page size, font size, rescaling

I'm not entirely clear what you're doing. And I probably can't answer your question about dpi.

To keep the text from being scaled with the rest of the image, just don't select the text. Only select the parts that you want to be scaled.

If you want to use Ctrl A, then you can hold the Shift key, and click on the text which deselects it. Then scale everything else. However, when you do this, you may need to move the text afterwards, if the text isn't precisely in the center of everything else, before you start to scale.

Or another idea might be to go ahead and scale everything. Then select the text, and either switch to the Selection tool, and scale with the arrows; or keep with the Text tool, and change the size on the Text control bar.

You could look in the XML Editor yourself, to be sure. But I don't think the 14 pt is kept in the SVG/XML. Once you scale it, Inkscape calculates its new size. In my experience, unless I'm lucky, when I scale the text, it ends up with a decimal point in the size. Rarely can I scale by hand and have and even pt size. But I'm pretty sure the SVG/XML keeps the current, scaled size.

For the dpi issue, do you mean that you exported a PNG at something besides 90 dpi, and then saved the PNG as PDF? If that's what you did, I don't know why it went back to the same size as PDF. After you exported to PNG, did you confirm the PNG was the right size? I wonder if you saved the SVG as PDF, by mistake?

Thanks for your response. I'll start by answering the questions in the last paragraph.

I did not export to PNG. I used File | save as and selected PDF. It was deliberate; why do you say that's a mistake? My goal was to produce PDF.

The 14pt is being kept in the XML; it was generated by dot/graphviz. However, inkscape says it is 17.5 pt type. The XML has no dpi info (at least it has neither the string "dpi" nor the string "resolution"). 17.5 = 14 * 90/72, so Inkscape seems to have assumed the input was 72dpi and scaled up for 90dpi (inkscape default for export). Since the font size in points is resolution independent, adjusting it for resolution seems odd.

To provide more context, dot produced and svg file that was a graph with nodes containing text and arrows between them. Since there were a lot of nodes and several text elements per node, selecting just the text, or just not the text, would take awhile to do manually, and if I resized the non-text only the text would no longer be in position (as you note).

Looking more closely, it appears the font sizes are in pixels, so the translation from 14pt to 17.5 px is proper and understandable, given the slightly odd decision to use pixels as the unit.

"I did not export to PNG. I used File | save as and selected PDF. It was deliberate; why do you say that's a mistake? My goal was to produce PDF."

I misunderstood what you said.

Unfortunately, as I noted before, I probably won't be much help with the dpi issue. I have no experience with changing the dpi, when saving as PDF. However, I notice just above the "Resolution for rasterization (dpi)" setting, in the Save As PDF dialog, is "Rasterize filter effects". Maybe the dpi setting refers to that, rather than the whole image?? That's just a guess. (PDF files can hold both vector and raster content.)

On the issue of having too many text objects to select or not select, I wonder if the so-called rubberband selection technique might make it easier. Since you have to drag the selection box around entire objects to select them, I've used that in certain situation, to make tricky selections.

Not being able to see your image, I have no idea if that will help. But just in case. Also, if the text is on top of other objects, and it's hard to know where to start/end the drag from outside the image border, remember you can hold Shift and avoid selecting something unintentionally, in the initial click to start the click-drag.

If you decide to try to select the text objects, be sure, after you finally get them selected, to either group, or move to another layer. That will make subsequent selections MUCH easier. Also, you might be able to use grouping, to help in a massive selection process. For example, group every 10 or 20 objects. Then if something happens, like your finger slips off the Shift key, or you select the wrong thing, or whatever, you won't lose the whole selection.

Beyond that, idk. If no one else answers after awhile, I would suggest posting at InkscapeForum.com. You'll get a faster response, and also be able to share the file. Sometimes it's really hard to give good suggestions, without being able to see a file. (I also have a forum for Inkscape, but since I already can't help you much, maybe they can :-) )

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.