[PLUG] ghostscript without page-boundary cropping

[mjd-list-plug2@plover.com (Mark Dominus)]

I use ghostscript to render postscript files in various output
formats, typically PBM format with -sDEVICE=pbmraw.  Often my input
file is a funny shape.  For example, it might be only an inch tall,
but nine inches wide.  In this case, GS crops the image to be 8.5
inches wide, discarding part of the drawing, so that the rightmost
half-inch is not in the PBM file.  Also, the output is still 11 inches
tall, so I then have to crop the ten inches of blank space off the
bottom of my PBM file.

I can get a complete image by using -sPAPERSIZE=a0, which expands the
cropping rectangle to 33x47 inches.  But then it uses a lot of memory
and runs very slowly, and the output is very large, and I have to crop
off even more blank space.

What I really wish it would to was to be smarter about the cropping.
I wish I could omit the explicit paper size, and that it would keep
track of how wide and tall the picture was, and emit a PBM file of
exactly the right size.

What do you all recommend?

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