| title | author | date |
|---|---|---|
Pandoc User's Guide |
John MacFarlane |
November 02, 2021 |
pandoc [options] [input-file]...
Pandoc is a Haskell library for converting from one markup format to another, and a command-line tool that uses this library.
Pandoc can convert between numerous markup and word processing formats,
including, but not limited to, various flavors of Markdown, HTML,
LaTeX and Word docx. For the full lists of input and output formats,
see the --from and --to [options below][General options].
Pandoc can also produce PDF output: see [creating a PDF], below.
Pandoc's enhanced version of Markdown includes syntax for [tables], [definition lists], [metadata blocks], [footnotes], [citations], [math], and much more. See below under [Pandoc's Markdown].
Pandoc has a modular design: it consists of a set of readers, which parse text in a given format and produce a native representation of the document (an abstract syntax tree or AST), and a set of writers, which convert this native representation into a target format. Thus, adding an input or output format requires only adding a reader or writer. Users can also run custom pandoc filters to modify the intermediate AST.
Because pandoc's intermediate representation of a document is less expressive than many of the formats it converts between, one should not expect perfect conversions between every format and every other. Pandoc attempts to preserve the structural elements of a document, but not formatting details such as margin size. And some document elements, such as complex tables, may not fit into pandoc's simple document model. While conversions from pandoc's Markdown to all formats aspire to be perfect, conversions from formats more expressive than pandoc's Markdown can be expected to be lossy.
If no input-files are specified, input is read from stdin.
Output goes to stdout by default. For output to a file,
use the -o option:
pandoc -o output.html input.txt
By default, pandoc produces a document fragment. To produce a standalone
document (e.g. a valid HTML file including <head> and <body>),
use the -s or --standalone flag:
pandoc -s -o output.html input.txt
For more information on how standalone documents are produced, see [Templates] below.
If multiple input files are given, pandoc will concatenate them all (with
blank lines between them) before parsing. (Use --file-scope to parse files
individually.)
The format of the input and output can be specified explicitly using
command-line options. The input format can be specified using the
-f/--from option, the output format using the -t/--to option.
Thus, to convert hello.txt from Markdown to LaTeX, you could type:
pandoc -f markdown -t latex hello.txt
To convert hello.html from HTML to Markdown:
pandoc -f html -t markdown hello.html
Supported input and output formats are listed below under [Options]
(see -f for input formats and -t for output formats). You
can also use pandoc --list-input-formats and
pandoc --list-output-formats to print lists of supported
formats.
If the input or output format is not specified explicitly, pandoc
will attempt to guess it from the extensions of the filenames.
Thus, for example,
pandoc -o hello.tex hello.txt
will convert hello.txt from Markdown to LaTeX. If no output file
is specified (so that output goes to stdout), or if the output file's
extension is unknown, the output format will default to HTML.
If no input file is specified (so that input comes from stdin), or
if the input files' extensions are unknown, the input format will
be assumed to be Markdown.
Pandoc uses the UTF-8 character encoding for both input and output.
If your local character encoding is not UTF-8, you
should pipe input and output through iconv:
iconv -t utf-8 input.txt | pandoc | iconv -f utf-8
Note that in some output formats (such as HTML, LaTeX, ConTeXt,
RTF, OPML, DocBook, and Texinfo), information about
the character encoding is included in the document header, which
will only be included if you use the -s/--standalone option.
To produce a PDF, specify an output file with a .pdf extension:
pandoc test.txt -o test.pdf
By default, pandoc will use LaTeX to create the PDF, which requires
that a LaTeX engine be installed (see --pdf-engine below).
Alternatively, pandoc can use ConTeXt, roff ms, or HTML as an
intermediate format. To do this, specify an output file with a
.pdf extension, as before, but add the --pdf-engine option
or -t context, -t html, or -t ms to the command line.
The tool used to generate the PDF from the intermediate format
may be specified using --pdf-engine.
You can control the PDF style using variables, depending on
the intermediate format used: see [variables for LaTeX],
[variables for ConTeXt], [variables for wkhtmltopdf],
[variables for ms]. When HTML is used as an intermediate
format, the output can be styled using --css.
To debug the PDF creation, it can be useful to look at the intermediate
representation: instead of -o test.pdf, use for example -s -o test.tex
to output the generated LaTeX. You can then test it with pdflatex test.tex.
