Printing descriptions with Prince

What Prince does

Prince converts Web pages into PDFs, intended for printing. The cave descriptions on this site can be printed using your normal Web browser, but if you use Prince, you can also get a nicely formatted table of contents.

Downloading Prince

Download Prince 6 or later for your system from the Prince 6 download page. Follow their instructions for installing it. Note that since this is for personal private use, it is free, and you do not need to purchase a license.

Converting the description with Prince

Tell Prince to load and convert the online page, as well as applying the special Prince stylesheet:

Windows
Start - (All) Programs - Accessories - Command prompt (change the description URL as needed) (note that you can copy from here and right click in the command prompt window to paste):
"C:\Program Files\Prince\Engine\bin\prince" --no-embed-fonts --style=http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/styles/prince-a4.css "http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/info/Crescent.htm" C:\description.pdf
Linux/Mac
In a terminal (change the description URL as needed):
prince --no-embed-fonts --style=http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/styles/prince-a4.css http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/info/Crescent.htm ~/description.pdf

You should now have a new PDF file in the specified folder (C:\description.pdf on Windows, ~/description.pdf on Linux/Mac). Double click it (or whatever) to open it in your chosen PDF viewer, and then use that program's print function to print it.

By default, it will produce a PDF optimised for A4 paper size, and most PDF viewers can zoom it to fit the paper if you use a different size in your printer. You can also choose these alternative stylesheets (as the value of the --style option) for different paper sizes:

A4 (normal for most countries)
http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/styles/prince-a4.css
A5 (half sized for most countries)
http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/styles/prince-a5.css
Letter (normal for USA, Canada and Mexico)
http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/styles/prince-letter.css
Not specified (use this if you plan to use your own stylesheet to specify a different size)
http://www.cavinguk.co.uk/styles/prince.css