Command-line Interface

Prince may be called from the command-line with the following arguments:

prince [OPTIONS] FILES... [ -o PDF ]

Please note that on Windows, Prince can be called from the command-line by running the prince.exe file found in the Prince\Engine\bin folder of the Prince installation.

Examples

prince file.xml
Convert file.xml to file.pdf.
prince doc.html -o out.pdf
Convert doc.html to out.pdf.
prince -s style1.css -s style2.css input.xml -o output.pdf
Convert input.xml to output.pdf, applying two user style sheets.
prince doc1.html doc2.html -o out.pdf
Combine doc1.html and doc2.html into a single PDF file, out.pdf.

Specifying input and output

The command line must contain the name of the input file to process. An input filename consisting of a single hyphen "-" will cause Prince to read from the standard input stream.

The output file name can be specified on the command line using the -o command line option. An output filename consisting of a single hyphen "-" will cause Prince to write to the standard output stream.

If the output file name is omitted, the output will be placed in a file with the same name as the input, but with a PDF file extension.

Options

The command line may include the options described below:

General options

-h, --help
Display usage and options.
--version
Display version information.
-v, --verbose
Log informative messages.
--log=FILE
Log error messages to a file.
--log-stats
Log document statistics. (Removed in Prince 8.0)

Input options

-i, --input=FORMAT
Set input format [xml | html | auto].
--baseurl=URL
Specify the base URL of the input document.
--fileroot=DIR
Specify the root directory for absolute filenames.
--no-xinclude
Disable XInclude processing.

Network options

--no-network
Disable network access (prevents HTTP downloads).
--http-user=USER
Specify the username for HTTP authentication.
--http-password=PASS
Specify the password for HTTP authentication.
--http-proxy=PROXY
Specify the HTTP proxy server.
--cookiejar=FILE
Specify a file containing HTTP cookies.
--ssl-cacert=FILE
Specify an SSL certificate file.
--ssl-capath=PATH
Specify an SSL certificate directory.
--insecure
Disable SSL verification (not recommended).

CSS options

-s, --style=FILE
Apply a CSS file.
--media=MEDIA
Specify the media type (eg. print, screen).
--no-author-style
Ignore author style sheets.
--no-default-style
Ignore default style sheets.

PDF output options

-o, --output=FILE.PDF
Specify the output PDF file.
--no-embed-fonts
Disable font embedding in PDF output.
--no-subset-fonts
Disable font subsetting in PDF output.
--no-compress
Disable compression of PDF output.

PDF encryption options

--encrypt
Encrypt PDF output.
--key-bits=NUM
Set encryption key size [40 | 128].
--user-password=PASS
Set PDF user password.
--owner-password=PASS
Set PDF owner password.
--disallow-print
Disallow printing of PDF output.
--disallow-copy
Disallow copying from PDF output.
--disallow-annotate
Disallow annotation of PDF output.
--disallow-modify
Disallow modification of PDF output.

Utility options

--scanfonts FILES...
Scan font files and create a CSS file.