[Feature] PDF Export Functionality in Documentation

[ai-yann]

Problem description

The PDF printing functionality (⌘P > "Save as PDF") in Fern's documentation is not working as expected across browsers:

• Chrome: Only saves the currently visible portion of the webpage, rather than the complete documentation
• Safari: Produces a blank page when attempting to save as PDF

This behavior differs from other documentation sites (e.g., Google Cloud Docs, OpenAI Docs) where the complete documentation is properly saved as a multi-page PDF.

Why would it be useful?

Many users save documentation as PDFs to:

• Provide context to LLM conversations
• Reference documentation offline
• Share documentation with team members
• Archive specific versions of documentation

Having consistent PDF export functionality would streamline these workflows and align with user expectations based on other documentation platforms.

Describe the solution

The PDF printing functionality should:

1. Capture the complete documentation content, not just the visible portion
2. Work consistently across major browsers (Chrome, Safari)
3. Generate properly formatted multi-page PDFs
4. Match the behavior seen on other documentation platforms

Additional context

• Currently users need to use the raw markdown files from the GitHub repository as a workaround
• Repository: https://github.com/cohere-ai/cohere-developer-experience/tree/main/fern/pages
• Similar sites where the functionality works as expected:
  • https://cloud.google.com/docs
  • https://platform.openai.com/docs/api-reference/introduction

[dannysheridan]

Hey @ai-yann -- it sounds like the most important use case is Provide context to LLM conversations given you mentioned it first and it's a feature request we've been hearing from other users of Fern Docs.

We're prototyping a new feature that allows you to add .mdx to the end of any page and it will spit out the underlying markdown. Example: https://docs.cohere.com/docs/preambles.mdx

Does this solve the problem you're after?

[dannysheridan]

We're planning to support the proposal from https://llmstxt.org/ of having docs.cohere.com/llms.txt and/or docs.cohere.com/llms-full.txt

I anticipate we will do this in .txt. and .mdx but am open to input.

[ai-yann]

This sounds great. My personal favorite is .txt because it is the most widely accepted file extension accepted by chatbots. When dealing with .mdx I usually need to remove the x or even change it to .txt entirely, for the chatbot to accept it, depending on which I'm using.