Recently, we say "front-end" everyday. Then why don't we make the printing documents in front-end? We believe we can make it perfectly without back-end. Paper CSS is just a small snippet of CSS, but it helps us create them in browser easily.
You can check the design and layout before printing. See the browser like when you build a webpage.
This example could be printed like this.
It's just HTML/CSS, so we can edit it with live-reloading. See "Try" section below and gulpfile.babel.js for more detail.
Get paper-css from npm:
$ npm install paper-cssLoad paper-css into <head> like this:
<!-- Load paper.css for happy printing -->
<link rel="stylesheet" href="dist/paper.css">
<!-- Set page size here: A5, A4 or A3 -->
<!-- Set also "landscape" if you need -->
<style>@page { size: A5 }</style>Set the class of <body> and set also "sheet" for each sheet.
<!-- Set "A5", "A4" or "A3" for class name -->
<!-- Set also "landscape" if you need -->
<body class="A5">
<!-- Each sheet element should have the class "sheet" -->
<!-- "padding-**mm" is optional: you can set 10, 15, 20 or 25 -->
<section class="sheet padding-10mm">
<!-- Write HTML just like a web page -->
<article>This is an A5 document.</article>
</section>
</body>See also the examples for detail.
Download or clone this repo, then execute the commands bellow:
$ cd to/this/repo
$ npm install
$ npm startThe browser will show the receipt example automatically. Edit the file examples/receipt.html, you'll find the preview on the browser be reloaded each time when you save it.
| type | expression | learning cost | editable | in-browser | multipage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HTML | Enough | already known | No | OK | ~100 pages * |
| SVG | Enough | not so difficult | No | OK | |
| Perfect | difficult | No | NG | no limit ** | |
| Excel | Not cool | sigh | Yes | NG | uncontrollable |
* It depends on user's environment. ** Only if you have huge memory on the server.