When using LaTeX, the following packages need to be available
(they are included with all recent versions of TeX Live):
amsfonts, amsmath, lm, unicode-math,
iftex, listings (if the
--listings option is used), fancyvrb, longtable,
booktabs, graphicx (if the document
contains images), hyperref, xcolor,
ulem, geometry (with the geometry variable set),
setspace (with linestretch), and
babel (with lang). If CJKmainfont is set, xeCJK
is needed. The use of xelatex or lualatex as
the PDF engine requires fontspec. lualatex uses
selnolig. xelatex uses bidi (with the dir variable set).
If the mathspec variable is set, xelatex will use mathspec
instead of unicode-math. The upquote and microtype
packages are used if available, and csquotes will be used
for [typography] if the csquotes variable or metadata field is
set to a true value. The natbib, biblatex, bibtex,
and biber packages can optionally be used for [citation
rendering]. The following packages will be used to improve
output quality if present, but pandoc does not require them to
be present: upquote (for straight quotes in verbatim
environments), microtype (for better spacing adjustments),
parskip (for better inter-paragraph spaces), xurl (for
better line breaks in URLs), bookmark (for better PDF
bookmarks), and footnotehyper or footnote (to allow
footnotes in tables).
Instead of an input file, an absolute URI may be given. In this case pandoc will fetch the content using HTTP:
pandoc -f html -t markdown https://www.fsf.org
It is possible to supply a custom User-Agent string or other header when requesting a document from a URL:
pandoc -f html -t markdown --request-header User-Agent:"Mozilla/5.0" \
https://www.fsf.org
-f FORMAT, -r FORMAT, --from=FORMAT, --read=FORMAT
: Specify input format. FORMAT can be:
::: {#input-formats}
- `bibtex` ([BibTeX] bibliography)
- `biblatex` ([BibLaTeX] bibliography)
- `commonmark` ([CommonMark] Markdown)
- `commonmark_x` ([CommonMark] Markdown with extensions)
- `creole` ([Creole 1.0])
- `csljson` ([CSL JSON] bibliography)
- `csv` ([CSV] table)
- `docbook` ([DocBook])
- `docx` ([Word docx])
- `dokuwiki` ([DokuWiki markup])
- `epub` ([EPUB])
- `fb2` ([FictionBook2] e-book)
- `gfm` ([GitHub-Flavored Markdown]),
or the deprecated and less accurate `markdown_github`;
use [`markdown_github`](#markdown-variants) only
if you need extensions not supported in [`gfm`](#markdown-variants).
- `haddock` ([Haddock markup])
- `html` ([HTML])
- `ipynb` ([Jupyter notebook])
- `jats` ([JATS] XML)
- `jira` ([Jira]/Confluence wiki markup)
- `json` (JSON version of native AST)
- `latex` ([LaTeX])
- `markdown` ([Pandoc's Markdown])
- `markdown_mmd` ([MultiMarkdown])
- `markdown_phpextra` ([PHP Markdown Extra])
- `markdown_strict` (original unextended [Markdown])
- `mediawiki` ([MediaWiki markup])
- `man` ([roff man])
- `muse` ([Muse])
- `native` (native Haskell)
- `odt` ([ODT])
- `opml` ([OPML])
- `org` ([Emacs Org mode])
- `rtf` ([Rich Text Format])
- `rst` ([reStructuredText])
- `t2t` ([txt2tags])
- `textile` ([Textile])
- `tikiwiki` ([TikiWiki markup])
- `twiki` ([TWiki markup])
- `vimwiki` ([Vimwiki])
:::
Extensions can be individually enabled or disabled by
appending `+EXTENSION` or `-EXTENSION` to the format name.
See [Extensions] below, for a list of extensions and
their names. See `--list-input-formats` and `--list-extensions`,
below.
-t FORMAT, -w FORMAT, --to=FORMAT, --write=FORMAT
: Specify output format. FORMAT can be:
::: {#output-formats}
- `asciidoc` ([AsciiDoc]) or `asciidoctor` ([AsciiDoctor])
- `beamer` ([LaTeX beamer][`beamer`] slide show)
- `bibtex` ([BibTeX] bibliography)
- `biblatex` ([BibLaTeX] bibliography)
- `commonmark` ([CommonMark] Markdown)
- `commonmark_x` ([CommonMark] Markdown with extensions)
- `context` ([ConTeXt])
- `csljson` ([CSL JSON] bibliography)
- `docbook` or `docbook4` ([DocBook] 4)
- `docbook5` (DocBook 5)
- `docx` ([Word docx])
- `dokuwiki` ([DokuWiki markup])
- `epub` or `epub3` ([EPUB] v3 book)
- `epub2` (EPUB v2)
- `fb2` ([FictionBook2] e-book)
- `gfm` ([GitHub-Flavored Markdown]),
or the deprecated and less accurate `markdown_github`;
use [`markdown_github`](#markdown-variants) only
if you need extensions not supported in [`gfm`](#markdown-variants).
