It is possible to build a single PDF that contains all of your book's content. This page describes a couple ways to do so.
:::{warning} PDF building is in active development, and may change or have bugs. :::
There are two approaches to building PDF files.
(pdf:html)=
It is possible to build a single PDF from your book's HTML. This starts by converting all of your book's content into a single HTML file, and then renders it as a PDF by emulating a browser from the command-line.
Your system will need to use pyppeteer
to parse the generated HTML for
conversion to PDF.
You can install it like so:
pip install pyppeteer
You may also need to install this bundle of packages below (on *nix systems):
In addition, if you get errors about libraries that don't exist, check out
[these install commands](https://circleci.com/orbs/registry/orb/threetreeslight/puppeteer)
to see if that fixes it. We warned you it was an experimental feature :-)
To build a single PDF from your book's HTML, use the following command:
jupyter-book build mybookname/ --builder pdfhtml
or
jb build mybookname/ --builder pdfhtml
:::{warning}
If you get a "MaxRetryError" and see mentions of SSL in the error message when building the PDF,
this could be due to a bug in pyppeteer
as it downloads Chromium for the first time.
See this GitHub comment
for a potential fix, and this Jupyter Book issue
where we're tracking the issue.
:::
Because you are using HTML as an intermediary for your book's PDF, you can control the look and feel of the HTML via your own CSS rules. Most CSS changes that you make to your HTML website will also persist in the PDF version of that website. For information about how to define your own CSS rules, see .
To add CSS rules that only apply to the printed PDF, use the @media print
CSS pattern to define print-specific rules. These will only be applied when the HTML is being printed, and will not show up in your non-PDF website.
For example, to hide the right table of contents at print time, you could add this rule:
@media print {
.bd-toc {
visibility: hidden;
}
}
The right Table of Contents would be present in your live website, but hidden when someone printed a PDF of your website.
(pdf:latex)=
You can also use LaTeX to build a PDF of your book.
This process requires you to have tex
setup on your system.
Jupyter Book will construct a LaTeX file and then use the system latex
to build that LaTeX file.
:::{margin}
The LaTeX file that jupyter-book
produces is not particularly easy to edit primarily
because it contains sphinx
and pygments
markup to enable syntax highlighting for
code cells etc. This is an area we would like to improve so that the LaTeX file is more
human readable to enable customization.
See #1497 :::
This section tries to recommend a few best-practices.
:::{note} We recommend using the texlive distribution :::
jupyter-book
uses the
sphinx-jupyterbook-latex package,
which handles much of the customised LaTeX infrastructure. A full list of features can be found
the sphinx-jupyterbook-latex
features list.
Some of these features include:
- This package enables building
pdf
files by providing support of the various structures that are defined in the _toc.yml. This also enablespdf
files to be constructed in a way that is harmonised with thehtml
output. - the
masterdoc
orroot
document forjupyter-book
is treated asfrontmatter
in LaTeX - update fonts so that
unicode
characters can be used without breaking LaTeX builds (xelatex
is used by default) - support for
png
andgif
images usingsphinx.ext.imgconverter
- support for
jupyter-book
tags such ashide-cell
::::{note}
This functionality is enabled by default, but if you need to turn off this package,
you need add the following config to your _config.yml
:
latex:
use_jupyterbook_latex: false
::::
For Debian
-based Linux
platforms it is recommended to install the following packages:
sudo apt-get install texlive-latex-recommended texlive-latex-extra \
texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-fonts-extra \
texlive-xetex latexmk
Alternatively you can install the full TeX Live distribution.
For OSX
you may want to use MacTeX which is a more
user friendly approach. Alternatively you may also use TeX Live.
For Windows
users, please install TeX Live.
To build a PDF of your project using LaTeX, use the following command:
jupyter-book build mybookname/ --builder pdflatex
or
jb build mybookname/ --builder pdflatex
::::{note} If you would just like to generate the latex file you may use:
jb build mybookname/ --builder latex
::::
It is possible to build
individual PDF files for each page of the project by enabling the --individualpages
option
when using the pdflatex
builder.
jupyter-book build mybookname/ --builder pdflatex --individualpages
This option
is only enabled for the pdflatex
builder.
:::{warning}
The current implementation of --individualpages
does not make use of the improvements
introduced by sphinx-jupyterbook-latex and
uses the default latex
writer included with Sphinx.
We are currently working on making improvements to how --individualpages
are constructed.
You can track progress here
:::
The individual PDF files will be available in the _build/latex
build folder.
These files will have the same name as the source file or, if nested in folders, will be named {folder}-{filename}.pdf
in a flat structure.
:::{note}
When specifying a single page using the build
command,
the --individualpages
will automatically be set to True
.
In the future we intend for this to produce latex documents more suitable to single pages (see issue #904). :::
To update the name of your PDF
file you can set the following in _config.yml
latex:
latex_documents:
targetname: book.tex
This will act as an automatic override
when Sphinx builds the
latex_documents.
It is typically inferred by Sphinx
but when using jupyter-book
naming the file in the _config.yml
generally makes it easier to find.
The current default is to use xelatex
to build pdf
files.
:::{warning}
The --individualpages
option currently uses pdflatex
by default.
:::
You may choose a different LaTeX engine such as pdflatex
or lualatex
.
For example, to use pdflatex
engine for LaTeX
, add the following to your _config.yml
:
latex:
latex_engine: pdflatex
:::{seealso}
The Sphinx documentation for available builders
contains a full list of supported latex
builders.
:::
The current focus of the EBP project has been to automate the process of building pdf
files
from myst:md
sources and to ensure the resulting pdf
files are syncronised (in structure)
with the html
output. We are actively looking at ways to enable more LaTeX
configuration and
customization.
The majority of customization offered is via Sphinx
, the underlying build engine that powers
jupyter-book
.
Configuration via Sphinx LaTeX settings can be passed through using the config
section
of sphinx
in the _config.yml
file for your project.
For example, if you would like to set the
latex_toplevel_sectioning
option to use part
instead of chapter
you would use:
sphinx:
config:
latex_toplevel_sectioning: 'part'