Re: [Groff] Get margin of a Postscript file

[Ralph Corderoy]

Hi Jérôme,

Please reply to the list, not just me.  :-)

> Here is the context : I'm student in Law and next year I will have to
> write a memorandum.  Nevertheless, this memorandum must be in MS Word
> format which displease me greatly.  This format is imposed to verify
> if we respect the instructions, and especially the margins.
> 
> In this situation, I wonder if there is a solution to obtain this
> information from another format, like Postscript, so I can propose an
> alternative to the use of MS Word format.

Ghostscript can report the bounding-box for the ink laid on each page.
http://ghostscript.com/doc/7.07/Use.htm#Bounding_box_output

    $ for n in 5 271 3141; do
    >     echo $n
    >     seq $n | groff | gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=bbox -
    > done
    5
    %%BoundingBox: 73 829 107 837
    %%HiResBoundingBox: 73.025998 829.745975 106.379997 836.765974
    271
    %%BoundingBox: 72 719 540 837
    %%HiResBoundingBox: 72.017998 719.045978 539.747984 836.765974
    3141
    %%BoundingBox: 72 47 540 837
    %%HiResBoundingBox: 72.017998 47.051999 539.747984 836.765974
    %%BoundingBox: 72 47 540 837
    %%HiResBoundingBox: 72.305998 47.051999 539.675984 836.765974
    %%BoundingBox: 72 683 540 837
    %%HiResBoundingBox: 72.305998 683.045979 539.675984 836.765974
    $ 

Note how the left margin varies slightly, 72 or 73, depending I suspect
on the curvuture of the glyphs at the start of the line.  The first
document has the smallest height, just one line of text, from 829 to
837;  origin is bottom-left.  The two full pages of the 3141 document
have the same low-res box.

Perhaps this helps.

Cheers, Ralph.