any2pdf — Markdown to Professional PDF

This skill converts any Markdown file into a publication-quality PDF using Python's reportlab library. It was developed through extensive iteration on real Chinese technical reports and solves several hard problems that naive MD→PDF converters get wrong.

When to Use

• User wants to convert .md → .pdf
• User has a markdown report/document and wants professional typesetting
• Document contains CJK characters (Chinese/Japanese/Korean) mixed with Latin text
• Document has fenced code blocks, markdown tables, or nested lists
• User wants a cover page, table of contents, or watermark in their PDF

Quick Start

python md2pdf/scripts/md2pdf.py \
  --input report.md \
  --output report.pdf \
  --title "My Report" \
  --author "Author Name" \
  --theme warm-academic

All parameters except --input are optional — sensible defaults are applied.

Pre-Conversion Options (MANDATORY)

IMPORTANT: You MUST use the AskUserQuestion tool to ask these questions BEFORE running the conversion. Do NOT list options as plain text — use the tool so the user gets a proper interactive prompt. Ask all options in a SINGLE AskUserQuestion call.

Use AskUserQuestion with the following template. The tone should be friendly and concise — like a design assistant, not a config form:

开始转 PDF！先帮你确认几个选项 👇

━━━ 📐 设计风格 ━━━
 a) 暖学术    — 陶土色调，温润典雅，适合人文/社科报告
 b) 经典论文  — 棕色调，灵感源自 LaTeX classicthesis，适合学术论文
 c) Tufte     — 极简留白，深红点缀，适合数据叙事/技术写作
 d) 期刊蓝    — 藏蓝严谨，灵感源自 IEEE，适合正式发表风格
 e) 精装书    — 咖啡色调，书卷气，适合长篇专著/技术书
 f) 中国红    — 朱红配暖纸，适合中文正式报告/白皮书
 g) 水墨      — 纯灰黑，素雅克制，适合文学/设计类内容
 h) GitHub    — 蓝白极简，程序员熟悉的风格
 i) Nord 冰霜 — 蓝灰北欧风，清爽现代
 j) 海洋      — 青绿色调，清新自然
 k) LaTeX 清爽 — pandoc+XeLaTeX 原生排版，无封面无装饰，干净学术风（需装 pandoc+texlive）

━━━ 🖼 扉页图片（封面之后的全页插图） ━━━
 1) 跳过
 2) 我提供本地图片路径
 3) AI 根据内容自动生成一张

━━━ 💧 水印 ━━━
 1) 不加
 2) 自定义文字（如 "DRAFT"、"内部资料"）
    可选调整：字号(默认52)、透明度(0-1)、角度(默认35°)、间距

━━━ 📇 封底物料（名片/二维码/品牌） ━━━
 1) 跳过
 2) 我提供图片
 3) 纯文字信息

示例回复："a, 扉页跳过, 水印:仅供学习参考, 封底图片:/path/qr.png"
直接说人话就行，不用记编号 😄

Mapping User Choices to CLI Args

Choice	CLI arg
Design style a-k	--theme with value from table below (k uses pandoc engine)
Frontispiece local	--frontispiece <path>
Frontispiece AI	Generate image first, then --frontispiece /tmp/frontispiece.png
Watermark text	--watermark "文字"
Watermark style	--wm-size 30 --wm-opacity 0.1 --wm-angle 45 (all optional)
Image as cover	--image-cover true (requires --frontispiece)
Back cover image	--banner <path>
Back cover text	--disclaimer "声明" and/or --copyright "© 信息"

Theme Name Mapping

Choice	--theme value	Inspiration
a) 暖学术	warm-academic	Lovstudio design system
b) 经典论文	classic-thesis	LaTeX classicthesis
c) Tufte	tufte	Edward Tufte's books
d) 期刊蓝	ieee-journal	IEEE journal format
e) 精装书	elegant-book	LaTeX ElegantBook
f) 中国红	chinese-red	Chinese formal documents
g) 水墨	ink-wash	水墨画 / ink wash painting
h) GitHub	github-light	GitHub Markdown style
i) Nord	nord-frost	Nord color scheme
j) 海洋	ocean-breeze	—
k) LaTeX 清爽	latex-clean	pandoc+XeLaTeX 原生排版，无封面

Handling AI-Generated Frontispiece

If user chose AI generation: read the document title + first paragraphs, use an image generation tool to create a themed illustration matching the chosen design style, show for approval, then pass via --frontispiece /path/to/image.png

Architecture

Markdown → Preprocess (split merged headings) → Parse (code-fence-aware) → Story (reportlab flowables) → PDF build

Key components:

