md_to_pdf — Markdown to PDF Converter

A lightweight Python script that converts Markdown files into clean, styled PDFs using reportlab. No browser, no Pandoc, no LaTeX required.

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Features

• Headings (H1–H3) with distinct font sizes and colors
• Bold, italic, and bold italic inline formatting
• Inline code and fenced code blocks with monospace styling
• Ordered and unordered lists
• Blockquotes
• Horizontal rules
• Hyperlinks (clickable in PDF)
• Markdown pipe tables rendered as real PDF tables
• Mermaid xychart-beta blocks rendered as vector charts in PDF
• Manual page breaks using /newpage (configurable token)
• Manual extra line spacing using /n (configurable token)
• Optional dark code theme with --dark
• Clean typography with 1-inch margins on US Letter paper

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Requirements

• Python 3.7+
• reportlab
• markdown

Install dependencies:

pip install reportlab markdown

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Usage

# Output defaults to same filename with .pdf extension
python md_to_pdf.py input.md

# Specify a custom output path
python md_to_pdf.py input.md output.pdf

# Use dark code theme (fenced code + inline code)
python md_to_pdf.py input.md --dark

# Change page-break command token (default: /newpage)
python md_to_pdf.py input.md --pagebreak-token "/pagebreak"

# Change manual line-break token (default: /n)
python md_to_pdf.py input.md --newline-token "/br"

Examples

python md_to_pdf.py README.md
# → README.pdf

python md_to_pdf.py docs/notes.md exports/notes.pdf
# → exports/notes.pdf

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Supported Markdown Syntax

Element	Syntax Example
Heading 1	# Title
Heading 2	## Section
Heading 3	### Subsection
Bold	**bold** or __bold__
Italic	*italic* or _italic_
Bold + Italic	***bold italic***
Inline code	`code`
Fenced code block	``` ... ```
Unordered list	- item or * item or + item
Ordered list	1. item
Blockquote	> quote
Horizontal rule	--- or ***
Link	[text](https://example.com)
Table	`
Page break	/newpage (alone on a line)
Extra spacing	/n (alone on a line or inline)

Mermaid Support

• Supported rendering: xychart-beta diagrams (line and bar series)
• Other Mermaid diagram types are preserved as code blocks (not rendered as charts)

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Limitations

• Nested lists are not currently supported
• Images (![alt](url)) are not rendered
• HTML embedded in Markdown is ignored
• Mermaid rendering is currently limited to xychart-beta

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Project Structure

md_to_pdf.py    # Main converter script
README.md       # This file
test.md         # Sample Markdown file for testing

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License

MIT — free to use and modify.