Pushing forward for CSS Print

The Web is one of the largest common resources, accessible to everyone across the globe, based on standards maintained by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Certain CSS modules have been developed specifically for paginated design and publication: the fragmentation model, which divides content into pages, columns, or regions, and includes features such as controlling flow breakpoints (page breaks, column breaks, etc.). Additionally, three W3C CSS modules focus on formatting for "paginated media", defining how pages are structured and providing essential functionality for printed page layouts, including margin sizes, page numbering, running headers, footnotes, templates, and element positioning on the page. However, these modules remain in the Working Draft phase, and currently no web browser has fully implemented them.

In response to this limited browser support, several open-source initiatives (such as WeasyPrint and Paged.js) have emerged over the past 15 years, each with a unique approach to addressing these challenges. The user community continues to grow, new layout requirements have arisen, revealing that the current specifications are insufficient to meet the demands of modern paginated layout. As developers, maintainers and users of these open-source solutions, our goal is to address these gaps by collaborating on the development of new specifications in a structured and collective manner, demonstrating the feasibility of these new specifications by implementing them in various tools and engaging in advocacy with the CSS Working Group (CSSWG) to promote the adoption of these new specification proposals.