mitgliederverwaltung/docs/pdf-generation-imprintor.md

PDF Generation: Imprintor instead of Chromium

Decision

For PDF generation we use Imprintor ({:imprintor, "~> 0.6.0"}) with Typst templates, rather than a Chromium-based renderer (Puppeteer, Chrome Headless, etc.). Implemented in lib/mv/membership/members_pdf.ex, template at priv/pdf_templates/members_export.typ.

Rationale (Imprintor over Chromium)

• Resource efficiency: no full browser instance in memory, no browser-rendering pipeline on the CPU.
• Smaller Docker images: no Chromium install (saves several hundred MB); works in minimal images (e.g. Alpine), with no system dependencies (Chromium, ChromeDriver) to ship or keep updated.
• Elixir-native: integrates with the BEAM and Elixir error handling instead of managing an external browser process; faster generation and easier parallelism (no browser startup or instance management).
• Smaller attack surface: no browser engine with its own CVE stream.

When Chromium would still be warranted

A Chromium-based renderer makes sense when the document requires JavaScript execution, dynamic JS-rendered content, modern web CSS features, or full-page screenshots of web pages — none of which apply to our static, template-driven exports.

Usage in this project

Member export as PDF (member lists / reports) and other static, predefined documents (e.g. membership certificates).