Custom Styles

Styles are LaTeX header templates that control the visual appearance of PDF output: fonts, colors, headers/footers, heading formats, and page geometry.

Style Resolution

When a style name is specified in the config, obsidian-export looks for the corresponding header.tex template in this order:

1. style_dir field in config — explicit path to a style directory
2. Built-in styles — bundled with the package (e.g., default)
3. User styles — ~/.obsidian-export/styles/<name>/header.tex
4. Filesystem path — treat the style name as a direct path

Creating a Custom Style

Place your custom style in ~/.obsidian-export/styles/<name>/header.tex:

~/.obsidian-export/
  styles/
    my_brand/
      header.tex
      logo.png       # optional logo file

The header.tex file is a LaTeX preamble template. It supports placeholder variables that are substituted at render time:

• {doc_title} — the document title (from frontmatter or filename)
• {logo_path} — absolute path to the logo file

Style Configuration

Styles are configured via the style section in your config YAML. You can customize fonts, colors, headers/footers, heading formats, and more without writing LaTeX directly:

style:
  name: "default"
  fontsize: "12pt"
  mainfont: "Georgia"
  sansfont: "Helvetica"
  monofont: "Source Code Pro"
  greek_font: ""            # Fallback font for Greek glyphs (e.g. "DejaVu Serif"); empty disables
  geometry: "a4paper,margin=25mm"
  line_spacing: 1.5
  linkcolor: "NavyBlue"
  urlcolor: "NavyBlue"

Brand Colors

Define named colors for use in heading styles and title blocks:

style:
  brand_colors:
    petrol: [20, 75, 95]
    turkis: [0, 152, 160]

Colors are specified as RGB triplets (0-255).

Heading Styles

Customize the appearance of section headings:

style:
  heading_styles:
    - level: "section"
      size: "Large"
      bold: true
      sans: true
      color: "petrol"
      uppercase: false
    - level: "subsection"
      size: "large"
      bold: true
      sans: true
      color: "turkis"
      uppercase: true

Available sizes (LaTeX): huge, LARGE, Large, large, normalsize, small.

Every field shown above is required on each entry. Omitting one raises ConfigValueError naming the missing field rather than silently applying a built-in default.

Title Style

Customize the document title block:

style:
  title_style:
    size: "huge"
    bold: true
    sans: true
    color: "petrol"
    date_visible: true
    vskip_after: "2em"

title_style may be omitted entirely (or set to null) to keep the default title block, but when present every field above is required.

Headers and Footers

Configure page headers and footers with placeholder support:

style:
  header_left: "{doc_title}"
  header_right: "My Company"
  footer_left: ""
  footer_center: "\\thepage"
  footer_right: ""
  logo: "logo.png"

The {doc_title} and {logo_path} placeholders are replaced at render time.