Question

I am looking for a tool to extract a given rectangular region (by coordinates) of a 1-page PDF file and produce a 1-page PDF file with the specified region:

# in.pdf is a 1-page pdf file
extract file.pdf 0 0 100 100 > out.pdf
# out.pdf is now a 1-page pdf file with a page of size 100x100
# it contains the region (0, 0) to (100, 100) of file.pdf

I could convert the PDF to an image and use convert, but this would mean that the resulting PDF would not be vectorial anymore, which is not acceptable (I want to be able to zoom).

I would ideally like to perform this task with a command-line tool or a Python library.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The following script found in
http://snipplr.com/view.php?codeview&id=18924
splits each page of a pdf into 2.

#!/usr/bin/env perl
use strict; use warnings;
use PDF::API2;

my $filename = shift;
my $oldpdf = PDF::API2->open($filename);
my $newpdf = PDF::API2->new;

for my $page_nb (1..$oldpdf->pages) {
  my ($page, @cropdata);

  $page = $newpdf->importpage($oldpdf, $page_nb);
  @cropdata = $page->get_mediabox;
  $cropdata[2] /= 2;
  $page->cropbox(@cropdata);
  $page->trimbox(@cropdata);
  $page->mediabox(@cropdata);

  $page = $newpdf->importpage($oldpdf, $page_nb);
  @cropdata = $page->get_mediabox;
  $cropdata[0] = $cropdata[2] / 2;
  $page->cropbox(@cropdata);
  $page->trimbox(@cropdata);
  $page->mediabox(@cropdata);
}

(my $newfilename = $filename) =~ s/(.*)\.(\w+)$/$1.clean.$2/;
$newpdf->saveas('destination_path/myfile.pdf');