- `haddock` ([Haddock markup])
- `html` or `html5` ([HTML], i.e. [HTML5]/XHTML [polyglot markup])
- `html4` ([XHTML] 1.0 Transitional)
- `icml` ([InDesign ICML])
- `ipynb` ([Jupyter notebook])
- `jats_archiving` ([JATS] XML, Archiving and Interchange Tag Set)
- `jats_articleauthoring` ([JATS] XML, Article Authoring Tag Set)
- `jats_publishing` ([JATS] XML, Journal Publishing Tag Set)
- `jats` (alias for `jats_archiving`)
- `jira` ([Jira]/Confluence wiki markup)
- `json` (JSON version of native AST)
- `latex` ([LaTeX])
- `man` ([roff man])
- `markdown` ([Pandoc's Markdown])
- `markdown_mmd` ([MultiMarkdown])
- `markdown_phpextra` ([PHP Markdown Extra])
- `markdown_strict` (original unextended [Markdown])
- `mediawiki` ([MediaWiki markup])
- `ms` ([roff ms])
- `muse` ([Muse]),
- `native` (native Haskell),
- `odt` ([OpenOffice text document][ODT])
- `opml` ([OPML])
- `opendocument` ([OpenDocument])
- `org` ([Emacs Org mode])
- `pdf` ([PDF])
- `plain` (plain text),
- `pptx` ([PowerPoint] slide show)
- `rst` ([reStructuredText])
- `rtf` ([Rich Text Format])
- `texinfo` ([GNU Texinfo])
- `textile` ([Textile])
- `slideous` ([Slideous] HTML and JavaScript slide show)
- `slidy` ([Slidy] HTML and JavaScript slide show)
- `dzslides` ([DZSlides] HTML5 + JavaScript slide show),
- `revealjs` ([reveal.js] HTML5 + JavaScript slide show)
- `s5` ([S5] HTML and JavaScript slide show)
- `tei` ([TEI Simple])
- `xwiki` ([XWiki markup])
- `zimwiki` ([ZimWiki markup])
- the path of a custom Lua writer, see [Custom writers] below
:::
Note that `odt`, `docx`, `epub`, and `pdf` output will not be directed
to *stdout* unless forced with `-o -`.
Extensions can be individually enabled or
disabled by appending `+EXTENSION` or `-EXTENSION` to the format
name. See [Extensions] below, for a list of extensions and their
names. See `--list-output-formats` and `--list-extensions`, below.
-o FILE, --output=FILE
: Write output to FILE instead of stdout. If FILE is
-, output will go to stdout, even if a non-textual format
(docx, odt, epub2, epub3) is specified.
--data-dir=DIRECTORY
: Specify the user data directory to search for pandoc data files.
If this option is not specified, the default user data directory
will be used. On *nix and macOS systems this will be the pandoc
subdirectory of the XDG data directory (by default,
$HOME/.local/share, overridable by setting the XDG_DATA_HOME
environment variable). If that directory does not exist and
$HOME/.pandoc exists, it will be used (for backwards compatibility).
On Windows the default user data directory is
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\pandoc.
You can find the default user data directory on your system by
looking at the output of pandoc --version.
Data files placed in this directory (for example, reference.odt,
reference.docx, epub.css, templates) will override
pandoc's normal defaults.
-d FILE, --defaults=FILE
: Specify a set of default option settings. FILE is a YAML
file whose fields correspond to command-line option
settings. All options for document conversion, including input
and output files, can be set using a defaults file. The file will
be searched for first in the working directory, and then in
the defaults subdirectory of the user data directory
(see --data-dir). The .yaml extension may be omitted.
See the section [Default files] for more information on the
file format. Settings from the defaults file may be
overridden or extended by subsequent options on the command
line.
--bash-completion
: Generate a bash completion script. To enable bash completion
with pandoc, add this to your .bashrc:
eval "$(pandoc --bash-completion)"
--verbose
: Give verbose debugging output.
--quiet
: Suppress warning messages.
--fail-if-warnings
: Exit with error status if there are any warnings.
--log=FILE
: Write log messages in machine-readable JSON format to
FILE. All messages above DEBUG level will be written,
regardless of verbosity settings (--verbose, --quiet).
