Re: How can I generate a pdf from html with css?

I went that way but abandoned it. HTML is for a computer screen and --if well written-- will adapt to a variety of screenwidths, available fonts, font-sizes, OS-styles, browser peculiarities, ...

PDF on the other hand is really for printing things on paper and trying to do so exactly the same wherever it is printed.

HTML does not even have a concept of page-length, so how would you reliably split your HTML-"pages" into PDF-pages.

As I have to produce PDF-documents I now do so through Template Toolkit which writes me a LaTeX-file which I then feed to the pdfLaTeX program and it produces a nice PDF file.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

Comment on Re: How can I generate a pdf from html with css?

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Re^2: How can I generate a pdf from html with css? by LanX (Saint) on Feb 16, 2009 at 21:49 UTC
> HTML does not even have a concept of page-length, so how would you reliably split your HTML-"pages" into PDF-pages. Well CSS2 has separate "@media" styles which you can be used for printing. This has a concept of page-length!!! But AFAIK that's only supported by browsers and you have to fiddle around with preset browsersettings like pagemargins and pagenumber and so on... not really a reliable approach for server programming. Anyway I'm using this for printingš some private html-pages with firefox... Cheers Rolf UPDATE: Link (German): http://de.selfhtml.org/css/eigenschaften/printlayouts.htm (š) ...and of course I can also directly print to a PDF-file.	[reply]

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Re^2: How can I generate a pdf from html with css?
by LanX (Saint) on Feb 16, 2009 at 21:49 UTC

HTML does not even have a concept of page-length, so how would you reliably split your HTML-"pages" into PDF-pages.

Well CSS2 has separate "@media" styles which you can be used for printing. This has a concept of page-length!!!

But AFAIK that's only supported by browsers and you have to fiddle around with preset browsersettings like pagemargins and pagenumber and so on... not really a reliable approach for server programming.