1. Font system: Palatino (Latin body), Songti SC (CJK body), Menlo (code) on macOS; auto-fallback on Linux
2. CJK wrapper: _font_wrap() wraps CJK character runs in <font> tags for automatic font switching
3. Mixed text renderer: _draw_mixed() handles CJK/Latin mixed text on canvas (cover, headers, footers)
4. Code block handler: esc_code() preserves indentation and line breaks in reportlab Paragraphs
5. Smart table widths: Proportional column widths based on content length, with 18mm minimum
6. Bookmark system: ChapterMark flowable creates PDF sidebar bookmarks + named anchors
7. Heading preprocessor: _preprocess_md() splits merged headings like # Part## Chapter into separate lines

Hard-Won Lessons

CJK Characters Rendering as □

reportlab's Paragraph only uses the font in ParagraphStyle. If fontName="Mono" but text contains Chinese, they render as □. Fix: Always apply _font_wrap() to ALL text that might contain CJK, including code blocks.

Code Blocks Losing Line Breaks

reportlab treats \n as whitespace. Fix: esc_code() converts \n → <br/> and leading spaces →  , applied BEFORE _font_wrap().

CJK/Latin Word Wrapping

Default reportlab breaks lines only at spaces, causing ugly splits like "Claude\nCode". Fix: Set wordWrap='CJK' on body/bullet styles to allow breaks at CJK character boundaries.

Canvas Text with CJK (Cover/Footer)

drawString() / drawCentredString() with a Latin font can't render 年/月/日 etc. Fix: Use _draw_mixed() for ALL user-content canvas text (dates, stats, disclaimers).

Images Silently Dropped (Relative Paths)

![alt](charts/chart_01.png) in a markdown file used to get skipped without warning because the image path was resolved against the current working directory, not the markdown's directory. Fix: main() now passes input_dir (the .md's directory) into the builder, and the image handler resolves relative paths against it. Missing images now also emit a WARN: image not found: ... to stderr instead of silently dropping.

Multi-Line Image References (pandoc --wrap=auto)

When feeding pandoc's output into md2pdf, pandoc's default --wrap=auto (72 cols) wraps long ![alt text very long](path.png) across multiple lines, which defeated the single-line image regex. Fix: _preprocess_md() now collapses multi-line image references into one line (outside code fences) before parsing.

Pipeline tip: If you're piping HTML → markdown via pandoc, use pandoc --wrap=none input.html -o output.md to avoid wrap-related parsing issues for images and tables alike.

Input Format

This skill takes Markdown files only as input. If you have HTML, DOCX, or other formats, convert them to markdown first (e.g. pandoc --wrap=none). Embedded HTML blocks in markdown are passed through as text — pre-process any visual content (charts, complex tables) into plain markdown tables or image references before invoking md2pdf.

Configuration Reference

Argument	Default	Description
--input	(required)	Path to markdown file
--output	output.pdf	Output PDF path
--title	From first H1	Document title for cover page
--subtitle	""	Subtitle text
--author	""	Author name
--date	Today	Date string
--version	""	Version string for cover
--watermark	""	Watermark text (empty = none)
--theme	warm-academic	Color theme name
--theme-file	""	Custom theme JSON file path
--cover	true	Generate cover page
--toc	true	Generate table of contents
--page-size	A4	Page size (A4 or Letter)
--frontispiece	""	Full-page image after cover
--banner	""	Back cover banner image
--header-title	""	Report title in page header
--footer-left	author	Brand/author in footer
--stats-line	""	Stats on cover
--stats-line2	""	Second stats line
--edition-line	""	Edition line at cover bottom
--disclaimer	""	Back cover disclaimer
--copyright	""	Back cover copyright
--code-max-lines	30	Max lines per code block
--image-cover	false	Use frontispiece as full-bleed cover (page 1), text cover becomes page 2
--heading-top-spacer	5	Top spacer before H1/H2 chapter titles in mm
--wm-size	52	Watermark font size
--wm-opacity	theme default	Watermark opacity (0.0–1.0)
--wm-angle	35	Watermark rotation angle in degrees
--wm-spacing-x	220	Watermark horizontal spacing in pt
--wm-spacing-y	160	Watermark vertical spacing in pt

Themes

Available: warm-academic, nord-frost, github-light, solarized-light, paper-classic, ocean-breeze.

Each theme defines: page background, ink color, accent color, faded text, border, code background, watermark tint.

Fallback: pandoc + XeLaTeX

When reportlab fails (e.g. wide/complex tables cause infinite loops in table width calculation), fall back to pandoc with XeLaTeX. This produces high-quality CJK PDFs with proper table handling.

