PDF Export

DocsForge can export your documentation as PDF files using docsforge build --pdf.

Quick Start

pip install "docsforge[pdf]"
playwright install chromium
docsforge build --pdf

Output goes to pdf/ preserving the site directory structure.

Requirements

Usage

# Build site + export PDF
docsforge build --pdf

# Use more parallel tabs for faster rendering (default: 4)
docsforge build --pdf --jobs 8

# Single-threaded (for debugging)
docsforge build --pdf --jobs 1

The output is written to the pdf/ directory, preserving the site's directory structure:

pdf/
├── index.pdf
├── getting-started/
│   └── index.pdf
└── setup/
    └── changing-the-colors/
        └── index.pdf

System Browser

Instead of Playwright's bundled Chromium, use a system-installed browser:

export PLAYWRIGHT_CHROMIUM_EXECUTABLE=/usr/bin/chromium-browser
docsforge build --pdf

Auto-detected browsers: thorium, chromium, google-chrome, brave-browser.

Docker

docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/docs ghcr.io/qqshi13/docsforge:latest build --pdf

The Docker image includes Playwright, Chromium, and all dependencies.

How It Works

1. Full docsforge build — runs the complete build pipeline with all plugins (Mermaid, KaTeX, TikZ, privacy, search)
2. Playwright render — opens each HTML page in a headless Chromium tab with @media print CSS
3. Print mode strips UI chrome — navigation bars, tabs, footer, search are hidden automatically
4. Mermaid rendering — diagrams are rendered by the browser before capture
5. Tooltip expansion — hover tooltips are expanded inline in the PDF
6. Output — one PDF per page, preserving the directory structure

Performance

• Parallel tabs: defaults to 4. Use --jobs N to adjust
• Network requests: external requests are served from the local filesystem (privacy plugin cache)
• Work queue: each tab picks the next page as soon as it finishes — no batch waiting

Troubleshooting