asciidoctor-web-pdf VS pdf

I've been test-driving the web pdf build tool for Asciidoc, asciidoctor-web-pdf[1], for a few years, which uses Paged.js as the template engine before CSS PMM has its go. I like it - I like it a LOT[2] - but Puppeteer-Chrome bugs breaks the build on the regular, or requires a rework of templates. So the web-pdf team started just releasing docker images that include a tested Chromium version (among other things), so as to keep that from being such a PITA. Which is fine. Howaaaayyyyyyyver . . that shines a spotlight on a problem with this workflow: the dependency on browser rendering kit.

[1] https://github.com/ggrossetie/asciidoctor-web-pdf

https://github.com/ggrossetie/asciidoctor-web-pdf

I encourage everyone to take a look at the documentation; this is the markup language I now use for all my personal and professional projects.

https://github.com/ggrossetie/asciidoctor-web-pdf (this is an implementation of Paged.js +CSS for the Asciidoc markup language, as an alternative to asciidoctor-pdf [Ruby/Prawn] or asciidoctor-fopub [Docbook-XSL].)

We're currently ironing out the bugs for parallel AsciiDoc > PDF generation for downloadable/offline versions anyway, so once that's sorted we can use those for review again. Much as I hated writing book-style PDF help docs, Acrobat's commenting/review features are actually pretty hard to replace.

Asciidoctor-web-pdf https://github.com/Mogztter/asciidoctor-web-pdf for web-based PDF with Paged.JS and CSS.

You'll get extremely consistent output from Asciidoc, but I'm not gonna lie: customizing format is going to be a learning curve no matter what compared to MSO. Tweaking either 1) asciidoctor-pdf's yaml themes, 2) docbook-xsl overrides, or 3) asciidoctor-web-pdf's CSS and JS (via Paged.js Paged Media Module implementation). And if your parent org uses Office365 up and down the chain, Word publishing can be automated . . fairly well. You'll still get some surprises, but it's Word. It's the lingua franca for a reason.

How you turn including files into deliverables, there's a few paths, but HTML is the "natural" output, and PDF can be made with a few different tools depending on what the output format is required to look like. DocBook-XSL is a more complex but configurable processor, while the Ruby-based asciidoctor-pdf is the easier, more Honda-like option. I'm pretty fond of the "web-pdf" method (https://github.com/Mogztter/asciidoctor-web-pdf) which uses Paged.js and CSS to style the print document, but your mileage may vary depending on your CSS comfort level.

Asciidoctor has a web PDF tool that just went alpha a little bit ago, uses the same stack as the OP's thingie.

https://github.com/Mogztter/asciidoctor-web-pdf

The content handoff goes like this: Asciidoc (using defined roles) generates HTML5 (Pagedjs polyfills page areas / pagination stuff), CSS styles stuff, and Puppeteer runs a headless Chromium for the pdf render. It's straight from CSS GCPM W3C spec, a flavor of CSS Paged Media, drafts that have been percolating since frickin' 2006 but have never seen browser implementation.

Just use asciidoc.

E.g.

- https://github.com/Mogztter/asciidoctor-web-pdf/tree/master/...

Hi dang, hope you are well. May I kindly ask why not? I spent two weeks writing the CSS / HTML / JavaScript, and did well documented code - in fact the output serves as both documentation of the code and also output from it (in my own stupid way, I was thinking I was following Donald Knuth’s Literate Programming Approach :D).

The repo (https://github.com/ashok-khanna/pdf) contains all the necessary code and is intended for others to reuse in their projects. Some of it isn’t straightforward, despite the guide looking easy - I had to figure out how CSS selectors and counters work for example, how MathJax interacted with Paged.Js.

I think the confusion comes from it being labeled as a “guide”, in fact it’s a full set of code to give the required functionality for high quality PDFs from HTML, using paged.js, the guide is just the self documentation as I figured I might as well use documentation for the sample output. Otherwise, I’d be genuinely curious on what constitutes Show HN vs normal posts?

I think the repo description and the way the output is confusing / unclear - the primary goal is very much meant to be a code base for people to reuse as I’ve noticed for many programmers, the design side can be a bit more elusive.

Separately, would it be possible to add beautiful back to the title - it’s not really about producing PDFs from html as browsers can already do that, and there are many other tools. The main aim is to have the functionality to produce very high quality typeset PDFs from HTML, which until now, I only felt PrinceXML did well and that’s a paid solution. Maybe we could say the title is “High quality PDFs from HTML using Paged.JS”? I know there has been a separate discussion on another thread on the overuse of the word beautiful in describing code - my view is that it has its place when it relates to output / UI.

Thanks for reading, and no issues otherwise (no need to reply).