Does PDF file scale the line width?

Question

I'm drawing using Inkscape on Linux. At the end I'll save the file as PDF and the figure will be used in many kinds of reports, so I'll insert the PDF file (in LaTeX) with different dimensions.

Suppose that the original draw is 10cm x 10cm (the paper size on PDF info).

If I had drawn a curve with line width 2pt and after saving as PDF and resizing the PDF file, the line width will be scaled accordingly or could I have a small shape with a very thick stroke?

On Inkscape, during the resizing we can choose tho affect the widths or not.

But what about the final PDF file?

Answer 1

Theoretically, this should depend on the method by which you scale the PDF. PDF files generated from Inkscape do store the stroke width of paths (as is evident by exporting to PDF and then re-importing into Inkscape), so the choice will be up to the application scaling the PDF to determine exactly how to perform the scaling. That being said, I would guess that most applications capable of scaling PDF files would indeed scale the stroke of the paths proportionally so that the graphic remains unaltered.

If you wish to make certain that your resulting graphic will never be mangled due to such scaling, I recommend converting all your strokes to areas by selecting the objects, choosing "Path" > "Object to path", and then "Path" > "Stroke to path". Note that this is a destructive operation though so make sure to save a copy of your graphic before doing it.