Skip to content

PrepareForWindowsUser.md

Latest commit

 

History

History
55 lines (34 loc) · 2.27 KB

PrepareForWindowsUser.md

File metadata and controls

55 lines (34 loc) · 2.27 KB
Raw

Windows PDF Export Dependencies

Markdown Reader uses WeasyPrint for PDF export when its native libraries can be loaded. On Windows, install the runtime libraries through MSYS2 UCRT64 and point WeasyPrint at the UCRT64 DLL directory.

1. Install MSYS2

Download and install MSYS2. Complete its first-time update steps, then open the MSYS2 UCRT64 terminal from the Start menu.

2. Install Pango

In the MSYS2 UCRT64 terminal, run:

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-pango

Accept the package installation prompts. This installs the Pango runtime and its required UCRT64 dependencies.

3. Configure WeasyPrint DLL discovery

WeasyPrint uses the WEASYPRINT_DLL_DIRECTORIES environment variable to locate the MSYS2 runtime DLLs. The default MSYS2 UCRT64 path is:

C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin

For the current PowerShell session, run:

$env:WEASYPRINT_DLL_DIRECTORIES = 'C:\msys64\ucrt64\bin'

To configure it persistently, open System Properties → Advanced → Environment Variables, add a user variable named WEASYPRINT_DLL_DIRECTORIES, and set its value to the UCRT64 bin directory. Open a new terminal after changing the variable.

This is a WeasyPrint DLL-search setting; adding the directory to the general Windows PATH is not the documented replacement for this variable.

4. Verify the runtime

From the repository root, after installing the Python dependencies, run:

uv run python -m weasyprint --info
uv run python -c "from weasyprint import HTML; print('WeasyPrint import OK')"

If the import fails, confirm the MSYS2 installation path and the value of WEASYPRINT_DLL_DIRECTORIES. If MSYS2 was installed outside C:\msys64, use its actual UCRT64 bin directory.

Notes

For upstream installation and native-library troubleshooting details, see the WeasyPrint first steps documentation.

  • PDF export uses WeasyPrint when available. The app can fall back to PyMuPDF, which may produce simpler layouts.
  • DOCX export is separate from the WeasyPrint PDF dependency.
  • For macOS setup, see Prepare for macOS.
  • For the PDF export architecture, see Technical Documentation.