Note that for example dokuwiki has a [[nice plugin|http://danjer.doudouke.org/tech/dokutexit]] which converts the wiki page to latex and then to pdf and you can customize the latex-preamble.
-> I've actually written one, it's just not publicly released. You can check it out from the "experimental" branch of my <a href="https://github.com/rubykat/ikiplugins">ikiplugins githup repo</a>. It's called "html2pdf" and it depends on the static version of <a href="http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/">wkhtmltopdf</a> rather than requiring a whole LaTeX setup. It's only been used on Ubuntu, so I can't say what problems there might be on other setups, but it works for me. It's not properly documented; I'd appreciate some help with that.
+> I've actually written one, it's just not publicly released. You can check it out from the "experimental" branch of my <a href="https://github.com/rubykat/ikiplugins">ikiplugins githup repo</a>. It's called "html2pdf" and it depends on the static version of <a href="http://wkhtmltopdf.org">wkhtmltopdf</a> rather than requiring a whole LaTeX setup. It's only been used on Ubuntu, so I can't say what problems there might be on other setups, but it works for me. It's not properly documented; I'd appreciate some help with that.
> -- [[KathrynAndersen]]
-> Thanks, I downloaded the git-repro and did `sudo cp html2pdf.pm /usr/share/perl5/IkiWiki/Plugin/` then I added html2pdf to the addplugins line in my setup-file (`mywiki.setup`) as well a new line `html2pdf_pages=>"/*",`. Then I did `sudo ikiwiki --setup mywiki.setup`. However there is no button or something like that which let's me create the pdf's
-> -- [[micheal]]
+>> kathryn: wkhtmltopdf is based on webkit (qtwebkit). it effectively does a sort-of "i am a browser, i am going to print this page for you, oh look, you don't actually have a screen, i'll just output the file conveniently for you" thing. as such, the dependencies are MASSIVE. i just tried installing wkhtmltopdf on a debian server: it required pulling in x11 libraries, font configs, QT5, libxml2, 30+ other dependencies, pulling in over ONE HUNDRED sub and sub-dependencies - the works. absolutely NO chance - whatsoever - that i am going to put a public-facing server at risk or waste resources with such a nightmare waiting to happen, particularly one that is activated by a web service. latex on the other hand, despite being likely much larger, i can tolerate. it has "class" and history, being developed in the 70s by donald knuth - i.e. it was *not* developed by apple (ripping off the KDE KHTMLPart team's work, years ago) and does *not* depend on a whole bunch of crap such as qt. qt is a *GUI* toolkit, what am i gonna do installing that on a *server* for god's sake?? :) tex. donald knuth. that's pedigree.
+
+>> Thanks, I downloaded the git-repro and did `sudo cp html2pdf.pm /usr/share/perl5/IkiWiki/Plugin/` then I added html2pdf to the addplugins line in my setup-file (`mywiki.setup`) as well a new line `html2pdf_pages=>"/*",`. Then I did `sudo ikiwiki --setup mywiki.setup`. However there is no button or something like that which let's me create the pdf's
+>> -- [[micheal]]
+
+>>> That is because they are created automatically as part of the page-build process. That's what the "html2pdf_pages" option is for: it defines which pages have PDFs generated from them. If a PDF is generated for page "foo", then the PDF itself will be in "foo/foo.pdf".
+
+>>> I also notice you didn't mention installing wkhtmltopdf - it won't create PDFs without that!
+>>> -- [[KathrynAndersen]]
+
+>>>> Yes, wkhtmltopdf is installed and works, however there are no pdf-files in my /var/www/myiki directory or in scrdir.
+
+>>>>> Have you tried running it with "verbose" turned on, and noting the output? That could give some clues.
+>>>>> And no, the PDFs are not placed in the source dir, only in the destination dir.
+>>>>> -- [[KathrynAndersen]]
+
+**Edit (17.02.2012)**: I have put an extended version of the question on webmasters.stackexchange: [[http://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/24905/run-external-application-on-markdown-source-in-ikiwiki]] , perhaps someone of the ikiwiki programmers is intersted in having this feature too...