Professional Markdown PDF Exporter

Export Markdown files to polished Arabic RTL or English LTR A4 PDFs directly from VS Code.

Professional Markdown PDF Exporter turns ordinary .md files into clean, print-ready A4 documents — business reports, proposals, investment memos, technical specifications and legal drafts — without Python, WeasyPrint, or a bundled browser. It renders Markdown with markdown-it and prints through a Chrome / Chromium / Edge browser already installed on your machine.

Features

• Arabic RTL preset — right-to-left layout with Arabic-friendly typography
• English LTR preset — left-to-right layout with English-friendly typography
• A4 document rendering with proper print margins
• Professional print CSS tuned for Chromium's print engine
• Page numbers in the footer (page / total)
• Table styling with alternating row stripes
• Cover pages, note boxes, highlight boxes and signature sections
• Syntax-highlighted code blocks — highlighted at export time, no scripts run
• Bundled Arabic fonts (Noto Naskh / Noto Kufi) — identical output on every machine
• Local image support — relative paths are resolved automatically
• Right-click export from the Explorer
• Command Palette support
• Lightweight architecture — uses your installed Chrome/Chromium/Edge, nothing is bundled

Screenshots

Actual PDF output rendered from the bundled sample documents:

English preset	Arabic preset

Regenerate these locally with node scripts/verify-export.js after npm run compile.

Requirements

• VS Code 1.85.0 or newer
• Google Chrome, Chromium, or Microsoft Edge installed on your system

A reasonably modern browser version is recommended for the best print-CSS behaviour (page-number footers in particular). See Browser configuration.

Installation (for development)

npm install
npm run compile

How to run locally

1. Open the project folder in VS Code.
2. Press F5 to launch the Extension Development Host.
3. In the new window, open a .md file (try the bundled samples in test/sample-documents/).
4. Run Markdown PDF: Export PDF... from the Command Palette.

Usage

Explorer right-click workflow

Right-click any .md or .markdown file in the Explorer and choose Export PDF.... A Quick Pick appears so you can select the Arabic or English preset. The PDF is written next to the Markdown file.

Command Palette workflow

With a Markdown file open in the editor, open the Command Palette (Ctrl/Cmd+Shift+P) and run one of:

If the document has unsaved changes it is saved automatically before export. Untitled documents must be saved first. If a PDF of the same name already exists you are asked to confirm before it is overwritten.

Browser configuration

The extension never downloads or bundles a browser. It locates one already installed on your system:

• Auto-detection searches the standard install locations for Chrome, Chromium and Edge on Linux, macOS and Windows. Chrome is preferred, then Chromium, then Edge.

• Manual override — if your browser lives in a non-standard location, set the path explicitly:

  "professionalMarkdownPdf.browserExecutablePath": "/opt/custom/chrome"
  

If no compatible browser is found, the extension shows:

No supported browser was found. Install Chrome, Chromium, or Edge, or configure a browser executable path in Settings.

Settings

Custom Markdown HTML classes

Raw HTML is enabled in Markdown, so you can use the preset's document classes directly in your .md files. Both presets style the following:

.cover-page

A full-page, centred title page (forces a page break after it).

<div class="cover-page">
  <h1>Investment Memo</h1>
  <p class="document-subtitle">Confidential</p>
</div>

.document-header

A header band with an accent underline.

<div class="document-header">
  <h1>Executive Summary</h1>
  <p class="document-subtitle">An overview of the opportunity.</p>
</div>

.note-box and .highlight-box

Callout panels — blue for notes, amber for highlights.

<div class="note-box">This is an important note.</div>
<div class="highlight-box">This is a highlighted section.</div>

.signature-box

A row of signature lines.

<div class="signature-box">
  <div class="signature-item">Founder</div>
  <div class="signature-item">Investor</div>
</div>

.status-badge

A small pill label. Optional state modifiers: is-draft, is-review, is-final.

<span class="status-badge is-draft">Draft</span>

.page-break and .keep-together

Layout helpers.

<div class="page-break"></div>

<div class="keep-together">
  <!-- content kept on a single page where possible -->
</div>

.price, .currency, .number

Inline spans for figures. They use tabular numerals and an isolated LTR run so amounts never reorder inside RTL Arabic text.

The round is <span class="price">$6,000,000 USD</span>.
Headcount grew to <span class="number">35</span>.

Sample Markdown

A minimal English document:

<div class="cover-page">
  <h1>Quarterly Report</h1>
  <p class="document-subtitle">Q1 2026</p>
</div>

## Summary

Revenue reached <span class="price">$1,250,000 USD</span> this quarter.

<div class="note-box">Figures are preliminary.</div>

A minimal Arabic document:

<div class="cover-page">
  <h1>التقرير الربع سنوي</h1>
  <p class="document-subtitle">الربع الأول 2026</p>
</div>

## الملخّص

بلغت الإيرادات <span class="price">1,250,000 USD</span> هذا الربع.

<div class="note-box">الأرقام أولية.</div>

Full, richer examples are in test/sample-documents/.

How it works

1. The Markdown file is read and rendered to HTML with markdown-it (html: true, linkify: true, typographer: false).
2. Relative <img> paths are resolved against the Markdown file's directory and rewritten to absolute file:// URIs.
3. A complete HTML document is assembled with the correct lang/dir and the inlined CSS preset.
4. The HTML is written to a temporary file, opened in your system browser via puppeteer-core, and printed with page.pdf({ format: 'A4', printBackground: true, preferCSSPageSize: true }).
5. The temporary file is deleted and the PDF is saved beside the source.

Security note. Raw HTML inside Markdown is rendered locally as part of the export. The generated HTML is printed by a headless browser; the extension does not execute Markdown-derived JavaScript and makes no external network or analytics requests. Only export Markdown files you trust.

Limitations

• Depends on an installed Chrome / Chromium / Edge browser.
• Best print-CSS behaviour — particularly the @bottom-center page-number footer — requires a modern browser version. Very old browsers may omit the footer; the extension warns but does not block the export.
• The extension is optimised for Markdown-to-document export, not arbitrary webpage capture.

Roadmap / future enhancements

• Custom CSS presets and user-defined CSS imports
• Automatic language detection from document text
• Batch export of an entire folder
• Custom output directory and "ask every time" output mode
• PDF metadata (title, author, subject)
• Export multiple presets in a single action
• Marketplace icons and theme variants

See ROADMAP.md for the full improvement plan, effort estimates, and release sequencing.

License

MIT © Ibrahim Chehab

The Arabic fonts bundled with the extension — Noto Naskh Arabic and Noto Kufi Arabic — are licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 (see src/styles/fonts/OFL.txt).