Page format and orientation¶

By default, a FPDF document has a A4 format with portrait orientation.

Other formats & orientation can be specified to FPDF constructor:

pdf = fpdf.FPDF(orientation="landscape", format="A5")

Currently supported formats are a3, a4, a5, letter, legal or a tuple (width, height). Additional standard formats are welcome and can be suggested through pull requests.

Per-page format, orientation and background¶

.set_page_background() lets you set a background for all pages following this call until the background is removed. The value must be of type str, io.BytesIO, PIL.Image.Image, drawing.DeviceRGB, tuple or None

The following code snippet illustrates how to configure different page formats for specific pages as well as setting different backgrounds and then removing it:

from fpdf import FPDF

pdf = FPDF()
pdf.set_font("Helvetica")
pdf.set_page_background((252,212,255))
for i in range(9):
    if i == 6:
        pdf.set_page_background('image_path.png')
    pdf.add_page(format=(210 * (1 - i/10), 297 * (1 - i/10)))
    pdf.cell(text=str(i))
pdf.set_page_background(None)
pdf.add_page(same=True)
pdf.cell(text="9")
pdf.output("varying_format.pdf")

Similarly, an orientation parameter can be provided to the add_page method.

Page layout & zoom level¶

set_display_mode() allows to set the zoom level: pages can be displayed entirely on screen, occupy the full width of the window, use the real size, be scaled by a specific zooming factor or use the viewer default (configured in its Preferences menu).

The page layout can also be specified: single page at a time, continuous display, two columns or viewer default.

from fpdf import FPDF

pdf = FPDF()
pdf.set_display_mode(zoom="default", layout="TWO_COLUMN_LEFT")
pdf.set_font("helvetica", size=30)
pdf.add_page()
pdf.cell(text="page 1")
pdf.add_page()
pdf.cell(text="page 2")
pdf.output("two-column.pdf")

Viewer preferences¶

Those settings are detailed in the official PDF format specification, but may not be honored by PDF viewers. If a setting seems ignored, this is probably not a bug with fpdf2, but a choice or a missing feature from your PDF renderer software.

from fpdf import FPDF, ViewerPreferences

pdf = FPDF()
pdf.viewer_preferences = ViewerPreferences(
    hide_toolbar=True,
    hide_menubar=True,
    hide_window_u_i=True,
    fit_window=True,
    center_window=True,
    display_doc_title=True,
    non_full_screen_page_mode="USE_OUTLINES",
)
pdf.set_font("helvetica", size=30)
pdf.add_page()
pdf.cell(text="page 1")
pdf.add_page()
pdf.cell(text="page 2")
pdf.output("viewer-prefs.pdf")

Full screen¶

from fpdf import FPDF

pdf = FPDF()
pdf.page_mode = "FULL_SCREEN"
pdf.output("full-screen.pdf")