The magic of Prince
Prince is a computer program that converts XML and HTML into PDF. It is simple, yet very powerful, and
it creates beautiful documents. The purpose of this small document is to showcase the formatting magic
Prince can do. We have chosen to highlight eighteen of our favorite features. This document is written in
HTML and converted to PDF by Prince. The source file is a compact 13k document, including the embedded CSS, SVG and MathML.

#4: HTTP support

T ab le o f c o n t ents
Hyphenation ...................1
Rounded borders ............1
Character substitution ....1
HTTP support.................1
Web fonts .......................1
Image resolution.............1
Columns .........................1
CMYK colors .................1
Counters .........................2

Prince 6 has built-in HTTP support
and can fetch pages, images, DTDs
and style sheets from the web. The
image to the left was automatically
fetched when the PDF version was
generated.

Crop and cross marks..... 2
Cross-references ............ 2
Math............................... 2
Footnotes........................ 2
Leaders........................... 2
SVG ............................... 2
Page floats...................... 2
Headers and footers ....... 2
PDF bookmarks ............. 2

#5: Web fonts
Prince 6 can fetch fonts from the web and use them
without installing them on your system. The fonts used in
the PDF version of this document are web fonts. We are
grateful to Ray Larabie, Dieter Steffmann, and Red Hat
for making hi-quality fonts freely available.

#1: Hyphenation
Prince 6 supports automatic hyphenation which can
break words across several lines, adding a hyphen at the
word break. Hyphenation is controlled with a set of experimental CSS properties, and hyphenation patterns for
different languages can be supplied. Notice how the text
in this document is hyphenated.

#6: Image resolution
Sometimes images should be scaled to a certain resolution, rather than to an absolute size. In Prince, you can
set the resolution of an image as a property in the style
sheet. The smiley face in the previous section was scaled
this way. The smiley also represents the challenging
Acid2 test, which Prince 6 passes.

#2: Rounded borders
CSS3 introduces support for rounded borders. In the
table below, some of the corners have been rounded. On
purpose, the bottom right corner has an asymmetrical
shape.

#7: Columns
Columns are commonly
used on paper and Prince
supports multi-column layouts described in CSS.
This document is laid out
in two columns. Also, this

fruit computer
apple yes
orange yes

yes
no

#3: Character substitution

section uses a two-column
layout with gap and a rule
between. The width of the
gap and the style of the
rule is set in the style sheet.

#8: CMYK colors

It’s sometimes convenient to replace one character with
another without changing the source document. For example, the apostrophe character is easily found on keyboards, but in print it’s common to replace it with a quotation character. Notice how Prince 6 has replaced the
apostrophes in this paragraph.

Printers don’t use RGB colors, they mostly use CMYK:
cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Prince 6 can read
CMYK colors and will use them, if present. The heading
above this paragraph has both an RGB color (red) and a
CMYK color (bluish). Therefore, the text is red in

1

The magic of Prince

www.princexml.com
browsers, but blue in the PDF version. This is for demonstration purposes; normally the colors would be close to
each other.

don’t want to see. More often, footnotes will actually attract attention. 9 of 10 of readers will read the footnotes
before they read the text from where the footnotes are
anchored.2

#9: Counters
#14: Leaders

If you are reading the XHTML source code of this document, look for the h2 elements. You will notice that they
contain the text of the headings, but not their number.
The list item number, including the “#” and “:” are automatically generated by the style sheet. Generated content
and counters are especially useful for complex documents. They are described in CSS level 2.1.

Leaders consist of dots or dashes in a row leading the eye
across a page. For example, the Table of contents has
leaders in it. The leaders are not found in the document
itself, but rather in the style sheet.

#15: SVG
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) is a language for describing two-dimensional graphics for the web. SVG images scale better
than traditional bitmapped images and are
suitable for printing. The crown is generated by two SVG
elements.

#10: Crop and cross marks
In printing, crop marks are used to indicate where the
printed paper should be cut. Cross marks are used to
align prints of different colors to improve color reproduction. Prince 6 adds support for crop and cross marks, and
the PDF version of this document includes both.

#16: Page floats
#11: Cross-references

On paged media, elements can be set float to the top or
bottom of pages. The big URL at the top of this page
comes after this paragraph in the source code, but is
floated to the top by the style sheet.

Prince can read hyperlinks inside a document and generate page numbers accordingly. For example, it will automatically find out which page Headers and Footers are
discussed on (page 2). Cross-references are used to generate the Table of contents (page 1).

#17: Headers and footers
Printed documents often have page headers and footers.
For example, page numbers are often printed at the bottom of the page, and the document title is shown at the
top – except on title pages.

#12: Math
Prince 6 add experimental support for MathML. Here is
an example:
maps to

n

( )

x → y = f n (x ) = 1 +

1
xn

#18: PDF Bookmarks
Prince will automatically generate PDF bookmarks from
heading elements in HTML. The feature is set with a
property in the style sheet, and can also be used with other markup languages.

#13: Footnotes
Footnotes1 are essential in printed documents and Prince
knows how to generate them. Unlike what some people
think, footnotes are not the place to put information you

1.A footnote is a note placed at the bottom of a page of a book or manuscript that comments on or cites a reference for a designated part of the text.
2.Often, the most interesting information is found in the footnotes.

2