Convert text to PDF

What the PDF looks like

The PDF is a plain document: your text in one font and size, in black, on A4 or US Letter pages. Lines wrap at the margins between words, and a word too long for a whole line (a long URL) is broken where it reaches the edge. Blank lines and spaces at the start of a line are kept, and tabs become spaces up to the next multiple of four, so lists and simple layouts look the way they do in your text editor.

The first non-empty line becomes the PDF’s title, which is what most readers show in the window or tab instead of the file name.

Fonts and file size

Helvetica, Times and Courier are three of the 14 standard fonts that every PDF reader must provide, so the PDF doesn’t have to carry the font inside it. That keeps a page of text to a few kilobytes and makes the text selectable and searchable. These fonts only cover English and Western European languages, so text with other letters is set in the matching Noto font instead (Noto Sans, Noto Serif or Noto Sans Mono, and Noto Sans for Chinese, Japanese and Korean). The PDF then carries just the characters it uses, so it stays small. Characters no font here has are listed in the status line rather than dropped silently.

Paper sizes

A4 (210 × 297 mm) is the standard paper size almost everywhere outside North America. Letter (8.5 × 11 inches) is used in the United States, Canada and a few other countries. A PDF made for one prints fine on the other with “fit to page” turned on, but choosing the right one keeps the margins even. To combine the PDF with others afterwards, use merge PDF.