Introduction

PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a lossless image format widely used for screenshots, graphics, and web images. Stencila can render documents or individual nodes to PNG for sharing, embedding, or use as static previews.

Usage

Use the .png file extension, or the --to png option, when converting to PNG e.g.

stencila convert doc.smd doc.png

Implementation

PNG encoding is implemented in the Rust crate codec-png. By default, nodes are encoded to LaTeX and then rendered to a PNG image. Image resizing and optimization options are also supported for use cases like email embedding.

Limitations

PNG is encode-only. Stencila cannot reconstruct document structure from PNG images.

Rendering relies on a LaTeX installation being available.

The output is a flat image with no selectable text or document structure.

Very long documents may produce extremely tall images.