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Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python

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Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python

#1

Post by sammycage »

Hi everyone, I built PlutoPrint because I needed a simple way to generate beautiful PDFs and images directly from HTML with Python. Most of the tools I tried felt heavy, tricky to set up, or produced results that didn’t look great, so I wanted something lightweight, modern, and fast. PlutoPrint is built on top of PlutoBook’s rendering engine, which is designed for paged media, and then wrapped with a Python API that makes it easy to turn HTML or XML into crisp PDFs and PNGs. I’ve used it for things like invoices, reports, tickets, and even snapshots, and it can also integrate with Matplotlib to render charts directly into documents.

I’d be glad to hear what you think. If you’ve ever had to wrestle with generating PDFs or images from HTML, I hope this feels like a smoother option. Feedback, ideas, or even just impressions are all very welcome, and I’d love to learn how PlutoPrint could be more useful for you.

Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python
github.com

Re: Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python

#3

Post by sammycage »

eterps wrote: post #2

How does it differ from https://weasyprint.org ?

WeasyPrint is great, but PlutoPrint takes a different angle: the engine is all C++, so it’s faster and lighter on memory. It can render directly to PNG as well as PDF, and has stronger SVG support.

Re: Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python

#5

Post by socalgal2 »

Maybe this isn't the same but it's a relatively few lines of code to use puppeteer to use an actual browser to render pages to PDFs/PNGs. Advantages would be everything is supported. Every new feature in CSS, HTML, SVG, Canvas2D, WebGL, WebGPU, etc... (though for WebGL/WebGPU you might need to pass in some flags to use llvmpipe/mesa/warp etc...

Asking your favorite LLM will give you da codez

PS: I'm not trying to discount this tool. I'm only pointing out an alternative that might be useful

Re: Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python

#6

Post by sammycage »

socalgal2 wrote: post #5

Maybe this isn't the same but it's a relatively few lines of code to use puppeteer to use an actual browser to render pages to PDFs/PNGs. Advantages would be everything is supported. Every new feature in CSS, HTML, SVG, Canvas2D, WebGL, WebGPU, etc... (though for WebGL/WebGPU you might need to pass in some flags to use llvmpipe/mesa/warp etc... Asking your favorite LLM will give you da codez PS: I'm not trying to dis…

That’s a good point. Using Puppeteer or a headless browser gives you essentially full web platform support. The tradeoff is that it comes with a heavier runtime and more moving parts (Chromium, Node, etc.). PlutoPrint aims to be much lighter: no browser dependency, just a compact C++ engine with a Python wrapper. It does not cover the entire browser feature set but it is fast, portable, and easy to drop into projects without the overhead of a full browser.

Re: Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python

#7

Post by slig »

socalgal2 wrote: post #5

Maybe this isn't the same but it's a relatively few lines of code to use puppeteer to use an actual browser to render pages to PDFs/PNGs. Advantages would be everything is supported. Every new feature in CSS, HTML, SVG, Canvas2D, WebGL, WebGPU, etc... (though for WebGL/WebGPU you might need to pass in some flags to use llvmpipe/mesa/warp etc... Asking your favorite LLM will give you da codez PS: I'm not trying to dis…

Exactly what I was wondering. I use puppeteer to render these [1] printable puzzles pages, and I use SVG, JavaScript to dynamically resize the text to fit a page, etc. Just works.

[1]: https://ahapdf.nyc3.cdn.digitaloceanspaces.com/samplers/logi... (PDF)

Re: Show HN: PlutoPrint – Generate PDFs and PNGs from HTML with Python

#10

Post by nicoburns »

sammycage wrote: post #6
socalgal2 wrote: post #5

Maybe this isn't the same but it's a relatively few lines of code to use puppeteer to use an actual browser to render pages to PDFs/PNGs. Advantages would be everything is supported. Every new feature in CSS, HTML, SVG, Canvas2D, WebGL, WebGPU, etc... (though for WebGL/WebGPU you might need to pass in some flags to use llvmpipe/mesa/warp etc... Asking your favorite LLM will give you da codez PS: I'm not trying to dis…

That’s a good point. Using Puppeteer or a headless browser gives you essentially full web platform support. The tradeoff is that it comes with a heavier runtime and more moving parts (Chromium, Node, etc.). PlutoPrint aims to be much lighter: no browser dependency, just a compact C++ engine with a Python wrapper. It does not cover the entire browser feature set but it is fast, portable, and easy to drop into projects…

Interesting. I was not aware of PlutoBook!

We're doing a very similar thing (custom lightweight engine) over at https://github.com/DioxusLabs/blitz. We have more of a focus on UI, but there's definitely overlap (we support rendering to image, but don't have pagination/fragmentation implemented).

Have you run the WPT tests against your engine to test spec conformance?

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