Excalidraw canvas resizing

[ferdinandSoethe]

I so much appreciate a chance to escape from onNote thanks to all your effort.
This tool has soo much potential.

I have four questions regarding the excalidraw canvas:

1. Is there a way to set Canvas to be the default node type.
   Or would it be possible that node take the node type of the existing node above on creation?
   Or can I script a macro for that?

2. Is there a concept of page orientation when printing or exporting to PDF?

3. When printing a canvas to pdf every node seems to come out as about half a page vertically.
   But when I scroll down and add more content then will fit on the screen, contents seems to be shrunk to still fit that half page.
   Is there any way of stopping that behaviour and make trillium simply print in original size?

4. Can I set pen colors to other color values anywhere in the config.

Thanks for your input.

[dosubot[bot]]

Here's what I found:

1. There isn't a built-in way to make Canvas (Excalidraw) the default note type or have new notes inherit the type of the node above. However, you can script this behavior using Trilium's JavaScript scripting support—macros can automate note creation and set the type to "canvas" as needed. Scripts can even run automatically at startup if labeled with #run=frontendStartup (reference).

2. There is no user-facing option for page orientation (portrait/landscape) when printing or exporting Excalidraw canvases to PDF. The orientation is determined automatically by the canvas aspect ratio, and there are no settings to override this.

3. The scaling/shrinking you see when printing/exporting is due to Trilium always fitting the canvas to the page size. There is no option to print at the original size or to have content overflow onto multiple pages—everything is auto-scaled to fit within the page boundaries.

4. Pen colors (and stroke widths) in Excalidraw are not configurable via Trilium settings or config files. The integration uses Excalidraw's defaults, and any customization would require editing the Excalidraw source files directly, which is not officially supported and may be lost on updates (reference).

Let me know if you want pointers on scripting macros for note creation!

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[eliandoran]

Correction for (2), it's possible to switch to landscape mode: https://docs.triliumnotes.org/User%20Guide/User%20Guide/Basic%20Concepts%20and%20Features/Notes/Printing%20%26%20Exporting%20as%20PDF.html?h=ex#customizing-exporting-as-pdf