All PDF applications mix the width and height of a PDF file

Question

I have this PDF file created by scanning. When viewing it in any PDF viewer, the page's width is greater than the height.

But it seems like all the PDF applications I have tried mistake the width as the height and the height as the width for this PDF file (see below.)

Why?

Is the PDF file broken?

How can I "repair" the PDF file so that the PDF applications don't mix its width and height?

1. The following command shows the width is smaller than the height in points:

   $ pdfinfo test.pdf 
   Creator:        Xerox WorkCentre 7830
   Producer:       Xerox WorkCentre 7830
   CreationDate:   Tue Dec 23 00:22:47 2014
   Tagged:         no
   Form:           none
   Pages:          1
   Encrypted:      no
   Page size:      612 x 1008 pts
   Page rot:       90
   File size:      81820 bytes
   Optimized:      no
   PDF version:    1.4
   

2. The following command shows the width is smaller than the height in pixels:

   $ pdfimages -list test.pdf 
   page   num  type   width height color comp bpc  enc interp  object ID
   ---------------------------------------------------------------------
      1     0 image     864  1400  rgb     3   8  jpeg   no         6  0
      1     1 mask     1236   895  -       1   1  jbig2  no         8  0
      1     2 mask      737   891  -       1   1  jbig2  no        10  0
      1     3 mask      247   381  -       1   1  jbig2  no        11  0
      1     4 mask       44   298  -       1   1  jbig2  no        12  0
      1     5 mask      429     9  -       1   1  jbig2  no        13  0
      1     6 mask       22   258  -       1   1  jbig2  no        14  0
      1     7 mask      130   142  -       1   1  jbig2  no        15  0
   

3. I am trying to crop away the left and right margins of the PDF file, using the script pdfcrop.sh here which seems based on gs and pdftk. My measurements of the left and right margins are 116 pts and 20 pts.

   The usage of the script says:

     echo " -t \"<left> [<top> [<right> <bottom>]]\""
     echo "    trims outer page edges by the given amounts. Unit is bp. A single number"
     echo "    is used for all trims, two numbers \"<left> <top>\" are applied to the"
     echo "    right and bottom trims alike."
   

   but

   pdfcrop.sh -t "116 0 20 0" test.pdf trimmed.pdf

   will crop the top by 116 pts and the bottom by 20 pts, while the following does the correct thing by crop the left by 116 pts and the right by 20 pts.

   pdfcrop.sh -t "0 116 0 20" test.pdf trimmed.pdf

Answer 1

0.

Here is a PNG made from your one page sample PDF file:

1.

When viewing it in any PDF viewer, the page's width is greater than the height.

This is exactly as it's supposed to be.

2.

[...] it seems like all the PDF applications I have tried mistake the width as the height and the height as the width for this PDF file.

As you said, it only seems like that.

3.

Is the PDF file broken?

No, it isn't.

4.

You overlooked one information which your first command (pdfinfo) gave you:

Page rot:       90

It means that the PDF source code inside the PDF file tells the viewer to take this "It's indeed higher than wide"-page and display it with a 90 degree rotation.

Thus, "viewing it in any PDF viewer, the page's width is greater than the height". As it is supposed to be. See my No. 1 above. And my No. 2 above.

5.

You can use pdfimages to extract all images, and then ImageMagick's convert to convert these which do come out as PNM or PBM to JPEG:

 pdfimages -j test.pdf test-

 for i in *.pbm ; do            \
    convert $i ${i/.pbm/.jpg} ; \
 done

This results in eight different images, the ones with numbering 0--7 in your pdfimages -list command from your question ('2.').

Here are these images. All of them are scaled to 25% of their original size so not too much space is wasted. All of them are displayed in their "natural" orientation, as they are extracted by pdfimages. Here is the first one, number 0 in your list:

This image was extracted in its "natural" orientation. It is clearly higher than wide.

The following pairs of images are all scaled by 25%. They represent images of type mask in the list of your pdfimages output above:

   

  

Your scanner (with its built-in software) is a more "intelligent" one. It does not simply make a single TIFF from the page and then embed that into a PDF shell, but it tries to optimize the different parts, using image 'masks' (with alpha channels -- appearing as black colors in the JPEGs I created) for parts which contain text.

Luckily, your scanner software was not "more" intelligent when it applied its compression for the text, and it used JPEG2000 instead of JBIG2. So you did not fall for the infamous "Xerox scanning bug".