Document sizes and measurement support

Discover how Inkit Render handles size dimensions of your generated documents

In this topic, you’ll learn about measurement support and how to specify document dimensions. While the goal is to give you a conceptual understanding, you can also use this page as a reference for standard document sizes.

The intended audience is those who want to create documents of standard formats or customizable sizes.

Prerequisites:

You know the data requirements for making a request
You have assessed the dimensions of your documents

Measurement support

As an organization, you most likely have a myriad of different documents. Not only in content but in size formats too. For example, you may have letters, bank statements, whitepapers, or even brochures, and they all need different measurements.

Fortunately, when using Inkit Render, you can render documents of any dimension. However, to do so, you must understand the where and how of this process.

You must specify a width and height body parameter in any create request you send to the Inkit Render API. This information determines the actual size dimensions of your document. Meaning if you want to print or use the generated documents, they will have this actual size.

Note: You must include the measurement system you are using. Avoid hiccups in your document generation flows and double-check your specified measurement system. You can do this in the unit body parameter. You may choose one of three options: inches-in, centimeters-cm, or pixels-px. For example, when generating standard US letters, ensure you put ‘in’ as your unit parameter. Yet, when generating standard A4 documents, use cm.

Standard & customized document sizes

You may put any size in your width and height parameters. This customizability allows for standard document sizes but also size customization. Most businesses conform to international or US size formats.

For the US, you have:

Half-Letter: 5.5 by 8.5 in
Government Letter: 8 by 10 in
Letter: 8.5 by 11 in
Junior Legal: 5 by 8 in
Government Legal: 8.5 by 13 in
Legal: 8.5 by 14 in
Ledger / Tabloid: 11 by 17 in

Then, international sizes typically go from A0 to A10, where A0 is largest and A10 smallest. Generally, most businesses create documents ranging between A3 and A6 in size.

A3 (poster size): 29.7 by 42 cm
A4 (standard paper size): 21 by 29.7 cm
(International print paper size, similar to US Letter in size)
A5 (half paper size): 14.8 by 21 cm
A6 (Card size): 10.5 by 14.8 cm

While conforming to these standards makes it easier to print actual paper documents, you can use custom sizes that fit your needs and create any paperless document.

Input your custom dimension, and Inkit Render generates the appropriate PDF.