PDF Output

PDF output creates one document whose pages follow identified child frames in source order.

xaligo render diagram.xal --format pdf -o diagram.pdf

Each frame is first rendered through the shared SVG/page plan and then placed as vector artwork on one PDF page. The PDF page uses the SVG’s intrinsic canvas dimensions and converts them to physical units at 96 pixels per inch without non-uniform scaling. Default page SVGs use the exact frame rectangle as their canvas and clip boundary, so the PDF page has no marker-safe overflow padding and a top/bottom metadata band’s row-gap gutter reaches the physical edge while its tag cells remain inset by that value. A one-frame document produces one page. The logical frame defines page projection but its outline is not drawn.

Use --combine-frames to preserve the compatibility canvas as one PDF page:

xaligo render diagram.xal --format pdf -o diagram.pdf --combine-frames

The combined compatibility page inherits the SVG renderer’s marker-safe canvas expansion.

Cross-frame connections remain page links. The source page contains to <destination frame ID> and the destination page contains from <source frame ID>; no line is drawn through an inter-page gap. Explicit frame-side/frame-anchor geometry, the inward terminal line, and the 4-layout-pixel label gap from that final terminal are resolved before the PDF projection. The terminal inset is the resolved metadata row-gap, or 4 layout pixels when metadata is absent; zero retains the outer edge.