slides-to-pdf

Slides to PDF

Converts a JS-driven, one-slide-per-screen HTML deck into a paginated PDF: one page per slide, matching the browser rendering, with a centred page number in the footer. There is no native "print to PDF" for such decks (printing captures only the visible slide), so the pipeline is: screenshot every slide at 2x with headless Chrome, wrap the screenshots in a print-paginated page, number them, print that to PDF, then verify the PDF by rendering it back to images.

Inputs to establish up front (ask only if not obvious):

• Deck path, the literal that marks one slide (default <section class="slide"), and the deck's canvas size (default 1280x720). Read the deck's own CSS to confirm both before you start; a wrong size silently letterboxes or crops every page.
• Output path: default next to the HTML, same basename, .pdf.
• Chrome-only UI to hide: for SlideOps decks this is .hud,.progress,.hint; for other decks, identify the fixed nav/progress elements a printed page shouldn't show.

1. Find Chrome and make a staging directory

find_chrome() {
  local base c
  for base in "$HOME/Library/Caches/ms-playwright" "$HOME/.cache/ms-playwright"; do
    [ -d "$base" ] || continue
    c=$(find "$base" -maxdepth 6 -type f \
          \( -name chrome -o -name Chromium -o -name "Google Chrome for Testing" \) \
          2>/dev/null | grep -v headless_shell | sort -V | tail -1)
    [ -n "$c" ] && { printf '%s\n' "$c"; return; }
  done
  for c in "/Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome" \
           "$(command -v google-chrome || true)" "$(command -v chromium || true)"; do
    [ -x "$c" ] && { printf '%s\n' "$c"; return; }
  done
}
CHROME=$(find_chrome)
[ -x "$CHROME" ] || { npx --yes playwright install chromium; CHROME=$(find_chrome); }
"$CHROME" --version   # sanity-check; quote "$CHROME" everywhere (macOS path has spaces)

DECK="/absolute/path/to/deck.html"
STAGE=$(mktemp -d -t slidespdf)   # or a per-deck subdir of your session scratchpad

# Per-deck settings. The defaults match SlideOps decks; change all three for a foreign one.
SLIDE_MATCH='<section class="slide'   # the literal that starts one slide element
W=1280; H=720                         # the deck's canvas size in CSS pixels
CHROME_SANDBOX_ARGS=()                # see "Sandbox" below before adding --no-sandbox

N=$(grep -c "$SLIDE_MATCH" "$DECK")
[ "$N" -gt 0 ] || { echo "No slides matched $SLIDE_MATCH; check the selector"; exit 1; }
echo "$N slides at ${W}x${H}"