--list-input-formats
: List supported input formats, one per line.
--list-output-formats
: List supported output formats, one per line.
--list-extensions[=FORMAT]
: List supported extensions for FORMAT, one per line, preceded
by a + or - indicating whether it is enabled by default
in FORMAT. If FORMAT is not specified, defaults for
pandoc's Markdown are given.
--list-highlight-languages
: List supported languages for syntax highlighting, one per line.
--list-highlight-styles
: List supported styles for syntax highlighting, one per line.
See --highlight-style.
-v, --version
: Print version.
-h, --help
: Show usage message.
--shift-heading-level-by=NUMBER
: Shift heading levels by a positive or negative integer.
For example, with --shift-heading-level-by=-1, level 2
headings become level 1 headings, and level 3 headings
become level 2 headings. Headings cannot have a level
less than 1, so a heading that would be shifted below level 1
becomes a regular paragraph. Exception: with a shift of -N,
a level-N heading at the beginning of the document
replaces the metadata title. --shift-heading-level-by=-1
is a good choice when converting HTML or Markdown documents that
use an initial level-1 heading for the document title and
level-2+ headings for sections. --shift-heading-level-by=1
may be a good choice for converting Markdown documents that
use level-1 headings for sections to HTML, since pandoc uses
a level-1 heading to render the document title.
--base-header-level=NUMBER
: Deprecated. Use --shift-heading-level-by=X instead,
where X = NUMBER - 1. Specify the base level for headings
(defaults to 1).
--strip-empty-paragraphs
: Deprecated. Use the +empty_paragraphs extension instead.
Ignore paragraphs with no content. This option is useful
for converting word processing documents where users have
used empty paragraphs to create inter-paragraph space.
--indented-code-classes=CLASSES
: Specify classes to use for indented code blocks--for example,
perl,numberLines or haskell. Multiple classes may be separated
by spaces or commas.
--default-image-extension=EXTENSION
: Specify a default extension to use when image paths/URLs have no extension. This allows you to use the same source for formats that require different kinds of images. Currently this option only affects the Markdown and LaTeX readers.
--file-scope
: Parse each file individually before combining for multifile
documents. This will allow footnotes in different files with the
same identifiers to work as expected. If this option is set,
footnotes and links will not work across files. Reading binary
files (docx, odt, epub) implies --file-scope.
-F PROGRAM, --filter=PROGRAM
: Specify an executable to be used as a filter transforming the pandoc AST after the input is parsed and before the output is written. The executable should read JSON from stdin and write JSON to stdout. The JSON must be formatted like pandoc's own JSON input and output. The name of the output format will be passed to the filter as the first argument. Hence,
pandoc --filter ./caps.py -t latex
is equivalent to
pandoc -t json | ./caps.py latex | pandoc -f json -t latex
The latter form may be useful for debugging filters.
Filters may be written in any language. `Text.Pandoc.JSON`
exports `toJSONFilter` to facilitate writing filters in Haskell.
Those who would prefer to write filters in python can use the
module [`pandocfilters`], installable from PyPI. There are also
pandoc filter libraries in [PHP], [perl], and
[JavaScript/node.js].
In order of preference, pandoc will look for filters in
1. a specified full or relative path (executable or
non-executable)
2. `$DATADIR/filters` (executable or non-executable)
where `$DATADIR` is the user data directory (see
`--data-dir`, above).
3. `$PATH` (executable only)
Filters, Lua-filters, and citeproc processing are applied in
the order specified on the command line.
-L SCRIPT, --lua-filter=SCRIPT
: Transform the document in a similar fashion as JSON filters (see
--filter), but use pandoc's built-in Lua filtering system. The given
Lua script is expected to return a list of Lua filters which will be
applied in order. Each Lua filter must contain element-transforming
functions indexed by the name of the AST element on which the filter
function should be applied.
The `pandoc` Lua module provides helper functions for element
creation. It is always loaded into the script's Lua environment.
See the [Lua filters documentation] for further details.
In order of preference, pandoc will look for Lua filters in
1. a specified full or relative path
2. `$DATADIR/filters` where `$DATADIR` is the user data
directory (see `--data-dir`, above).
Filters, Lua filters, and citeproc processing are applied in
the order specified on the command line.
-M KEY[=VAL], --metadata=KEY[:VAL]
: Set the metadata field KEY to the value VAL. A value specified
on the command line overrides a value specified in the document
using [YAML metadata blocks][Extension: yaml_metadata_block].
