mxi / ptxt

Fast Text-to-PDF Converter

ptxt: Fast Text-to-PDF Converter

The ptxt utility is a text-to-PDF converter aiming to:

• be blazing fast 🚀
• be light weight 🪶
• have a low memory footprint 💪
• support interactive conversion 📜

To reach these goals, ptxt uses an ad-hoc solution instead of depending on a full-feature PDF library or rendering engine.

News about this project will be published at Twitter.

Output Style

By default, the program produces a document as if written on a typewriter.

The following options are configurable:

Option	Short	Long	Default
Number of columns	-c	--columns	80
Number of rows	-r	--rows	60
Tab stop	-t	--tab-stop	8
Left margin	-x	--offx	1in (72pt)
Top margin	-t	--offy	1in (72pt)
Font size	-s	--font-size	10pt
Font style	-f	--font	mono

Limitations

Some features are desired, but are not implemented yet:

• Allow font embedding.
• Right and bottom margins (requires font library.)
• Automatic column and row detection (requires font library.)

Examples

• ptxt file

  Convert file to PDF using default options. The result is printed to stdout. If file is omitted, stdin is used. The special - also specifies stdin but with block buffering instead (useful if you're piping large amounts of data.)

• nl -b a ptxt.c | ptxt - -s 8 -c 72 -r 55 -f mono -t 4 -x 1.5in -y 1.5in -o ptxt.pdf

  Number all lines in ptxt.c and convert to PDF using block buffered stdin, 8pt font, 72 columns, 55 rows, standard monospaced font (Courier), 4-space tab stop, 1.5 inch left and top margins, outputting to ptxt.pdf.

• ptxt --help

  Print the usage.

• ptxt --version

  Print version information.

See ptxt(1) for more information.

Installation

$ make NDEBUG=1
$ sudo make install

To uninstall,

$ sudo make uninstall