DeckTape

DeckTape is a high-quality PDF exporter for HTML5 presentation frameworks. It supports all the features that you would expect from a PDF exporter like font embedding, selectable text, hyperlinks, SVG graphics objects, file compression.

DeckTape is built on top of PhantomJS which relies on WebKit Qt for laying out and rendering Web pages and provides a headless WebKit scriptable with a JavaScript API.

DeckTape currently supports the reveal.js and DZSlides presentation frameworks. Besides, it exposes a plugin-based extension API so that it is possible to add support for other frameworks or tailored existing ones to your specific needs.

You can browse some slide deck examples below that have been exported with DeckTape.

Install

1. Clone DeckTape Git repository:

    git clone https://github.com/astefanutti/decktape.git
   

2. Change into the decktape directory:

    cd decktape
   

3. Dowload PhantomJS executable: DeckTape currently depends on a forked version of PhantomJS. You can get the corresponding binaries for the platforms above:

    # Windows (MSVC 2013), 64-bit, for Windows Vista or later, bundles VC++ Runtime 2013
    wget http://a9i.io/decktape/downloads/phantomjs-msvc2013-win64.exe
    move phantomjs-msvc2013-win64.exe bin\phantomjs.exe
   
    # Mac OS X (Cocoa), 64-bit, for OS X 10.6 or later
    curl -L http://a9i.io/decktape/downloads/phantomjs-osx-cocoa-x86-64 -o bin/phantomjs
    chmod +x bin/phantomjs
   

   If the executable isn't available for your target plaform, see the Build section and follow the instructions.

Usage

Into DeckTape install directory:

bin/phantomjs decktape.js -h

Usage: phantomjs decktape.js <url> <filename> [options]

url          URL of the slides deck
filename     Filename of the output PDF file

Options:
   --width    Width of the slides deck  [1280]
   --height   Height of the slides deck  [720]
   --pause    Duration in milliseconds before the next slide is exported  [1000]

Build

To build the forked version of PhantomJS whose DeckTape relies on, you have to execute the following commands from the DeckTape install directory:

1. Initialize the phantomjs submodule:

    git submodule init
   

2. Pull down the phantomjs files:

    git submodule udpdate
   

3. Change into the phantomjs directory:

    cd phantomjs
   

4. Launch the build script:

    build
   

More information can be found in Compiling PhantomJS from source and in Building Qt 5 from Git.

Plugins

✏️

Examples

The following slide deck examples have been exported using DeckTape:

HTML5 Presentation	Framework	Exported PDF
Beyond Rectangles in Web Design	reveal.js 2.6.2	fowd-nyc-2014.pdf (14Mb)
Getting Involved in Open Source	reveal.js 3.0.0	opensource-getting-involved.pdf (1.1M)
Going Further with CDI	Asciidoctor + DZSlides	going-further-with-cdi.pdf (1.8M)