Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?

#21

Post by oulipo » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

Have you tried https://typst.app/?

Re: Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?

#22

Post by jppope » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

typora.io is what I use

Re: Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?

#23

Post by w4rh4wk5 » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:18 PM UTC

It has been a while, but back them i cobbled together a pipeline using Pandoc [1]. Back then, I wrote my master thesis with this [2]. While the primary output is HTML, PDF is supported as well.

[1]: https://github.com/w4rh4wk/dogx

[2]: https://github.com/W4RH4WK/M.Sc.-Thesis/blob/master/output/t...

Re: Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?

#24

Post by countrymile » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

Quarto is worth looking at. Might not be able to solve you regex issue though.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?

#25

Post by gloxkiqcza » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:19 PM UTC

geor9e wrote: post #9

I think you're overcomplicating it. I assume you created this markdown file and I assume you have a preview render that shows it the way you like it to be shown. So just hit the print button, and in the print dialog select save as PDF.

I’m not OP but e.g. VS Code markdown preview (which works great) doesn’t offer printing.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?

#26

Post by amgreg » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

If you’re on a Mac or iOS you could try creating a Shortcut where you input Markdown, convert to rich text, then output as a PDF. I use Shortcuts regularly. It’s pretty easy to set up. I haven’t tried it on something as larger as 500 pages, though. YMMV

Re: Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?

#27

Post by westurner » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:30 PM UTC

MyST-MD transforms to LaTeX or HTML, which are transformable to (PostScript and then) PDF. With LaTeX it's possible to exactly typeset.

Sphinx and jupyter-book support MyST Markdown.

PDF Tables of Contents with links to headings or page numbers are possible with MyST and RestructuredText.

Re: Ask HN: Where are the good Markdown to PDF tools (that meet these requirements)?

#28

Post by Ancapistani » Sun, Mar 02, 2025, 6:42 PM UTC

I’ve not used it for very large documents, but I’ve been very happy with the fidelity of conversion using Marked 2 (https://marked2app.com)

I believe it’s Mac only. I use it sometimes when I’m creating PDFs from my personal documentation to share more publicly, which I keep in Markdown and deploy on Gitlab Pages as a static site.