When to use pandoc engine

• User chose latex-clean theme (k) — pandoc is the primary engine, not a fallback
• Document has many wide multi-column tables (reportlab's table layout may hang)
• Document needs LaTeX-quality typesetting (justified text, hyphenation)
• reportlab md2pdf.py hangs or crashes on the input

Basic command

pandoc input.md -o output.pdf \
  --pdf-engine=xelatex \
  -V CJKmainfont="Songti SC" -V mainfont="Palatino" -V monofont="Menlo" \
  -V geometry:margin=2.5cm -V fontsize=11pt \
  --toc -V toc-title="目录" -V documentclass=article

Adding watermark + headers/footers

pandoc input.md -o output.pdf \
  --pdf-engine=xelatex \
  -V CJKmainfont="Songti SC" -V mainfont="Palatino" -V monofont="Menlo" \
  -V geometry:margin=2.5cm -V fontsize=11pt \
  -V colorlinks=true -V linkcolor=red -V toccolor=red -V urlcolor=red \
  --toc -V toc-title="目录" -V documentclass=article \
  -V header-includes='
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[L]{\small 页眉左侧文字}
\fancyhead[R]{\small 页眉右侧文字}
\fancyfoot[C]{\thepage}
\usepackage{draftwatermark}
\SetWatermarkText{水印文字}
\SetWatermarkScale{0.5}
\SetWatermarkColor[gray]{0.9}
'

Pandoc theme presets

Each preset defines a complete set of pandoc -V flags. Use the full command from "Adding watermark + headers/footers" above, replacing the color/link flags per preset.

Theme	linkcolor	toccolor	urlcolor	Watermark color	Notes
chinese-red	red	red	red	[gray]{0.9}	朱红正式，适合政企报告、白皮书
warm-academic	brown	brown	brown	[gray]{0.9}	陶土色调，温润学术风
classic-thesis	brown	brown	brown	[gray]{0.85}	LaTeX classicthesis 灵感
ieee-journal	blue	blue	blue	[gray]{0.9}	藏蓝严谨，期刊风格
github-light	blue	blue	blue	[gray]{0.92}	极简蓝白，程序员友好
ink-wash	black	black	black	[gray]{0.92}	水墨素雅，文学/设计类
nord-frost	teal	teal	teal	[gray]{0.9}	北欧冰霜蓝灰

chinese-red 完整示例（本次一滕项目实际使用）

pandoc input.md -o output.pdf \
  --pdf-engine=xelatex \
  -V CJKmainfont="Songti SC" -V mainfont="Palatino" -V monofont="Menlo" \
  -V geometry:margin=2.5cm -V fontsize=11pt \
  -V colorlinks=true -V linkcolor=red -V toccolor=red -V urlcolor=red \
  --toc -V toc-title="目录" -V documentclass=article \
  -V header-includes='
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\fancyhead[L]{\small 报告标题 | 品牌名}
\fancyhead[R]{\small 商业机密}
\fancyfoot[C]{\thepage}
\usepackage{draftwatermark}
\SetWatermarkText{商业机密}
\SetWatermarkScale{0.5}
\SetWatermarkColor[gray]{0.9}
'

latex-clean 完整示例（最简洁的 LaTeX 学术风格）

选择 latex-clean 时，跳过 reportlab，直接使用 pandoc 生成。特点：无封面、无扉页、 无装饰色块，纯 LaTeX 排版 + 点线 TOC 引导符，适合内容为王的学术/技术文档。

pandoc input.md -o output.pdf \
  --pdf-engine=xelatex \
  -V CJKmainfont="Songti SC" -V mainfont="Palatino" -V monofont="Menlo" \
  -V geometry:margin=2.5cm -V fontsize=11pt \
  -V colorlinks=true -V linkcolor=brown -V toccolor=brown -V urlcolor=brown \
  --toc -V toc-title="目录" -V documentclass=article

如需添加页眉页脚或水印，参考上方 "Adding watermark + headers/footers" 追加 -V header-includes。

Known limitations (pandoc fallback)

• No cover page (pandoc article class has no built-in cover — use --include-before-body with a LaTeX snippet if needed)
• Frontispiece/back cover not supported (use md2pdf.py for these)
• → ★ ☆ symbols may warn in Palatino — they render via CJK font fallback, safe to ignore
• ASCII art diagrams render as code blocks (same as md2pdf.py)

Dependencies (pandoc fallback)

Requires pandoc and a TeX distribution with XeLaTeX:

brew install pandoc
brew install --cask mactex-no-gui   # or basictex

Dependencies

pip install reportlab --break-system-packages