Browser support to print HTML sucked. No page counter / max pages, no way to properly style headers and footers. Chrome 131 recently added CSS support for @page [1][2] and cross-references in the same doc (giving you the page number), which is a great step forward. I think this simplifies Markdown → PDF even more on the tooling side.

[1] https://developer.chrome.com/blog/print-margins

[2] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/@page