Decision on PDF/EPUB generation

[LordSimal]

Important

EVERYONE is welcome to include their opinion about this topic!

Currently we not only generate a web version of the CookBook on https://book.cakephp.org/ but also a EPUB and PDF version.

This may have been very welcome in the past, where the web hasn't been as uniform and standardized as it is right now.

For me, I see the following possible ways to go:

1. Keep EPUB/PDF versions parallel to the current web version
2. Remove EPUB/PDF versions and ONLY keep the web version

[dereuromark]

I say do 1 only if the overhead is managable (minimal).

[ADmad]

If whatever new tool we switch to can easily generate either epub/pdf then we can keep it else having only the web version is fine by me.

[ravage84]

Yeah, if the burden to maintain that functionality is low, let's keep'em.

I found them to be useful if one does a first deep dive into the framework.
Using the docs like a printed book, e.g. on a tabled or e-reader.

[steinkel]

I keep a downloaded version of the book and I usually read it "again" in long flights.
If it's not hard to maintain, I vote for 1.

[markstory]

PDF generation can be a complex nightmare. The way sphinx does it is to convert RST -> LaTex, and then convert the LaTeX to create a PDF. If you're in the node build tool ecosystem, I have to assume there is a library that can convert HTML -> PDF.

If PDF generation is a hassle, ePUB generation is far more feasible. ePUB is just HTML/XML and files in a zip archive, so we could find/build tooling for this easily enough.

[Spriz]

Throwing a PDF into AI LLM of choice is actually pretty good - in many cases easier than using some MCP or let it look up websites - but having the entire docs concatenated in a single markdown file would also work in this case.

disclaimer: I have only used this for other projects than cakephp (I've been through the "book" so many times already.... :D )

[LordSimal]

Vitepress PDF Generation: https://github.com/whamcloud/vitepress-pdf-export

I have not found a EPUB Plugin for VitePress v2 yet.

[Spriz]

@LordSimal shared that he found https://github.com/okineadev/vitepress-plugin-llms in Slack (https://cakesf.slack.com/archives/C053DPNGT/p1758309968383629?thread_ts=1758309224.241269&cid=C053DPNGT) - and that has the following example listed: https://vite.dev/llms-full.txt - this will be insanely good for LLM consumption :)

[PaulHendriks]

I didn't know that there's a pdf/epub version of the doc's until i read this ticket.
Therefor i wont miss it when it's gone.

If the overhead to generate such files is low, then keep it.