Print production — bleed, trim & printer's marks

New in v1.7.0. Print-ready PDFs with zero dependencies: page geometry boxes (/TrimBox, /BleedBox, /ArtBox, /CropBox), crop and registration marks drawn as pure vector operators, /Trapped metadata with XMP parity, print-dialog defaults (duplex, tray, page range, copies), a caller-supplied OutputIntent ICC profile, and large-format /UserUnit. Everything is opt-in — output is byte-identical when unused.

TL;DR#

import { buildDocumentPDFBytes, PAGE_SIZES } from 'pdfnative';

const BLEED = 8.5; // 3 mm in points

const pdf = buildDocumentPDFBytes(params, {
  // Design the page at trim size + bleed on every side…
  pageWidth:  PAGE_SIZES.A4.width  + 2 * BLEED,
  pageHeight: PAGE_SIZES.A4.height + 2 * BLEED,
  margins: { t: 36 + BLEED, r: 36 + BLEED, b: 36 + BLEED, l: 36 + BLEED },
  // …declare the geometry and draw the marks:
  print: { bleed: BLEED, marks: true },
  viewerPreferences: { duplex: 'duplexFlipLongEdge', pickTrayByPDFSize: true },
});

Open the result in Acrobat with Preferences → Page Display → Show art, trim & bleed boxes to see the geometry.

The box model (ISO 32000-1 §14.11.2)#

┌─────────────────────────────┐  MediaBox — the physical page (sheet)
│  ┌───────────────────────┐  │  BleedBox — content clipped in production
│  │ ┌───────────────────┐ │  │  TrimBox — the finished page after cutting
│  │ │      ArtBox       │ │  │  ArtBox — meaningful-content extent
│  │ └───────────────────┘ │  │
│  │  backgrounds run here │  │  ← bleed zone: extend backgrounds into it
│  └───────────────────────┘  │
└─────────────────────────────┘

Boxes are validated (within the MediaBox, trim within bleed) and are pure page-dictionary metadata — the layout engine is untouched, so design the page at trim + 2×bleed and enlarge the margins by the bleed, letting backgrounds run to the page edge.

mergePdfs / splitPdf / extractPages preserve all four boxes (and /UserUnit).

Printer's marks (§14.11.3)#

print.marks: true draws, on every page, strictly outside the TrimBox:

• Crop marks — 8 corner hairlines (default 0.25 pt, 14 pt long, 5 pt clear of the trim edge) showing where to cut.
• Registration targets — circle-and-cross targets on the four edge midpoints, used to align separations.

Fine-tune with an object: marks: { crop, registration, length, offset, weight }.

Marks are stroked in RGB black. A true all-separation registration colour requires CMYK content support, which is on the roadmap together with PDF/X — see below.

/Trapped and prepress metadata#

buildDocumentPDFBytes({ ...params, metadata: { trapped: 'False' } }, { tagged: 'pdfa2b' });

Writes /Info /Trapped /False and mirrors it as pdf:Trapped in the XMP packet, telling the RIP whether trapping has been applied. Because pdf:Trapped is not part of the XMP-2005 Adobe PDF schema that PDF/A pins, pdfnative also emits the required PDF/A extension schema declaring the property (ISO 19005 §6.6.2.3.2) — the document stays veraPDF-compliant. Per ISO 32000-1 Table 317, trapped: 'Unknown' is written to /Info only: unknown maps to the absence of pdf:Trapped in XMP.

Print-dialog defaults (viewerPreferences)#

These join the existing v1.4.0 viewer preferences and remain PDF/A-safe metadata.

Custom OutputIntent (tagged/PDF-A)#

Replace the built-in minimal sRGB profile with a real ICC profile:

import { readFileSync } from 'node:fs';

buildDocumentPDFBytes(params, {
  tagged: 'pdfa2b',
  outputIntent: {
    iccProfile: new Uint8Array(readFileSync('sRGB-IEC61966-2.1.icc')),
    outputConditionIdentifier: 'sRGB IEC61966-2.1',
    outputCondition: 'sRGB display',
    info: 'IEC 61966-2.1 reference profile',
  },
});

RGB profiles only — pdfnative emits RGB content, and a mismatched intent fails PDF/A validation (a CMYK profile throws with an actionable message). Omitted, the historical built-in profile is used byte-identically.

Large formats — /UserUnit#

PDF user space caps pages at 14 400 units (200 in). For banners and plans, print.userUnit scales the unit (1 unit = userUnit/72 inch, up to 75 000):

// A 5 m × 1 m banner: 1417 × 283 units at 10/72 inch per unit.
buildDocumentPDFBytes(params, { pageWidth: 1417, pageHeight: 283, print: { userUnit: 10 } });

/UserUnit needs PDF 1.6+, so the header is raised to %PDF-1.7 when the option is set — and it is rejected under tagged: 'pdfa1b' (PDF/A-1 is PDF 1.4; use pdfa2b or later).

Limits & scope (v1.7.0)#

• Marks are RGB black; no CMYK content, spot colours, colour bars or PDF/X conformance claims yet — all on the roadmap as one coherent CMYK workstream.
• One geometry per document (pages share the same boxes), matching the single-page-size layout model.
• The OutputIntent (custom or built-in) is emitted under tagged modes only.

See the print samples: print/print-bleed-marks.pdf, print/print-explicit-boxes.pdf, print/print-large-format.pdf.