{"slug": "prince", "name": "Prince", "category": "other", "category_name": "Other software", "description": "", "recommenders": 3, "commenters": 3, "warners": 0, "score": 2.756, "rising": 0.35, "first": "2026-03-01", "latest": "2026-10-27", "why": "I've used it in the past, and can attest that it is outstanding.", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 0, "compare": 0, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "I've used it in the past, and can attest that it is outstanding.", "kind": "", "icon": true, "domain": "princexml.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.princexml.com", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["Prince"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 804074896, "item_id": 50254681, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50254681", "by": "Loranubi", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use \u201cPrince\u201d to convert html to pdf. With good CSS you can have a really good quality output.", "excerpt": "You can even have footnotes with links to other pages which automatically include the target page number in the text. Print CSS is actually pretty powerful. Just browser support is bad. I use \u201cPrince\u201d to convert html to pdf. With good CSS you can have a really good quality output. I used it to export a pdf for a whole book that way.", "context": "", "use_case": "HTML to PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Websites Should Be Printable"}, {"id": 771272640, "item_id": 48204540, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48204540", "by": "5-", "date": "2026-05-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "prince, a high quality html renderer used for typesetting", "excerpt": "prince, a high quality html renderer used for typesetting, is written in mercury: https://www.princexml.com/doc/acknowledgements/", "context": "", "use_case": "HTML to PDF typesetting", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Mercury logic programming system"}, {"id": 755429648, "item_id": 47214353, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47214353", "by": "TimTheTinker", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've used it in the past, and can attest that it is outstanding.", "excerpt": "> If you generate PDFs with headless browsers or HTML-to-PDF tools, you've accepted a compromise: heavy dependencies, memory leaks, and \"approximate\" layout that shifts across environments Absolutely not true with Prince[0]. It's an HTML/CSS-based typesetter built by the creator of CSS (H\u00e5kon Wium Lie [1]) that is lightweight, cross-platform, requires no dependencies, has no memory leaks, is 100% consistent in its ou", "context": "", "use_case": "HTML/CSS to PDF typesetting", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["html to pdf conversion", "html to pdf typesetting", "html/css to pdf typesetting"], "compared": [], "makers": [{"id": 732594064, "item_id": 45787129, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45787129", "by": "mikeday", "date": "2025-11-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "feel free to give Prince a try if you would rather avoid the headache", "excerpt": "We've spent twenty years working on HTML to PDF conversion and I expect we could easily spend another twenty years, so feel free to give Prince a try if you would rather avoid the headache :)", "context": "", "use_case": "HTML to PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "The hardest program I've ever written (2015)"}], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50241664", "title": "Websites Should Be Printable", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48176384", "title": "The Mercury logic programming system", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47206082", "title": "item 47206082", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45742886", "title": "The hardest program I've ever written (2015)", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-04": {}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-06": {}, "2026-07": {}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804074896, "item_id": 50254681, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50254681", "by": "Loranubi", "date": "2026-10-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use \u201cPrince\u201d to convert html to pdf. With good CSS you can have a really good quality output.", "excerpt": "You can even have footnotes with links to other pages which automatically include the target page number in the text. Print CSS is actually pretty powerful. Just browser support is bad. I use \u201cPrince\u201d to convert html to pdf. With good CSS you can have a really good quality output. I used it to export a pdf for a whole book that way.", "context": "", "use_case": "HTML to PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Websites Should Be Printable"}, {"id": 771272640, "item_id": 48204540, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48204540", "by": "5-", "date": "2026-05-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "prince, a high quality html renderer used for typesetting", "excerpt": "prince, a high quality html renderer used for typesetting, is written in mercury: https://www.princexml.com/doc/acknowledgements/", "context": "", "use_case": "HTML to PDF typesetting", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Mercury logic programming system"}, {"id": 755429648, "item_id": 47214353, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47214353", "by": "TimTheTinker", "date": "2026-03-01", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've used it in the past, and can attest that it is outstanding.", "excerpt": "> If you generate PDFs with headless browsers or HTML-to-PDF tools, you've accepted a compromise: heavy dependencies, memory leaks, and \"approximate\" layout that shifts across environments Absolutely not true with Prince[0]. It's an HTML/CSS-based typesetter built by the creator of CSS (H\u00e5kon Wium Lie [1]) that is lightweight, cross-platform, requires no dependencies, has no memory leaks, is 100% consistent in its ou", "context": "", "use_case": "HTML/CSS to PDF typesetting", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}