Printable PDF Newspaper Plugin

You can customize the PDF newspaper layout and styles using limited CSS definitions, in two different ways:

1. Enter your custom style definitions in the “Custom CSS” input field when generating the PDF.
2. In your theme, filter the output of ppn_pdf_template_css_file_path to specify the full filesystem path to a file containing CSS styles.

When specifying custom styles, do not enclose them in a <style> tag or any other HTML. Invalid CSS may break the PDF generation process.

Here are the CSS classes you may wish to adjust:

• ppn-article-title: Headlines / post titles
• ppn-article-wrapper: Wrapper around the loop of all included articles
• ppn-author: Author byline and display name (if included)
• ppn-date: Article date (if included)
• ppn-content and ppn-excerpt: article body content
• ppn-permalink-text: the “Continue Reading” permalink introductory text
• ppn-permalink-qr-code-image: image class for the QR Code (if included)
• ppn-article-bottom-border: horizontal line dividing articles

You can view the default style definitions in the plugin file assets/admin/css/pdf-template-styles.css or in Trac.

Note that TCPDF only supports a limited subset of the full CSS specification. Also note that any fonts referenced must be available in the TCPDF library used to generate the PDF. You can view the TCPDF core font list.
There’s also an experimental filter, ppn_font_file_paths, that allows you to add to or change the array of TTF font file paths being loaded.

Currently the header image size/position and subheading styles are not easily customizable, but will be in the future.

These filters are available to further customize the plugin functionality:

• ppn_post_query_args: override the array of arguments to WP_Query to control which posts are included
• ppn_pdf_configuration: override the array of PDF configuration values specified by the admin user
• ppn_pdf_template_css_file_path: override the full filesystem path to a CSS file for PDF content styling
• ppn_font_file_paths: override the array of filesystem paths to TTF font files to include in the PDF

For example, to customize the number of posts included in the PDF, add something like this to your theme:

add_filter( 'ppn_pdf_configuration', function( $config ) { $config['number'] = 2; return $config; }, 10, 1 ); 

• Allow saving of PDF configuration for easy re-use in future runs
• More customizable header size and layout
• Generate QR Codes within the plugin instead of Google Chart API
• Ability to auto-generate the PDF on a schedule
• Better controls for limiting number of pages generated and column breaks.

Some people still encounter things and ideas through engagement with objects in the physical world. If you are looking to attract readers to your WordPress-powered writing, distributing a printed “teaser” version might just help.