Print issue 0.99.5 : box icons & included notes disappeared

[Potjoe-97]

Hi, I've been amazed with the work on pdf printing in the last versions, but I recently faced an issue with all newly created notes. When trying to print them, when they contain links with box icons or included notes, these do not show up in the final results.

What is really strange is that for a few versions only old notes, I don't have any issue :

I've tried to use some custom printcss, but I deleted everything related to it. Did I broke something ?

[dosubot[bot]]

This is a regression caused by recent changes to Trilium's print/export pipeline. Since version 0.99.3, the print renderer uses an isolated environment with minimal CSS and JS, which means some elements—like box icons (styled with the boxicons library) and included notes (which rely on client-side logic)—may not appear in printed PDFs for new notes. Old notes might still work if their content was rendered differently or cached before these changes. Custom print CSS is no longer supported, so deleting or modifying it won't affect the output in 0.99.5 [source].

Currently, there isn't a built-in workaround to restore these features in print. The only suggested workaround is to export your note to HTML, manually adjust the CSS if needed, and print from your browser [source]. This limitation affects all new notes using the updated rendering logic, not just your setup.

If you need these features in your PDFs, exporting to HTML and printing from there is the best option for now.

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[Potjoe-97]

@dosu I understand, but as I'm saying, I'm not using any printcss anymore! The default renderer gives two different outputs, breaking include notes & box icons in links.

[eliandoran]

Can you provide a sample ZIP with a document where it renders fine and one where it doesn't? Perhaps there is a difference in the HTML of old vs new documents.

[dosubot[bot]]

This difference in print output is expected with the current Trilium architecture. Since version 0.99.3, the print/export pipeline uses a dedicated, isolated environment that only loads minimal CSS and does not run the full app’s client-side logic or global styles. As a result, elements like included notes and box icons—which depend on extra CSS, fonts, or dynamic scripts—don’t appear in printed PDFs for new notes. Old notes may still work if they have inline styles or cached markup that happens to render correctly in this minimal environment, but new notes rely on resources that aren’t present during print/export [source].

There’s no built-in workaround to restore these features in PDF output. The only reliable method is to export your note to HTML, manually adjust the CSS if needed, and print from your browser [source]. Custom print CSS is only loaded if you explicitly link a note to a printCss code note; global custom CSS is ignored in the print environment.

If you need more technical details or want to troubleshoot a specific case, let me know!

To reply, just mention @dosu.

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[Potjoe-97]

Thank you! Sure :

Valféroy.zip This note (Valféroy) renders fine, I included its child notes

Quête De l'amour dans les bois (1).zip And this one doesn'nt.

[eliandoran]

Hmm... in the upcoming release candidate we've changed the bit handling of reference links so they might actually render fine. Would you be willing to test on the latest nightly?

On my side it seems to render fine now, at least for the notes that exist:

[eliandoran]

Regarding included notes not rendering, I can reproduce the issue, I will see what I can do about it.
Update: Done in 2695b7f.

[Potjoe-97]

Thank you very much ! No issue anymore with the box icons in th nightly build.

[eliandoran]

Also, if you happen to test the latest nightly, you might find interesting printing list collections, which can render an entire note hierarchy into a book-like PDF.

https://docs.triliumnotes.org/user-guide/collections/list#printing-and-exporting-to-pdf

[Potjoe-97]

WOW!!! This is stunning ! I've been waiting this feature for years, thank you very much !!!!