iText - Page Setup

First things first. There are 72 points to 1 inch. This means that a document with a page size of 216pt x 720pt is actually 3 inches wide and 10 inches in height.

The lower-left corner of the page is used as the origin of the coordinate system when manipulating margins, rectangles etc.

Page sizes for documents can be defined using the Rectangle class.

Rectangle pagesize = new Rectangle(216f, 720f);

Document document = new Document(pagesize);

When using a Rectangle for page size, it allows the background color of the pages to be specified.

pagesize.setBackgroundColor(new BaseColor(0x64, 0x95, 0xed); //using rectangle from before

Be careful here. The signature for setBackgroundColor expects a BaseColor, from com.itextpdf.text.BaseColor not a Color from java.awt.Color.

Page sizes can also be set by specifying one of the static constants using the PageSize class.

Document document = new Document(PageSize.LETTER);

In addition, the pagesize object can be used to make the pages landscape.

PageSize.Letter.rotate(); or

Document document = new Document(pagesize.rotate()); //using the rectangle from before

PageSize can also be used to define the margins of the page. The margins are left, right, top and bottom respectively in the signature.

PageSize.A5, 36, 72, 108, 180) // 36 left, 72 right, 108 top, 180 bottom

Margin mirroring can be called on the document to mirror the margins on odd and even pages.

Document document = new Document(PageSize.A5, 36, 72, 108, 180) ;

document.setMarginMirroring(true);

In-depth iText information can be found in Bruno Lowagie's excellent book iText In Action http://www.manning.com/lowagie2/