From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: Jens Knoell <jens@surefoot.com>
Subject: Odd ghostscript problem (ps to PDF conversion)
Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2006 12:48:02 -0600
Message-ID: <44C90A62.3070401@surefoot.com>
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I'm occasionally converting scanned images to PDF files, people seem to 
be able to read/print them easier.

I have two scripts that basically run through the scanned .png files and 
spit out a single PDF in the end. This works for LETTER size, but not 
for LEGAL size, and I don't know why. What happens is this: The scan has 
the proper format (legal size), conversion to pnm and then ps gives me a 
properly legal sized postscript file - but as soon as ghostscript 
processes it, the document gets shifted down by an inch or so, and an 
inch of information gets lost at the end of the page. Why? I wish I 
knew. The script is as follows:

#!/bin/bash
cd ~scanner

for filename in `ls *.png` ; do
  echo -n "Converting $filename to PDF ... "
  pngtopnm $filename | pnmtops -imagewidth=8.5 -imageheight=14 | 
ps2pdf14 -sPAPERSIZE=legal - `echo $filename|cut -d. -f1`.pdf
  rm $filename
  echo "done. Source deleted."
done

echo -n "Concatenating PDF files ... "
gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -q -sDEVICE=pdfwrite 
-sPAPERSIZE=legal -sOutputFile="/mnt/server/PDF/ScanImage `date +"%a %F 
%H.%M.%S"`.pdf" `ls *.pdf`
echo "done."
echo -n "Cleaning up ... "
rm *.pdf
chmod -R a+rw "/mnt/server/PDF"

echo "done."


Does anyone see something obviously wrong? I don't :(

Jens