pdflatex produces A4 page despite the fact that letterpaper is specified

[Munchkinguy]

In Ubuntu Hardy, pdflatex produces documents of A4 paper even when letterpaper is specified. For example...

\documentclass[letterpaper]{report}
\usepackage{mathptmx}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
Hello world.
\end{document}

...yields a PDF file that is A4-sided, even though letterpaper is specified in \documentclass

[Stefan Kottwitz (stefan.k)]

With the letterpaper option \paperwidth and \paperheight will be set correctly.
For use with pdflatex you could modify the appropriate sizes:

  \setlength{\pdfpagewidth}{\paperwidth}
  \setlength{\pdfpageheight}{\paperheight}

It will fix this minimal example. The problem will vanish if you use additional packages designed for pdflatex. \usepackage{graphicx} will fix it too, also color, xcolor, hyperref.

[Munchkinguy (10068660)]

But this really ought to work the way its supposed to. When I use MikTeX on
Windows, typing "letterpaper" makes it letter-sized. I shouldn't *have* to
use additional options.

[Josh Zenker (jzenker)]

I agree that we shouldn't have to use an additional package to get letter-sized output. However, I can confirm that Stefan's solution works with texlive-base version 2007-13.

[Petru (becheru-petru-ioan)]

confirmed using XeTeX 3.1415926-2.3-0.9997.6 (TeX Live 2012/dev/Debian)
File contents:

\documentclass[b5paper]{article}
\begin{document}
 sdaf
\end{document}

The resulting pdf is not b5paper, it is a4paper

[Norbert Preining (preining)]

On Mo, 14 Mai 2012, Petru wrote:
> confirmed using XeTeX 3.1415926-2.3-0.9997.6 (TeX Live 2012/dev/Debian)
> File contents:
>
> \documentclass[b5paper]{article}
> \begin{document}
> sdaf
> \end{document}
>
> The resulting pdf is not b5paper, it is a4paper

Please learn to use google. Thanks.

That is one of the most asked questions ... you need to use
geometry or something else that sets the pdf paper size. LaTeX does not
know about pdf paper sizes.

Please someone closes this bug, PBCAS.

Best wishes

Norbert
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Norbert Preining preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan TeX Live & Debian Developer
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