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Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

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Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#91

Post by stuaxo »

grounder wrote: post #39
pabs3 wrote: post #7

Just print to PDF in a browser, or automate that using a browser automation tool. For a non-browser-based open source solution, WeasyPrint. https://weasyprint.org/ For a proprietary solution, try Prince XML: https://www.princexml.com/

WeasyPrint works really well for me. It can support all of the languages and fonts I need. I run it on AWS Lambda and in Docker as a web service. I previously used WKHTMLTOPDF, but it hasn't been supported for years and doesn't support the latest CSS, etc. It does support JS if you need it, but I'd probably look at headless Chromium or another solution for JS if needed. Edit: Previous post with some good discussion:…

This is my experience and recommendation too.

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#92

Post by rcarmo »

pabs3 wrote: post #7

Just print to PDF in a browser, or automate that using a browser automation tool. For a non-browser-based open source solution, WeasyPrint. https://weasyprint.org/ For a proprietary solution, try Prince XML: https://www.princexml.com/

These two are the only right answers if you want a reliable, reproducible, relatively low resource experience. Running a browser engine has always been hard to maintain in the long run for me.

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#93

Post by Koffiepoeder »

If you want lots of differently styled templates, template management and editing/styling capabilites in word or excel (ie. you can just ask your customer/employer/.. to make an example document), I can really recommend Carbone [0]. I've been a happy customer for a few years now. Extra advantage is also that it also offers you excel outout generation as well, which is also often a requirement in applications. They have a SaaS offering as well if you'd like. They are open source though, so you can easily run a docker container!

[0]: https://carbone.io/

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#94

Post by drabbiticus »

bencornia wrote: post #53
haft wrote: post #24

A reverse of this question; what is the best way to convert pdf to html? We are required by accessibility law to make our PDFs WCAG compliant however it would be easier to convert these to HTML.

I have been using pdf2htmlex with some success. https://github.com/pdf2htmlEX/pdf2htmlEX

This is really cool, so thanks for sharing. Since the motivating goal for the question you are answering is WCAG compliance, is the output of pdf2htmlex meaningfully more WCAG compliant?

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#95

Post by exabrial »

supersaw wrote: post #66
exabrial wrote: post #15

openhtmltopdf is what we're using. Some outdated versions.

Been using this as well. It's worth noting that while the original project appears to have been abandoned, it has since been forked and is currently maintained here: https://github.com/openhtmltopdf/openhtmltopdf

thanks, didnt know that!

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#96

Post by ratelimitsteve »

nine_k wrote: post #71
crazygringo wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, please do? I use PDF's so I can send them to my iPad to read offline, highlight them, annotate them, and then send them back to my filesystem with highlights and annotations intact. I sure can't do that with any "nice formats" like HTML or TXT or EPUB or MOBI.

PDF is literally digital paper. HTML has logical structure, it can adapt to different displays, etc. Sometimes you want one, sometimes, the other.

>Sometimes you want one, sometimes, the other.

This is the part that the top commenter missed. Instead they decided that one format is "nice" and the other, by implication, isn't. I find PDFs a lot easier to keep organized en masse, I like that I can use them on any of my devices and it's easy for me to use them when I'm doing in-depth reading such as an ebook. Doubly so because my ereader also does text to speech and syncs across devices so I can read on my tablet while I'm on the exercise bike and then switch to listening to the same book on my phone with minimal seams and without losing my place. It is, in a word, nice.

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#97

Post by jlokier »

mmphosis wrote: post #54
Snawoot wrote: post #13

chrome --headless --disable-gpu --print-to-pdf https://example.com

Can Firefox do this? with an elaborate script that relies on xdotool

Last time I explored this, Firefox rendered thin lines in subtly bordered tables as thick lines, so I had to use Chromium. But back then Chrome did worse at pagination than Firefox.

So I used Firefox for multi-page documents and Chromium for single-page invoices.

I spent a lot of time with different versions of both browsers, and numerous quirks made a very unpleasant experience.

Eventually I settled on Chromium (Ungoogled), which I use nowadays for invoices.

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#98

Post by ratelimitsteve »

mr_mitm wrote: post #87
crazygringo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PDF is designed for annotations in the file format. You annotate in one editor, you can change the annotations in another. You can always distinguish between original content and annotations. I see no indication that Okular stores highlights or annotations in a separate file, that would be bizarre. There is no mechanism for annotations in HTML or the other formats I listed. An editor would just be editing the origina…

It definitely used to be bizarre then: https://superuser.com/questions/333378/where-does-okular-sto...

turns out the default for okular is to save to an external file but there's a setting that can be changed to use the format correctly and store annotations within the file, which is universally compatible with other PDF readers. You can't really blame the format for someone using it wrong on purpose, and if you can then I'll just abuse HTML and the fact that I use it wrong will be evidence that it is, in itself, wrong

Re: Ask HN: What is nowadays (opensource) way of converting HTML to PDF?

#100

Post by freedomben »

mr_mitm wrote: post #63
freedomben wrote: post #56

I'd love to go the other way: convert a PDF into a self contained HTML page that renders properly in a browser. It's been way harder than I thought it would. Any advice?

You could embed it as a base64 blob, embed PDF.js (which is included by browsers anyway, I think) and use that to render it in the HTML. But I realize you probably meant a static HTML without JavaScript.

Yes ideally, but even this is helpful, thank you!
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