Ways to convert markdown to PDF in iOS

[Peterh]

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to send PDFs. This post lists ways I have found to convert markdown to PDF; none is ideal, so I'm hoping someone can suggest a better way.

In general, the idea is to convert the markdown to html, add a head element with a style element to control the look of the PDF, and pass it to an app that will convert html to PDF. All these ways let you insert page breaks in the PDF; most by using html page-break attributes.

1. Put the html on the clipboard and use the app PDF-Converter. This does not let you set a header/footer/page number or the paper size (before iOS 7 it gave me A4 paper that I want, but now it gives me US letter). You can add images that are stored on the web.

2. Open the html in the Documents app and save the page as a PDF. This is described here http://editorial-app.appspot.com/workflow/5660638047109120/vHXf1o0Is1o. This has the same features as the way above.

3. Put the html on dropbox, open it with the app UX Write and convert to PDF. You can set the paper size, there is no header, the footer is always the page number, centered. You can insert images from iOS Photos. I think UX Write is grossly overpriced.

4. Convert the html to LaTeX, put it on the clipboard, paste it into the app Texpad and convert to PDF. This gives you total control of everything (the style information is in a LaTeX include file, not a style element). You can insert images from iOS Photos, though Texpad converts everything to pngs, about three times the size of jpgs. HTML's tags generally correspond to LaTeX's tags, so it's relatively easy to write a python script to convert html to LaTeX.

5. Use Docverter, a free web service. A Pythonista script for this is here http://wcm1.web.rice.edu/pandoc-on-ios.html.