VMPrint Documentation

VMPrint is a deterministic spatial simulation engine for document generation. It has no knowledge of browsers or the DOM - pages are bounded arenas, elements are autonomous actors, and layout is the process of reaching a stable world state. The same input always produces the exact same output, to the sub-point, across every runtime: Node.js, Cloudflare Workers, Lambda, and the browser.

API Reference

Complete type-level documentation for all public packages, generated from source:

API Reference ->

Covers @vmprint/engine, @vmprint/contracts, all contexts, all font managers, and all transmuters - every class, interface, and type, cross-linked between packages.

Guides

A progressive six-chapter authoring guide, from first document to scripting:

Chapter	Topic
Introduction	Overview and reading path
01 - Your First Document	Document structure, layout config, a minimal working example
02 - Styles and Text	The style system, typography, inline formatting
03 - Stories, Strips, and Zones	Multi-column layout, strips, zone maps
04 - Headers, Footers, and Page Control	Running regions, page numbering, pagination control
05 - Images, Tables, and Overlays	Embedded images, table layout, overlay system
06 - Scripting	Document and element lifecycle hooks, messaging, mutations

Reference

Detailed specifications for the document format and runtime APIs:

Document	Contents
AST Reference	Complete `DocumentInput` schema - layout config, all element types, style properties
Scripting API	All lifecycle methods, element addressing, messaging, mutation API
Overlay System	`OverlayProvider` interface, render lifecycle, backdrop and overlay hooks
Standard Fonts	The 14 built-in PDF fonts, Win-ANSI encoding, sentinel buffer mechanism
CLI Reference	`vmprint` CLI - flags, layout stream, render-from-layout, overlay sidecar

Live Examples

Each example is a complete VMPrint pipeline running entirely client-side - no backend, no server, no headless browser. Download the folder, open index.html, and it works immediately from file://.

Example	Description
AST -> PDF	`StandardFontManager` + `PdfLiteContext`. Zero font files in the pipeline. ~182 KiB Brotli for the full runtime.
AST -> PDF with web fonts	Same pipeline with `@vmprint/web-fonts` for remote font loading, enabling custom typography and broad multilingual shaping.
AST -> Canvas with web fonts	`@vmprint/context-canvas` renders SVG-backed page scenes into a live browser canvas - the basis for document preview UIs.
Preview Package	Full canvas preview, PDF export, and SVG export via the standalone `@vmprint/preview` bundle.
Markdown -> AST	Full Markdown transmutation in the browser, producing a VMPrint `DocumentInput` you can inspect.

Packages