and adobe reader) remember to set page scaling to none, then this does not happen. I have no idea why they scale the page when they do not need to. – daleif Jul 17 '15 at 14:19