emacs-pdf

Emacs library to print buffer to PDF file.
Log | Files | Refs | README

commit 827cef72af244289f68855b8245d9c5e4a42a31e
parent 700f569cd51f43daeba2953032ba7d32bc88e0ce
Author: Tomas Hlavaty <tom@logand.com>
Date:   Mon,  1 Jun 2020 08:13:55 +0200

add README

Diffstat:
AREADME | 78++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
1 file changed, 78 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)

diff --git a/README b/README @@ -0,0 +1,78 @@ +emacs-pdf.el -- Emacs library to print buffer to PDF file. + +* Example configuration + + (require 'pdf) + +* Example usage + + M-x pdf-buffer + +or + + M-x pdf-region + +in example.txt will create example.txt.pdf file. + +Some variables can be customized in pdf and ps groups. + +* Why? + +PDF have (unfortunatelly) become the standard format for exchanging +documents. + +Emacs does not have a simple way of creating PDF documents yet. + +There are many ways to create PDF documents in Emacs currently but all +of them require installation of huge external dependencies. + +Printing from Emacs also pretty much depends on unsafe, unportable and +obsolete PostScript. + +* What + +emacs-pdf.el solves the above issues by creating PDF documents +directly in Emacs without any external dependencies. + +The code is rather short but already takes it quite close towards the +goal. Pages are automatically broken and counted, page headers and +footers are supported and a few things like font type or size can be +customized. + +* TODO + +unicode support: The biggest missing piece is support for non-ASCII +characters. Emacs has already the best support for international +input and output of any software I know. It would be nice to extend +that also to PDF generation. I myself use several input methods and +characters not supported by PDF out of the box. This is complex but +essential. + +per file customizations: Should this be stored in a separate file +(instead of in-file syntax)? I would really like to customize page +headers and footers and font type and size per file. + +justification: It would be nice to justify paragraphs. This would +require understanding of font metrics and will bring quite a lot of +complexity. + +box justification: Justify the whole box right but justify the text +inside the box left. Does it need special syntax or would a +convention be enough? + +ruler: It would be nice to suport tab-stop-list or something like +that. + +multiple columns: It would be nice to output text in more columns. It +should be possible to control where exactly to turn it on and off so +maybe we need some kind of syntax for this? If there is syntax for +this kind of stuff, what about syntax for justification and ruler? + +colors: It would be nice to support color output. What would be a +good way to have Emacs in reverse video (screen with black background) +but still support output to white paper without fiddling with faces +too much? + +tables, pictures etc: Is there a reasonable subset for rich documents +without inventing new document format and reinventing TeX, roff etc? +Or just use abw or odt files directly?