Difference in trim boxes - 189,999 vs 190,0386

[joannap]

Hi

I have two PDF pages which have to be merged into one PDF document, and then sent to the Printer Shop.

One of them was provided to me from other place, and made using InDesign
Second one was made in FrameMaker.

Checking trim boxes I can see that there is a very little (decimal) difference between those two pages.
One from those dimensions is: 189,9999 (printed from InDesign) and 190,0386 (printed from FrameMaker)

MY QUESTION IS - if Printer Shops used to round those sizes to the integer (so both pages width would be 190mm), or they take into consideration also decimal parts?

What can be the reason of that difference?
I will be grateful for help.

 

[leonardr]

Checking trim boxes I can see that there is a very little (decimal) difference between those two pages.
One from those dimensions is: 189,9999 (printed from InDesign) and 190,0386 (printed from FrameMaker)

Checking the box sizes where/how? How you arrived at these numbers is also relevant?

(and hopefully you don't mean "printed" from InDesign, you just mean created by)

MY QUESTION IS - if Printer Shops used to round those sizes to the integer (so both pages width would be 190mm), or they take into consideration also decimal parts?

Depends on what they are doing with the documents, what workflows they are using, what tools are involved, etc. You'd have to ask your printer...

 

[james.bredenhof]

The native unit of measurement on PDF is points (1/72 inch), so 190 mm isn't a particularly "clean" number to represent with points (538.58 pts). It's likely that there's some rounding of the numbers happening at some point during the creation of the file.

In any case, it's not likely to matter: trim not precisely matching the intended output size is a minor production problem and easy to overcome (or ignore, in this case). I'd mention it to your printer as a heads up for them; they'll likely be impressed that you noticed.