How to convert Markdown + CSS -> PDF?
I'm trying to convert a Markdown file into a PDF. I'm looking for only two things:
- A way to easily change the style of the pdf (for example with a CSS file)
- A syntax highlighter for code blocks
What tools can I use for that? I tried Pandoc, but it uses Latex for the formatting which is not easy to use.
Answer
Pandoc can convert your Markdown to HTML, but the styling/layout is a different topic. If you want to produce a PDF but use CSS for styling, you need something that can interpret CSS. That is either use a browser and print to PDF, pay for Prince or try wkhtmltopdf (see also print-css.rocks). Btw, pandoc can also use wkhtmltopdf now:
pandoc -t html --css mystyles.css input.md -o output.pdf
But I suspect if you want a beautifully-typeset PDF for free you'll have to learn LaTeX or ConTeXt which is a modern and more self-contained replacement for LaTeX, both can be used with pandoc. See creating a PDF with pandoc.
You can also give PanWriter a try: a markdown editor I built, where you can inject CSS and export the PDF from the paginated preview.