Typesetting Documents With HTML

Web development isn’t just about building websites

One surprisingly versatile use for html is using it to typeset pdf documents. Html provides a good middle ground between the precision of latex and the informality of markdown. With a little knowledge of basic css and html you can make good looking custom documents that render in very predictable ways. Printing to a more regular format like pdf avoids a lot of the challenges of web design.

The Workflow

Good documents start with a clear and legible title and header information. Incidentally, this also the first feature of a good website.

There’s a lot of information about there on web design and graphical issue, but a few basic principles are important: Use very few colors. Use contrast selectively.

The problem with playing around with contrast and colors, is it can make your document either hard to read or look ugly. I recommend using medium contrast on parts that are supposed to be artistic or visually appealing, using bold with high contrast when you want to draw attention, and using high contrast normal weighted text on the bulk of your article.

Fonts 101

For any of these design issues, you can go on the internet, and find websites you like, and try to copy them. But what often ends up often happening, is you try to copy what they are doing, but fall miserably short, and it looks bad. So it becomes…