#1

Please implement important feature, export of notes into PDF. It is beautiful to have private wikipedia, but it is quite useless if I want to share some articles with somebody.

  1. The feature should be capable to print current file into PDF with current CSS settings
  2. Make PDF from combination of articles sharing a hashtag
  3. Select manually articles for printing and make single PDF with option to rearrange articles
  4. Use custom CSS as base for PDF or allow to select online community CSS themes, but use them only for generating PDF

How better to spread the Obsidian for mundane people then share with them Obsidian generate PDF. The first cover page should contain Obsidian logo and name of compilation.

114 Likes
Run the preview through pandoc and give users the ability to control options?
#2

That would be a very fancy thing! Fully agree! You could export Slides as PDF for example. +1 :+1:

7 Likes
#3

I think this is a pretty crucial feature to have.
I don’t think it needs the ability to rearrange pages and assemble some custom pdf, but it should be able to take a single page and give you a nicely formatted pdf version.
Please don’t brand the output with obsidian logos.

~

I needed a pdf version of my page and it’s been a real pain in the butt to generate. I thought this would be supported out of the box (at least being able to print the preview).

I had to install pandoc and the appropriate latex packages which was its own challenge.
And then it turns out that the embedded images markdown that pandoc expects is different that whatever obsidian uses, so I had to break my own version of the page temporarily in order to generate a pdf.

16 Likes
#4

+1 For Me.

I created an account in the forum just to post about this. Bear does this export to pdf service really well. I prefer Obsidian overall due to the local folders + linking capabilities but I think having this feature in Obisidian would be extremely helpful. I hope it comes soon because I can’t create work reports using Obsidian unless I have this feature.

6 Likes
#5

This feature would be pretty nice to have, especially since it should automatically embed the linked images.
I just used VSCode + extensions for this and while that’s possible I had to change all the links to images within the file which was a bit annoying.

#6

But it’s just a markdown file. Surely there are tons of programs and converters that will produce a pdf from a markdown file.

1 Like
#7

I’m rather impressed by how this Android app converts markdown to PDF. It may be worth looking at as a model to develop this feature for Obsidian.

#8

My suggestion is: learn how to use pandoc.

9 Likes
#9

I’m late to the party, but FYI I think the issue of ![[ ... ]] not being vanilla markdown is easily fixed by a pandoc filter. You have full access to the AST so you can do a regex replace to replace these with canonical markdown image links (probably want to check for image extensions, since ![[ ... ]] is also used for transclusion).

2 Likes
#10

I dont know if the application developers will keep this feature free or not.

not sure if the publish add-on feature includes the exporting to PDF option or not.

3 Likes
#11

Yep, all that may be possible, but it is not practical to have to use workarounds like that, esp. for non-techies. Export to PDF is something that many note-taking apps offer, and not offering it is a serious shortcoming.

Obsidian is still in beta, i.e development, so not offering it at this stage is understandable, but it is a feature that needs to be part of the core features.

8 Likes
#12

Here are a couple of screenshots as a suggestion for an export set-up that’s pretty complete. To export to PDF it uses WKHTMLTOPDF.

One can choose the notes to export in which target format and rendering style, and there are advance settings.

exp1
exp1850×980 164 KB
exp2
exp2850×980 152 KB

2 Likes
#13

does it have this easy window just in iOS? I’m on windows and only find the tool as inline cmmander?

#14

The forum informs me that your comment is directed at me. If it is, please explain

  • what you mean by “it”
  • why you mention iOS specifically
  • which tool you are referring to
  • what you mean by an “inline commander”?

If these questions seem a bit stupid, I apologise, but I cannot make sense of your question.

If your comment was not meant for me, sorry to have taken it that way but that is what the forum’s system tells me.

1 Like
#15

Hey sorry, was in bus and didn’t took the time i should’ve.

I think you use WKHTMLTOPDF to export your .md files to .pdf

I wanted to do the same, but after downloading WKHTMLTOPDF for windows it just seems to be once more (like pandoc) to be a tool I can’t use because I am not interested in line-coding.

So I asked, how do you get this goodlooking window? Is it only possible on iOS? Because from the design, I would say it is not windows. And in my WKHTMLTOPDF-Windows version, it seems, I have to use line-commands.

Sorry if this sounds a bit stupid, but I don’t have any knowledge in coding, even custom.css is another language for me. I’m a 100% user. I just saw this easy looking window with Notes to export and Output directory and dreamd of an easy solution for PDF-export without writing one line :slight_smile:

1 Like
#16

Ah OK, it’s clear now.
WKHTMLTOPDF is used by another markdown app I use, and I posted that screenshot as a suggestion for the devs if/when they get around to making an export feature.

The other app is cross-platform: Windows, Linux, macOS. I don’t use it on iOS, I don’t even have an iPhone.

BTW I am like you: a user and a non-coder. I only copy/paste CSS I am interested in, but have no idea how write CSS code :wink:

3 Likes
#17

I fully endorse this idea

#18

Yes +1

#19

Yes please … I recently kind of stumbled over the current generation of markdown tools/editors, eventually settled with Obsidian, started to work on some docs I’d like to share with non markdown users and completely missed that this is not as easy as expected. Given it’s somehow rendered for the preview already I wonder why we can’t have at least what’s there already in a printable form (and then just print to PDF). Of course it’s limited with regards to links etc. but it’s much more than raw markdown already.

4 Likes
#20

Same. I’ve just recently started using markdown, then found Obsidian and was hooked. But now that I’ve made it the center of all my notes/to-do lists, I’m really missing the print or export to PDF from other tools.

Still, Obsidian is amazing, and I’m sure this feature (or plug-in) will be added soon. I’m happy to use another program for printing for now. So far, the best option I have found is opening/printing the note from my phone using 1Writer.

4 Likes