Beautiful PDF

Design and visually review print-ready PDFs

Turn structured content into a designed document, then inspect the rendered pages before delivery.

Workflow

1. Choose the document pattern in references/doc-types.md.

2. Draft in Markdown for linear documents or HTML for custom layouts.

3. Start from assets/default.css and select a restrained palette from references/style-guide.md.

4. Render:

   bash

   pandoc input.md --standalone --pdf-engine=weasyprint --css=assets/default.css -o output.pdf
   # Or, for hand-authored HTML:
   weasyprint input.html output.pdf
   

5. Rasterize every page and inspect it:

   bash

   python3 scripts/pdf-to-png.py output.pdf /tmp/pdf-qa --dpi 200
   

6. Fix overflow, weak hierarchy, widows/orphans, awkward breaks, clipped tables, low contrast, and inconsistent spacing. Render again until the pages are intentional.

Guardrails

• Do not pass Pandoc --metadata title when Markdown already contains an H1; it duplicates the title.
• Keep source HTML static. WeasyPrint does not execute JavaScript.
• Use absolute or file:// paths for local images and fonts.
• Preserve the original source alongside the PDF so later edits remain possible.
• Treat page inspection as part of completion, not an optional polish pass.
• Never silently install dependencies. If PyMuPDF, Pandoc, or WeasyPrint is missing, report the exact requirement.

Output

Use a user-approved destination. When no convention exists, prefer:

text

outputs/YYYY-MM-DD-descriptor.pdf

Before delivery, report the final page count, output path, and the visual issues checked.