render50

render50 is a command-line tool with which you can generate syntax-highlighted PDFs of source code. In years past, CS50 generated PDFs of students’ submissions so that teaching fellows (TFs) could annotate the PDFs with typed feedback. These days, CS50 generates PDFs of lectures’ source code so that students can annotate them during lectures and so that David has a printout of each lecture’s source code in front of him during lectures!

PDFs can be annotated (for free) with:

Installation

  1. Install Python 3.6 or later, if you haven’t already.

  2. Install pip, if you haven’t already.

  3. Install render50 itself:

    pip3 install render50

  4. Install WeasyPrint’s dependencies.

Upgrading

pip install --upgrade render50

Usage

usage: render50 [-h] [-b] [-C] [-i INCLUDE] -o OUTPUT [-r] [-s SIZE]
                [-x EXCLUDE] [-y] [-V]
                input [input ...]

A command-line tool that renders source code as a PDF.

positional arguments:
  input                 file or URL to render

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -b, --browser         render as a browser would
  -C, --no-color        disable syntax highlighting
  -i INCLUDE, --include INCLUDE
                        pattern to include
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        file to output
  -r, --recursive       recurse into directories
  -s SIZE, --size SIZE  size of page, per https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
                        US/docs/Web/CSS/@page/size
  -x EXCLUDE, --exclude EXCLUDE
                        pattern to exclude
  -y, --side-by-side    render inputs side by side
  -V, --version         show program's version number and exit

Examples

Render a single file

To generate a PDF (e.g., foo.pdf) from a source file (e.g., bar.c), execute:

render50 -o foo.pdf bar.c

Render multiple files

To generate a PDF (e.g., foo.pdf) from multiple source files (e.g., bar.c and baz.c), execute:

render50 -o foo.pdf bar.c baz.c

The source files will be rendered in the order in which they’re specified on the command line.

Include files

To generate a PDF (e.g., foo.pdf) from multiple source files, including only those that match some pattern (e.g., *.c), execute:

render50 -i "*.c" -o foo.pdf *

Take care to quote (or escape with \) any patterns with wildcards, lest your shell glob the pattern before render50 can.

Exclude files

To generate a PDF (e.g., foo.pdf) from multiple source files, excluding those that match some pattern (e.g., *.h), execute:

render50 -x "*.h" -o foo.pdf *

As before, take care to quote (or escape with \) any patterns with wildcards, lest your shell glob the pattern before render50 can.

Render two files side by side

To generate a PDF (e.g., foo.pdf) with two source files (e.g., bar.c and baz.c) side by side, execute:

render50 -o foo.pdf -y bar.c baz.c

Render files recursively

To recurse into directories, invoke render50 with -r.

Disable syntax highlighting

To disable syntax highlighting, invoke render50 with -C.

Rendering URLs

To generate a PDF (e.g., foo.pdf) with a source file at a URL (e.g., https://github.com/cs50/render50/blob/master/render50), execute:

render50 -o foo.pdf https://github.com/cs50/render50/blob/master/render50

Note that URLs on github.com are handled specially: URLs of the form https://github.com/*/*/blob/* are resolved to https://github.com/*/*/raw/* so that the file is downloaded from raw.githubusercontent.com. And URLs of the form https://gist.github.com/*/* (and https://gist.github.com/*/*#file-*) are resolved to https://gist.github.com/*/*/raw (and https://gist.github.com/*/*/raw/*) so that the file is downloaded from gist.githubusercontent.com.

Overriding page size

By default, render50 outputs letter-sized (8.5” × 11”) pages in landscape orientation. To override that default, invoke render50 with --size SIZE, where SIZE is as prescribed by CSS. Supported values for SIZE thus include:

  • letter landscape
  • letter portrait
  • A4 landscape
  • A4 portrait