papercut/docx

Word (.docx) export for Papercut documents: the same document you render as a PDF, as a file people can open and edit in Word, LibreOffice or Google Docs.

The Word file is written by dskripchenko/php-docx, by Denis Skripchenko. Papercut maps its layout onto Word's paragraphs and tables; php-docx writes the file. Thank you.

Documentation: Word export

Status: experimental. Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs lay out the file themselves, so spacing and page breaks can differ slightly from the PDF, and the output may change between minor versions while it settles.

Install

composer require papercut/docx

It needs PHP 8.4 with ext-zip, and papercut/core.

Use

use Papercut\Docx\DocxExporter;

$document->export(new DocxExporter())->save('invoice.docx');

With papercut/laravel installed too, Papercut::view('invoice', $data)->docx()->download('invoice.docx'), and ?format=docx on a preview route.

What readers see

Word, LibreOffice and Google Docs lay out the pages themselves, so page breaks can land a line or two away from the PDF's. Columns flow as paragraphs, rows become borderless tables at the widths the PDF uses, and a box with padding, a border or a background becomes a one-cell table.

• Each run of pages with the same size, margins, header, footer and layers becomes a Word section, so pages keep their own setup and headers.
• An image, QR code or SVG in a background (before anything else in it), or alone in an overlay place, becomes a floating picture at the place the PDF draws it, on every page. Word draws it with the header, so an overlay sits behind the body's text.
• Fonts are named, not embedded: the reader's machine supplies them.
• Pictures Word can't take as they are are drawn at the size the PDF gives them: WebP and AVIF images, image cover and opacity, and plain QR codes need ext-gd; styled QR codes need ext-imagick and bacon/bacon-qr-code; SVG needs an ext-imagick that reads SVG. Without them, these are left out and reported.
• Opacity is drawn by blending each faded colour onto what lies beneath it; text backgrounds keep their exact colour.
• Corner radius on boxes, other content in background and overlay layers, a border or background on a layer picture, PDF page templates and embedded PDF pages are left out and reported (strict mode throws on them).

Approximations and omissions are reported through ExportOptions::onWarning with the node's path, as with HTML export. How the layout itself is written (rows as tables, boxes as one-cell tables, colours with transparency blended onto white, fonts by name) applies to every document and isn't reported each time.