@pablo_clueless/printr

printr

Print Markdown and plain-text files as nicely styled PDFs — straight from your terminal.

Markdown is rendered with GitHub-flavored styling and syntax-highlighted code blocks, then printed to PDF through headless Chrome (Puppeteer) for high fidelity. Source-code files (JavaScript, TypeScript, Rust, C, Python, Go, …) are syntax-highlighted and labelled with their filename, and any other plain-text file is rendered verbatim in a clean monospace layout. The generated HTML is fully self-contained, so no external resources are fetched while rendering.

Features

• GitHub-flavored Markdown styling with print-tuned page breaks
• Syntax highlighting for code blocks via highlight.js
• High-fidelity PDF output through headless Chrome
• Batch conversion with glob patterns, reusing one browser for speed
• --watch mode that re-renders on every save
• Plain-text files rendered verbatim in monospace

Install

Run it on demand without installing:

npx @pablo_clueless/printr report.md

Or install globally to get the printr command everywhere:

npm install -g @pablo_clueless/printr

Chromium download: on first install Puppeteer downloads a matching Chromium build (~150 MB). To reuse an existing Chrome instead, set PUPPETEER_EXECUTABLE_PATH to its path and install with PUPPETEER_SKIP_DOWNLOAD=1.

Requirements: Node.js >= 18.

Usage

# Single file → writes report.pdf beside the source
printr report.md

# Explicit output path
printr report.md -o ~/Desktop/report.pdf

# Batch convert with a glob, into one folder
printr "docs/**/*.md" -d out/

# Letter paper, tighter margins
printr notes.txt -f Letter -m 15mm

# Source files are syntax-highlighted by extension
printr src/main.rs -d out/

# Force a language for an unrecognized extension
printr Dockerfile --lang dockerfile

# Watch and re-render on every save (Ctrl+C to stop)
printr "docs/**/*.md" -d out/ --watch

Quote glob patterns ("docs/**/*.md") so your shell passes them to printr rather than expanding them itself.

Options

Flag	Description	Default
-o, --output <file>	Output PDF path (single input only)	beside source
-d, --out-dir <dir>	Folder for output PDFs	source folder
-f, --format <fmt>	Paper format: A4, Letter, Legal, …	A4
-m, --margin <size>	Page margin on all sides, e.g. 20mm, 1in	20mm
-t, --title <title>	Document title (single input only)	filename
-l, --lang <lang>	Force the syntax-highlight language for source files, e.g. python, rust	by extension
-w, --watch	Re-render whenever an input file changes	off
-h, --help	Show help

Supported inputs

• Markdown: .md, .markdown, .mdown, .mkd
• Source code (syntax-highlighted): .js, .mjs, .cjs, .jsx, .ts, .tsx, .rs, .c, .h, .py, .go
• Other code: files with an unrecognized extension are auto-detected by highlight.js and highlighted accordingly. Use --lang to force a specific language.
• Plain text: .txt, .text, and .log are always rendered verbatim in monospace.

Examples

A ready-to-try sample lives in examples/:

printr examples/sample.md -d examples/out/

Contributing

git clone https://github.com/pablo-clueless/printr.git
cd printr
npm install        # installs deps and downloads Chromium
npm run dev -- examples/sample.md   # run from source without building
npm run build      # compile TypeScript to dist/

Issues and pull requests are welcome. See CHANGELOG.md for the release history.

License

MIT