PDF From Formatted Text: markdown to PDF with fewer dependencies

I think TeX, LaTeX, and Pandoc are fantastic tools! However, I sometimes need a markdown-to-PDF converter with fewer dependencies. Pfft is that tool.

Pfft:

• Doesn't need a Web browser --- it doesn't use HTML
• Doesn't need a build system --- it comes with an autoconf-generated build script
• Doesn't need a separate rendering library --- it uses pangocairo, which is standard on GNOME systems.

Installing from a source tarball

(Package names may differ --- these are for Ubuntu)

$ sudo apt install -y libpango1.0-dev libgee-0.8-dev libgstreamer1.0-dev
$ tar xvf pfft-VERSION.tar.gz
$ cd pfft-VERSION
$ ./configure && make -j4 && sudo make install

For the HTML documentation, run make html, then open doc/valadoc/pfft/index.htm.

Contributing to Pfft's development

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

The version history is in CHANGELOG.md.

Thanks

• https://github.com/stefantalpalaru/vala-skeleton-autotools
• https://github.com/D3Engineering/d3-jetson-bsp

Legal

Most of pfft is BSD-3-clause (see file LICENSE). The files in src/logging are LGPL 2.1+ (see file LGPL-2.1).