GitHub - asong56/rudoc: A smaller tool for simple convertion workflow

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Fast, dependency-free document converter — a smaller tool for simple convertion workflow.

Release License: MIT

Why Rudoc?

Pandoc Rudoc
Runtime Haskell GHC runtime None (static binary)
Binary size ~100 MB (with GHC) 4–6 MB
Startup 200–500 ms < 5 ms
Install Package manager Drop one binary
Formats 45+ Focused 12
PDF engine LaTeX / Weasyprint / etc. typst CLI or built-in

Rudoc covers the 80% use-case: rich-text ↔ rich-text, spreadsheets, and structured data.

Installation

Download pre-built binary

Platform Binary
Linux x86_64 (static musl) rudoc-linux-x86_64.tar.gz
Linux ARM64 (static musl) rudoc-linux-aarch64.tar.gz
Windows x86_64 rudoc-windows-x86_64.zip
macOS Apple Silicon rudoc-macos-aarch64.tar.gz
macOS Intel rudoc-macos-x86_64.tar.gz

Download from Releases, extract, and place on your PATH.

# Linux / macOS
curl -L https://github.com/asong56/rudoc/releases/latest/download/rudoc-linux-x86_64.tar.gz \
  | tar -xz -C /usr/local/bin
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/rudoc

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/asong56/rudoc
cd rudoc

# Default (no PDF built-in, PDF works via typst CLI on PATH)
cargo build --release

# With PDF built-in (adds ~1.5 MB to binary via printpdf)
cargo build --release --features pdf

# Install to /usr/local/bin
make install

Supported Conversions

Document formats (fully bidirectional)

md  ←→  html  ←→  txt  ←→  docx  ←→  typ  ←→  pdf
md html txt docx typ pdf
md — ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
html ✓ — ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓
txt ✓ ✓ — ✓ ✓ ✓
docx ✓ ✓ ✓ — ✓ ✓
typ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ — ✓
pdf (read) ✓† ✓† ✓† — — —

† PDF reading is text extraction only; layout is not preserved.

Presentations

md → pptx   (H1/H2 headings become slide boundaries)

Tabular data

Structured data (lossless round-trips)

Usage

# Auto-detect formats from file extensions — no flags needed
rudoc README.md README.docx
rudoc report.docx report.pdf
rudoc notes.md slides.pptx
rudoc data.csv report.xlsx
rudoc config.json schema.xml

# Explicit format override
rudoc -f md -t html README.md
rudoc --from docx --to markdown report.docx

# Output to explicit path
rudoc README.md -o /tmp/readme.pdf

# Pipe-friendly (stdin/stdout)
cat README.md | rudoc -f md -t html > page.html
rudoc -f json -t xml < data.json > data.xml

# Merge multiple Markdown files into one document
rudoc ch1.md ch2.md ch3.md -t html
rudoc ch1.md ch2.md -t docx -o book.docx

# Slide level control (default: H1 = new slide)
rudoc notes.md slides.pptx --slide-level 2

# Verbose output
rudoc README.md -t html -v

Options

OPTIONS:
  -f, --from <FORMAT>      Input format (auto-detected from extension)
  -t, --to <FORMAT>        Output format (auto-detected from extension)
  -o, --output <FILE>      Output path (default: stdout)
      --standalone         Emit full HTML document with <head> and CSS
      --slide-level <N>    Heading level that starts a new slide [default: 1]
      --sheet <NAME>       Sheet name for XLSX output/input [default: Sheet1]
      --pdf-paper <SIZE>   Paper: a4 a3 a5 us-letter us-legal [default: a4]
      --pdf-font <NAME>    Body font for Typst/PDF output [default: Arial]
      --wrap <COLS>        Line-wrap width for md/txt output (0 = off)
  -q, --quiet              Suppress progress messages
  -v, --verbose            Show IR stats and timing
  -h, --help               Print help
      --version            Print version

FORMAT NAMES (case-insensitive):
  md / markdown / commonmark / gfm
  html / htm / html5
  txt / text / plain
  docx / word
  typ / typst
  pdf
  pptx / powerpoint / ppt
  csv
  xlsx / excel / xls
  xml
  opml
  json

PDF Output

Rudoc tries three strategies in order:

  1. typst CLI (best quality) — if typst is on your PATH 
    # Install typst: https://typst.app
# macOS:  brew install typst
# Linux:  snap install typst
# Windows: winget install typst.typst
  2. Built-in printpdf (always available, no external tools) — compile with --features pdf
  3. Helpful error with instructions

To get the highest-quality PDFs:

# Install typst, then:
rudoc document.md -o document.pdf

Building Cross-Platform Binaries

Using cross (recommended, needs Docker)

cargo install cross

# Linux x86_64 musl (static)
cross build --release --features pdf --target x86_64-unknown-linux-musl

# Linux ARM64 musl (static)  
cross build --release --features pdf --target aarch64-unknown-linux-musl

# Windows x86_64
cross build --release --features pdf --target x86_64-pc-windows-gnu

macOS (native build required)

# Apple Silicon
cargo build --release --features pdf --target aarch64-apple-darwin

# Intel (or universal binary)
cargo build --release --features pdf --target x86_64-apple-darwin

# Universal fat binary
lipo -create \
  target/aarch64-apple-darwin/release/rudoc \
  target/x86_64-apple-darwin/release/rudoc \
  -output rudoc-macos-universal

GitHub Actions

Push a version tag to trigger the full release pipeline:

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

This builds and releases binaries for all 6 platform/arch combinations automatically.

Architecture

DocIR ────── readers/writers for: md, html, txt, docx, typ, pdf
SlideIR ──── writers for: pptx  (derived from DocIR by heading-split)
TableIR ──── readers/writers for: csv, xlsx
TreeIR ───── readers/writers for: xml, opml, json (lossless round-trips)