printr

Print Markdown, Word and plain-text files as nicely styled PDFs or Word documents — 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. Word documents (.docx) are converted through mammoth, which maps Word's styles onto the same clean typography. 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.

Pass --to docx and the same inputs are written as Word documents instead, with the syntax highlighting carried over as real character formatting. Output is always self-contained: images referenced by a document are embedded, so nothing is fetched when the file is opened later.

Features

• 📄 GitHub-flavored Markdown styling with print-tuned page breaks
• 🖨️ High-fidelity PDF output through headless Chrome
• 📝 Word .docx output with syntax highlighting preserved (--to docx)
• 📥 Word .docx input: headings, lists, tables, images and links
• 🎨 Syntax highlighting for code blocks via highlight.js
• 🧜 Mermaid diagrams, both in ```mermaid blocks and as standalone .mmd files
• 📁 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

# Word documents work the same way
printr proposal.docx

# Write a Word document instead of a PDF
printr report.md --to docx

# …or just name the output; the extension decides
printr report.md -o ~/Desktop/report.docx

# Batch convert a folder of notes into Word documents
printr "docs/**/*.md" --to docx -d out/

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

# Mix formats in one run
printr README.md proposal.docx notes.txt -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

# A standalone Mermaid file becomes a one-diagram document
printr architecture.mmd

# Print Mermaid blocks as source instead of rendering them
printr design-doc.md --no-mermaid

# 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 | | --to <format> | Output format: pdf or docx | from -o, else pdf | | -l, --lang <lang> | Force the syntax-highlight language for source files, e.g. python, rust | by extension | | --no-mermaid | Skip diagram rendering; Mermaid blocks print as highlighted source | off | | --mermaid-version | Mermaid major version to fetch | 11 | | -w, --watch | Re-render whenever an input file changes | off | | -h, --help | Show help | |

Supported inputs

• Markdown: .md, .markdown, .mdown, .mkd
• Mermaid: .mmd, .mermaid — rendered as a single diagram
• Word: .docx
• 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.

Output formats

| --to | Written with | Notes | | --------------- | ------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | | pdf (default) | Headless Chrome | Full CSS fidelity, print-tuned page breaks | | docx | @turbodocx/html-to-docx | Editable Word document; no Chrome needed, so it is noticeably faster |

--format and --margin apply to both: paper size and margins are translated into the Word document's own page setup.

Every input except .docx itself can be written as a Word document — converting a .docx to a .docx is refused rather than silently copied.

Word output

Markdown structure maps onto real Word constructs: headings, bullet and numbered lists, tables, blockquotes, links and images. Code keeps its syntax highlighting — highlight.js tokens become genuine character formatting (colour and monospace font), so a highlighted source file stays highlighted and stays editable in Word. Indentation and line breaks inside code are preserved exactly.

Because Word has no stylesheet, styling is applied run by run rather than by CSS, so the result is close to the PDF but not identical — page-break tuning in particular is left to Word.

Mermaid diagrams

Fenced ```mermaid blocks in Markdown are rendered as diagrams, and a standalone .mmd / .mermaid file is treated as one diagram filling the page:

printr architecture.mmd
printr design-doc.md --to docx

In a PDF the diagram is embedded as vector SVG, so it stays sharp at any zoom. Word has no SVG support worth relying on, so the --to docx path rasterizes each diagram to a high-DPI PNG scaled to the printable column width.

Rendering happens in the same headless Chrome instance that prints the PDF, so there is no extra dependency — but Mermaid's browser bundle (~3.4 MB) is downloaded from jsDelivr the first time a diagram is actually rendered, then cached under the OS cache directory and reused. To work entirely offline, point PRINTR_MERMAID_PATH at a local copy of mermaid.min.js; it is then used verbatim and the network is never touched.

A diagram that fails to parse does not fail the document: printr logs the error and falls back to printing that block's source, syntax-highlighted and labelled with the parser message, so the rest of the file still renders. Pass --no-mermaid to skip diagram rendering entirely and print every block as source.

Because Word output only needs Chrome for diagrams, a .docx conversion with no Mermaid blocks in it still never launches a browser.

Word input

.docx files are converted by mapping Word's styles onto semantic HTML — headings, lists, tables, blockquotes, links, footnotes and embedded images — which is then printed with printr's own typography. That means the output is a clean, consistently styled document rather than a pixel-for-pixel facsimile of Word: bespoke fonts, colours, text boxes and exact page layout are not carried over. Built-in styles (Title, Subtitle, Quote, Intense Quote, Heading 1–6) are recognised, including on localized Word installs.

Legacy .doc files are a different, binary format and are not supported — re-save them as .docx first.

Examples

Ready-to-try samples live in examples/:

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

Note that sample.md and sample.docx would both produce sample.pdf, so printr refuses to convert them in the same run rather than overwriting one with the other.

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