[HN Gopher] Diving deeper into custom PDF and ePub generation
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       Diving deeper into custom PDF and ePub generation
        
       Author : ingve
       Score  : 41 points
       Date   : 2022-09-19 15:13 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (nibblestew.blogspot.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (nibblestew.blogspot.com)
        
       | difflens wrote:
       | Not related to this article per se, but I wonder if there is a
       | tool (or a market) for "validating" pdfs. Specifically I'm
       | thinking of a tool that validates that different fields in a pdf
       | have been filled. Sort of like "required" fields in a document
       | that need to be filled for back office processing. I'm thinking
       | about a recent experience where I had to send a pdf back and
       | forth via email a couple times because some fields were missed
       | each time. Perhaps an automated system would've caught this and
       | saved everyone some time.
       | 
       | Might even make for a nice weekend project
        
       | Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
       | I think there may be a market for a typesetting language that
       | interacts directly with PostScript instead of LaTex + dozens of
       | packages -> PDF or HTML + CSS + forcing pagination -> PDF. It
       | would basically be a high level language that is compiled to
       | PostScript and perhaps word, DVI and even HTML. I say there is a
       | market for it because I imagine that there are many companies
       | using a collection of hacked together scripts perhaps involving
       | word-mailmerge to make their invoices and letters. Unless there
       | is an industry standard I'm not aware of. LaTex I feel is "just
       | enough" for whitepapers but breaks for almost anything past that.
       | Document generation for example is impossible without using a
       | templating engine. There's nothing wrong with that specificaly
       | but it's limited in many ways that add up to it being an annoying
       | experience. I've also used HTML/CSS -> PDF but there is no
       | pagination by default. We need a real typesetting language.
        
         | mistrial9 wrote:
         | great developers want to re-make tools + tools never pay well
         | in the market => zealots and dreamers get glued to tedious
         | toolchain managers for a short time, then retreat.. repeat
         | 
         | markets seek to reward initiative, but do reward great
         | initiative, greatly? no, so the cycle will always repeat
         | 
         | source: I have a 3-ring binder from Adobe Systems that I picked
         | up from their Embarcadero building, pre-Red Book.
        
           | Vt71fcAqt7 wrote:
           | >source: I have a 3-ring binder from Adobe Systems that I
           | picked up from their Embarcadero building, pre-Red Book.
           | 
           | could you expound on what this means and how it functions as
           | a source?
        
       | chrisco255 wrote:
       | One quote from the article that I disagree with:
       | 
       | "This is "Markdown-like" but specifically not Markdown because
       | novel typesetting has requirements that can't easily be retrofit
       | in Markdown."
       | 
       | Any HTML can be included with Markdown. Why not use HTML for
       | specific typesetting use cases?
        
         | samatman wrote:
         | This is a lot like feeding JSON to a YAML parser. Barring the
         | known edges, it works, but if that's normal, why the YAML
         | parser?
         | 
         | Inlining a bit of HTML into Markdown is a good way to inject
         | some forms Markdown doesn't support, but there's some tipping
         | point where the Markdown is just in the way.
        
       | tacker2000 wrote:
       | I used a tool called AsciiDoctor (http://www.asciidoctor.org),
       | which uses a markup called AsciiDoc. Its not Markdown, but
       | similar. It works quite well, but is still missing some features
       | like forced page breaks, the last time i used it about a year
       | ago.
       | 
       | Edit: corrected tld
        
         | jtreminio wrote:
         | The correct TLD for AsciiDoctor is .org, not .com :
         | https://asciidoctor.org/
        
       | Klasiaster wrote:
       | I can really recommend weasyprint for (markdown-)html-pdf
       | generation: https://github.com/Kozea/WeasyPrint
       | 
       | Things like columns, footers/headers, hyphenation are all easily
       | done with modern CSS.
        
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       (page generated 2022-09-20 23:02 UTC)