The ability to export (rendered) documentation – to PDF, for example – to be viewed offline.
Why do you need it?
Air-gapped solutions where internet access may be limited but documentation still needs to be shared with users.
How would it work?
An “Export to PDF” button to be visible for each individual Page. Additionally, the ability to export the Documentation as a whole to PDF – whether all as one, or individually, included in a .zip file.
Example
A table of contents should be included at the top.
Introduction
2
Product Overview
3
Architecture
4
Getting Started
5
Pre-requisites
5
Quick Setup Guide
7
The rendered content should be displayed on each page as it appears otherwise.
Pages can already be exported as PDF using the browser’s Print function, then by choosing Save as PDF. We do offer an optimised view for saving as PDF.
Unfortunately it is not possible programmatically to trigger the print system dialog with PDF pre-selected, but we can simply show the print system dialog by calling window.print(). You may use Custom Javascript to add Print as a button by the page title when a Documentation loads which calls window.print(), or even show an alert that tells them to choose Save as PDF, then shows the print dialog.
Exporting the whole documentation as PDF is not possible right now with one click, however we are gauging customer need for this and would build it accordingly. For now, one may export separate pages as explained above, or using Adobe Acrobat they may export the whole website to PDF.
I will keep you updated on volume of need for PDF export, and our progress.
We’re running a first draft of PDF generation internally. We’re actually printing the PDF pages as chrome would to file, and stitching them all together and adding a table of contents.
Limitations to this method is that links inside the PDF would not really link to each other. We could potentially add “(Page Name)” to every link to indicate which page should they look at.