Extra blank page with standalone class

[aminophen]

Sorry if reported elsewhere.

By running latex and dvipdfmx, the following MWE produces 2 pages in recent versions of pgf (v3.1.2 -- v3.1.4a current). The second page is blank.

% Package: pgfrcs 2019/02/02 v3.1.1 (3.1.1)
% Package: pgfrcs 2019/07/17 v3.1.4a (3.1.4a)
\documentclass[dvipdfmx]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
a
\end{document}

In TL2018 frozen (v3.1.1), it produced only 1 page.

[hmenke]

Bisected to fbfabbd

I would argue that the problem is in standalone rather than tikz because if I replace the documentclass with article it works fine. Here is a MWE without TikZ.

\documentclass{standalone}
\AtBeginDocument{\AtEndDocument{\clearpage}}
\begin{document}
a
\end{document}

[hmenke]

See now also: https://bitbucket.org/martin_scharrer/standalone/issues/47 https://web.archive.org/web/20200623152746/https://bitbucket.org/martin_scharrer/standalone/issues/47/spurious-empty-page-with-dvipdfmx

[tattsan]

standalone.cls has an option 'tikz':

\documentclass[dvipdfmx,tikz]{standalone}
% \usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}
a
\end{document}

and this produces no blank page.

[aminophen]

\documentclass[dvipdfmx,tikz]{standalone}

Yes, that produces no blank page, but the page is not cropped to the size of 'a'; it results in A4 paper. This behavior is not expected at all...

[aminophen]

I would argue that the problem is in standalone rather than tikz
because if I replace the documentclass with article it works fine.
\AtBeginDocument{\AtEndDocument{\clearpage}}

@hmenke I agree with you, thanks.

[tattsan]

but the page is not cropped to the size of 'a'

I see.

To use with dvipdfmx, I added the following line in the definition of \sa@placebox (defined in standalone.cls).

 \def\sa@placebox{%
    \newpage
    \global\pdfpagewidth=\wd\sa@box
    \global\pdfpageheight=\ht\sa@box
    \global\paperwidth=\wd\sa@box
    \global\paperheight=\ht\sa@box
    \global\hsize=\wd\sa@box
    \global\vsize=\ht\sa@box
    \global\@colht=\ht\sa@box
    \global\@colroom=\ht\sa@box
    \special{papersize=\the\pdfpagewidth,\the\pdfpageheight}%%%%%  This line.
    \noindent\usebox\sa@box
    \newpage
  }%

This also produce no blank page, and the page is cropped.

[hmenke]

I'm closing this for now, because the issue seems to be in standalone.

[u-fischer]

This topic just came up again: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/610206/standalone-creates-extra-empty-page-mwe

The empty page is triggered by the \clearpage inserted by pgf in pgfutil-latex.def

\AtBeginDocument{\AtEndDocument{\clearpage\the\pgfutil@everybye}}

As far as I can see only the driver files pgfsys-pdftex.def and pgfsys-luatex.def add something to the toks register \pgfutil@everybye. So there should be no need to issue the \clearpage in dvi mode at all. I also think (but I didn't test) that one can use in a current latex the shipout/lastpage hook for this instead of enddocument.

[hmenke]

As already noted earlier in this thread, standalone is broken. See #724 (comment) for MWE.

[u-fischer]

I know that the \clearpage has only an ill effect in standalone. I did read the thread.

But it is not clear if it is a bug. Creating single pages from content is not an easy task, and it is quite possible that standalone can't avoid the bad side effect from \clearpage in dvi mode without breaking something else.

It remains the fact that pgf issues an in dvi mode unneeded \clearpage. And imho it makes more sense here to ask pgf to not add it in the first place or to use another hook than asking standalone to remove it again with \RemoveFromHook.

[hmenke]

But it is not clear if it is a bug.

How is that not a bug? Using \clearpage in standalone is completely broken.

Creating single pages from content is not an easy task

Maybe it is but it's beyond the scope of PGF and therefore not my problem.

[davidcarlisle]

but the \clearpage is not issued by standalone but by PGF. pgfutil-latex.def having

\AtBeginDocument{\AtEndDocument{\clearpage\the\pgfutil@everybye}}

so if any document for any reason puts any kind of box into \AtEndDocument after this, it comes after the clearpage and an extra page will be generated.

[hmenke]

As I said, not my problem. However, you're welcome to open a PR with a *forward- and backward-compatible solution and I'll merge it.

Locking the conversation because that's my final statement.

[muzimuzhi]

This seems to work, at the cost of a new dependency atveryend for latex prior to 2020-10-01.

BTW, it seems standalone's repo has moved from bitbucket to sourceforge (https://sourceforge.net/projects/standalone/), but the bitbucket issues were lost.

diff --git a/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfutil-latex.def b/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfutil-latex.def
index 07a7fb1a..7574895a 100644
--- a/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfutil-latex.def
+++ b/tex/generic/pgf/utilities/pgfutil-latex.def
@@ -90,11 +90,17 @@
 
 \def\pgfutil@check@rerun#1#2{\@newl@bel{pgf@lab}{#1}{#2}}
 
-\AtBeginDocument{\AtEndDocument{\clearpage\the\pgfutil@everybye}}
-
 % \@ifl@t@r is defined \@onlypremable so we have to save it here
 \let\pgfutil@ifl@t@r=\@ifl@t@r
 
+% ensure \pgfutil@everybye is used after the \clearpage inside \enddocument
+\pgfutil@ifl@t@r\fmtversion{2020/10/01}{
+  \AtBeginDocument{\AddToHook{enddocument/afterlastpage}{\the\pgfutil@everybye}}
+}{
+  \usepackage{atveryend}
+  \AtBeginDocument{\AfterLastShipout{\the\pgfutil@everybye}}
+}
+
 \def\pgfutil@insertatbegincurrentpagefrombox#1{%
   \edef\pgf@temp{\the\wd\pgfutil@abb}%
   \global\setbox\pgfutil@abb\hbox{%