@imprentajs/cli

Preview and build Imprenta documents. init, a live preview that shows the real PDF, a build that compiles documents exactly the way the preview does, and rules that say whether a document will survive being printed.

npm i -D @imprentajs/cli@alpha

npx imprenta init    # a project that renders straight away
npx imprenta dev     # open the preview
npx imprenta build   # every document to a file

init writes imprenta.config.ts, a documents/ folder with a working invoice, and a line in .gitignore. It never overwrites anything already there, so it is safe to run inside a project you already have.

The preview shows the real file

Not a rendering of the page — the PDF the engine actually produced, in the browser's own viewer, at the page's own proportions. Save a document and it re-renders. A spreadsheet cannot be shown that way because no browser opens one, so it is drawn as the grid its IR declares, and the pane says so rather than letting you believe you have seen the artefact.

The checks

Along the bottom is a panel that says whether the document is any good. Not whether it is handsome — whether it will survive being printed, which is a question you cannot answer by looking at a screen:

• type too small to read once it is ink
• margins outside what a printer can reach
• an image whose dpi is too low for the size it is placed at
• a colour that will not survive being printed grey
• a box wider than the page leaves room for

Each names what it found and where. imprenta build --strict fails a pipeline on any of them.

Status

Alpha. It works and is built test-first, but the API is not settled.

Apache-2.0 · github.com/imprenta-project/imprenta