PDF export with size of the exported diagram

Question

Currently, no matter how small the diagram is, the page size is always an entire DIN A4 page (with the exported diagram centered on it).

It would be nice, if the PDF's "page" size could adapt to the actual size of the exported diagram, i.e. become smaller than A4.
In particular, this would facilitate using (importing) the exported PDF in other documents.

Comments

Thas the same with bigger formats:

No matter how big the diagram, the page size is always an A4 format.

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No, it is not. The page size is exactly what is specified on tab "PDF", option "Paper Size" if "Automatic Page Settings" is disabled. However, PDF export only downscales diagrams to fit into the desired size, it never upscales diagrams if there is excess space. And that is the way it is meant to be. Every half-way decent PDF viewer lets you scale your document to fit the chosen paper size on print, so simply stick with "Automatic Page Settings" enabled and let your PDF viewer do the scaling.

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So, export PDF and printing are two different things ?

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Yes, of course. PDF export creates PDF document on your hard drive. Printing on the other hand uses your operating system's printing framework to produce some kind of output.

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This is a great feature: but I need some more North American paper sizes - like legal.  Right now only Letter is listed along with all the European A# sizes... Any chance this can be done easily?

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Well, feel free to post a corresponding feature request (including the desired paper sizes).
However, I would like to ask why you need additional paper sizes, because (as the second comment explains) these are *not* required for printing your PDFs on paper size legal (or any other size).

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Thomas, there is one big reason:  printing to PDF, using the Adobe drivers, produces a bit map of the yEd drawing embedded in the PDF.  Exporting to a PDF produces a vector graphic of the yEd drawing.

Bit maps have problems when you want to scale etc.

But I've noticed a problem with PDF export (irrespective of paper size).  It can't do the three colour shading properly (it reduces it to just two colours).  

So right now my work-around is to export to svg then open in Inkscape and save as PDF from there.  Then the shading appears OK and I can set the paper size.

Thoughts... is this a bug in the PDF export?

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I think there has been a misunderstanding. What I would like to know is what you are doing with your PDF documents. If you simply print those on paper, you do not need additional paper sizes. You can choose yEd's "Automatic Page Settings" when exporting and when printing on paper have your PDF viewer fit the output on any chosen paper size.

The problem with "three colour shading" (though not a bug but a missing feature) will be fixed in yEd 3.10.2 (which will be released this week).

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Thomas,

Great to hear the 3 colour shading in PDF will be working soon.  That's great news.

Great question on what I'm doing with the PDF documents..

You say "have your PDF viewer fit the output on any chosen paper size.".   This is *THE* problem.  Currently, for my diagrams, the paper size chosen by "automatic settings" is much larger than the paper in any printer.  I want to distribute a file to people and not have to remind them to click on the "fit to paper size" when printing (in this case its for a thesis).  

One practical example is when I use a professional printer they want a PDF with the page size I desire *IN* the file.   There is too much room for error putting page size information in a covering email - i.e. "please print the attached PDF on A3 paper" (when the page size in the file is 60cm x 90cm)

As far as I can tell the only way of changing the page size in a PDF file once its been created is to spend $50-$150 on a 3rd party tool.  Even Adobe Acrobat Professional doesn't allow this (without printing using the PDF driver and then it tends to turn the file into a bitmap - to my earlier comment).

I've the lack of this feature in Adobe Acrobat found this very odd... so perhaps I'm wrong... but I've been looking around and I can't find another option - hence back to the "choose the paper size in yED" question.

Does that help understand the challenge?

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Thank you very much for the clarification of your use case.

Please do create a corresponding feature request and list the desired paper sizes.

Answer 1

Under linux you can use natively pdfcrop to trim the diagram. But if you use the trimmed diagram in latex documents you have to scale it manually to fit the text in lables to the document text.

Answer 2

Supported as of yEd 3.9.2.