Exporting & Compiling
Exporting & Compiling
Section titled “Exporting & Compiling”Lighthouse compiles a project’s files — in your Sheet order — into a single output document, for when it’s time to share, print, or submit your work.
Opening the Export Dialog
Section titled “Opening the Export Dialog”- Command Palette —
Lighthouse: Export project(exports the active project) - Library — open the project’s ”⋯” menu and choose Export…
Formats
Section titled “Formats”| Format | Built with | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Typst | Style presets, paper sizes, citations | |
| DOCX | Pandoc | Style presets, citations, editable in Word/Google Docs |
| EPUB | Pandoc | Citations, reflowable e-book format |
| Markdown | Built-in | Plain concatenation, no external tools |
PDF export runs entirely offline — Typst is bundled with the plugin, no download required. The first time you export to DOCX or EPUB, Lighthouse downloads the required Pandoc tooling automatically — this needs an internet connection and only happens once.
Style Presets
Section titled “Style Presets”PDF and DOCX exports use one of three built-in style presets:
| Style | Details |
|---|---|
| Novel — Trade | 5.5 × 8.5 in, Palatino serif, first-line indent, chapter page breaks |
| Manuscript Standard | US Letter, 12pt Courier, double-spaced — industry submission format |
| Academic — A4 | A4, 12pt Times New Roman, 1.5 spacing — for essays, theses, dissertations |
Paper Size (PDF)
Section titled “Paper Size (PDF)”- US Letter (8.5 × 11”)
- A4 (210 × 297 mm)
- Trade Paper (5.5 × 8.5”)
- A5 (148 × 210 mm)
Citations
Section titled “Citations”If your project has a bibliography file and citation style set (in the project editor — see Projects), PDF, DOCX, and EPUB exports will resolve and format citations automatically. If no bibliography is set, citation markup is stripped instead of left broken.
Ten citation styles are bundled: APA, Chicago (author-date), MLA, Harvard, IEEE, Vancouver, AMA, Nature, Elsevier Harvard, and ACM. You can also download any of the 10,000+ styles from the official CSL repository, or point at a custom .csl file, from the project editor.
Content Options
Section titled “Content Options”Available in the export dialog:
- Strip YAML frontmatter — remove
---frontmatter blocks before compiling - Convert
[[wiki links]]to plain text — resolve wikilinks to their display text - Remove
![[embedded file]]links — strip embeds rather than trying to inline them - Strip
==highlight==markers — remove Obsidian’s highlight syntax - Start chapters on new pages — page break before each file (PDF/DOCX)
- Generate table of contents — auto-generated from headings
- File separator — custom text/markup inserted between files; defaults to a sensible page break when “Start chapters on new pages” is enabled and no separator is set
Output
Section titled “Output”Choose a filename and output folder (a native file picker is available), then export. Your last-used settings — format, style, paper size, output folder, and all content options — are remembered per-project and pre-filled next time.