Enhanced PDF export

[DriesCal]

I am using MarkdownPad quiet often these days to document workflow and processes. The PDF export comes in handy to discuss the documents with colleagues. From personal experience, I believe that the following features would really enhance MarkdownPad 2.

• Page numbering: When Markdown documents gets over 8 pages, it becomes tricky to find the right order of the pages back when you print - especially when you print on both sides. Although I am not a big fan of paper, I noticed that my colleagues appreciate it to be able to print and immediately start with numbering the pages. Adding a automatic but simple page numbering function could remove this hassle.
• Table of content: In the MDP2 there is already an option to generate a table of content for the side bar based on the headings. Having this option to automatically generate the table of content during the export to PDF would definitely enhance the usability of MDP2. I imagine an solution similar to what is being used in Wiki's; e.g. [toc].
• Export tags for basic PDF layout: Based on experiences in other programs, I would be nice to have optional tags that are especially designed for PDF export. Via this tags, that are only visible in the editor, you would be able to add e.g. a page break or an empty page. These tags would then only be used when the markdown files is being exported to PDF. This feature would enable me to easily design more professional looking PDF exports.

I hope these features make it to one of the next releases...

[evanw]

Thanks for the feedback!

For inserting page breaks, this is currently possible with a little CSS magic. Although I don't yet have a convenient tag for it, I'll add this to my list for future development.

Page numbers is a great idea. I'll try to add this for an upcoming update.

Table of contents: I'll see what I can do here. This is best suited for the Markdown document itself, as the PDF processor (for the most part) is just rendering the document and saving its output.

[DriesCal]

Thanks for the fast reply Evan! I am looking forward to the next releases!

The CCS magic works indeed. I do understand that your point that it's tricky to find a tag that is not interfering with something else. Maybe you could use a tag like e.g. [pgbreak] to get this page break in a more usable format.

The table of content would be indeed best created in Markdown document itself. It would also beneficial for people that are writing e.g. a FAQ and export it to HTML. Maybe this feature could also render the page numbers when you choose to export the markdown file to PDF.

PS if you need feedback on these features I am more then happy to test these features upcoming releases.

[frafor]

I noticed in the last version that I just installed of MarkDownPad 2, that it has a way to export to PDF with a myriad of page sizes.

I selected CUSTOM but the program never showed a form to input the CUSTOM SIZE.

I selected other sizes but the PDF was always generated with the same size: LETTER SIZE.

In other words, this option only works to generate a PDF without page numbering and with only ONE page size.