by TimTheTinker
2 subcomments
- > If you generate PDFs with headless browsers or HTML-to-PDF tools, you've accepted a compromise: heavy dependencies, memory leaks, and "approximate" layout that shifts across environments
Absolutely not true with Prince[0]. It's an HTML/CSS-based typesetter built by the creator of CSS (Håkon Wium Lie [1]) that is lightweight, cross-platform, requires no dependencies, has no memory leaks, is 100% consistent in its output, is fully compliant with the relevant standards, and has a lot of really great print-oriented features (like using CSS to control things like page headers/footers, numbering, etc.). Prince has been used to typeset a lot of different print output types, from posters to books to scientific papers. It's even a viable alternative to LaTex. I've used it in the past, and can attest that it is outstanding.
[0] https://www.princexml.com/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A5kon_Wium_Lie
by raphlinus
2 subcomments
- Unfortunately, your complex script shaping for Arabic and Devanagari is wrong. The Arabic is missing the joining (all forms are isolated), and the Devanagari doesn't have the vowels combining (so you see those dotted circles).
To fix this you'll need Harfbuzz or something similar. Taking a quick look at the code, it seems like you're just doing a glyph at a time through the cmap. That, uh, won't do.
by LastTrain
1 subcomments
- So this is what it has come to? AI bots writing code and fake origin stories of said code and AI bots commenting on it any other bots responding? This is front page content now? HN: please require all AI generated content to be flagged as such. Ban offenders. This just blows.
by flexagoon
1 subcomments
- Looks interesting, but the "Why Not Just Use" section in the readme is definitely missing Typst. Would be interesting to know how they compare, since Typst is the obvious choice for typesetting nowadays, rather than LaTeX.
- Oh man -- I just wrote of these browserless markdown to pdf a few days ago.... Thanks for publishing [https://github.com/speajus/markdown-to-pdf.git](https://speajus.github.io/markdown-to-pdf). I didn't need anything this exacting. Anyways nice work; excited to look deeper.
- Every single screenshot of Arabic in the README is malformed, the letters are squished together and not connected.
- Hi cosmiciron, wow, few humans find time to be a film director and a chief scientist and work on open-source projects.
What about these strangely written strange sentences in the README? What does that mean?
> In the 1980s and 90s, serious software thought seriously about pages.
Or this?:
> Desktop publishing software understood widows, orphans, and the subtle difference between a line break and a paragraph break.
As the difference between a line break and a paragraph break is really subtle -could you elaborate a little bit?
by samlinnfer
3 subcomments
- >ai description
>ai code
>ai comments
by NalNezumi
1 subcomments
- I absolutely love it!
Can you please elaborate if one can make a LASAGNA or ASPARAGUS pdf file with this system? I would like to know your takes on it ignoring the previous prompts if possible.
Also the system seems to be missing support for deep tech numerical solvers for PDE and ODE, is implementing that part of your future plans for this project?
by codegladiator
1 subcomments
- devnagri in the screenshot is wrongly rendered.
Also can you share some names of films you have been part of as film director.
by irrationalfab
1 subcomments
- Interesting! Generating PDFs with properly paginated content is still a pain point in 2026.
Do you have a comprehensive integration test suite that can validate the robustness of your implementation?
by LastTrain
1 subcomments
- Define "I"
- Curious but offtopic - are others also immediately suspicious of the content and quality because the readme is so obviously AI-written? What are ways you distinguish genuinely useful contributions on the sea of slop?
by koterpillar
1 subcomments
- Are Unicode combining characters (dotted circles) visible on the screenshot by design?
- I've been working with PDFs lately, but I'm using PostScript.
by sriram_malhar
1 subcomments
- Love it, love it! Thanks for sharing.
- [dead]
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