Values will be parsed as YAML boolean or string values. If no value is
specified, the value will be treated as Boolean true. Like
--variable, --metadata causes template variables to be set.
But unlike --variable, --metadata affects the metadata of the
underlying document (which is accessible from filters and may be
printed in some output formats) and metadata values will be escaped
when inserted into the template.
--metadata-file=FILE
: Read metadata from the supplied YAML (or JSON) file. This
option can be used with every input format, but string scalars
in the YAML file will always be parsed as Markdown. Generally,
the input will be handled the same as in [YAML metadata
blocks][Extension: yaml_metadata_block]. This option can be
used repeatedly to include multiple metadata files; values in
files specified later on the command line will be preferred
over those specified in earlier files. Metadata values
specified inside the document, or by using -M, overwrite
values specified with this option.
-p, --preserve-tabs
: Preserve tabs instead of converting them to spaces. (By default, pandoc converts tabs to spaces before parsing its input.) Note that this will only affect tabs in literal code spans and code blocks. Tabs in regular text are always treated as spaces.
--tab-stop=NUMBER
: Specify the number of spaces per tab (default is 4).
--track-changes=accept|reject|all
: Specifies what to do with insertions, deletions, and comments
produced by the MS Word "Track Changes" feature. accept (the
default) processes all the insertions and deletions.
reject ignores them. Both accept and reject ignore comments.
all includes all insertions, deletions, and comments, wrapped
in spans with insertion, deletion, comment-start, and
comment-end classes, respectively. The author and time of
change is included. all is useful for scripting: only
accepting changes from a certain reviewer, say, or before a
certain date. If a paragraph is inserted or deleted,
track-changes=all produces a span with the class
paragraph-insertion/paragraph-deletion before the
affected paragraph break. This option only affects the docx
reader.
--extract-media=DIR
: Extract images and other media contained in or linked from
the source document to the path DIR, creating it if
necessary, and adjust the images references in the document
so they point to the extracted files. Media are downloaded,
read from the file system, or extracted from a binary
container (e.g. docx), as needed. The original file paths
are used if they are relative paths not containing ...
Otherwise filenames are constructed from the SHA1 hash of
the contents.
--abbreviations=FILE
: Specifies a custom abbreviations file, with abbreviations
one to a line. If this option is not specified, pandoc will
read the data file abbreviations from the user data
directory or fall back on a system default. To see the
system default, use
pandoc --print-default-data-file=abbreviations. The only
use pandoc makes of this list is in the Markdown reader.
Strings found in this list will be followed by a nonbreaking
space, and the period will not produce sentence-ending space
in formats like LaTeX. The strings may not contain spaces.
-s, --standalone
: Produce output with an appropriate header and footer (e.g. a
standalone HTML, LaTeX, TEI, or RTF file, not a fragment). This option
is set automatically for pdf, epub, epub3, fb2, docx, and odt
output. For native output, this option causes metadata to
be included; otherwise, metadata is suppressed.
--template=FILE|URL
: Use the specified file as a custom template for the generated document.
Implies --standalone. See [Templates], below, for a description
of template syntax. If no extension is specified, an extension
corresponding to the writer will be added, so that --template=special
looks for special.html for HTML output. If the template is not
found, pandoc will search for it in the templates subdirectory of
the user data directory (see --data-dir). If this option is not used,
a default template appropriate for the output format will be used (see
-D/--print-default-template).
-V KEY[=VAL], --variable=KEY[:VAL]
: Set the template variable KEY to the value VAL when rendering the
document in standalone mode. If no VAL is specified, the
key will be given the value true.
--sandbox
: Run pandoc in a sandbox, limiting IO operations in readers
and writers to reading the files specified on the command line.
Note that this option does not limit IO operations by
filters or in the production of PDF documents. But it does
offer security against, for example, disclosure of files
through the use of include directives. Anyone using
pandoc on untrusted user input should use this option.
-D FORMAT, --print-default-template=FORMAT
: Print the system default template for an output FORMAT. (See -t
for a list of possible FORMATs.) Templates in the user data
directory are ignored. This option may be used with
-o/--output to redirect output to a file, but
-o/--output must come before --print-default-template
on the command line.
Note that some of the default templates use partials, for
example `styles.html`. To print the partials, use
`--print-default-data-file`: for example,
`--print-default-data-file=templates/styles.html`.
--print-default-data-file=FILE
: Print a system default data file. Files in the user data directory
are ignored. This option may be used with -o/--output to
redirect output to a file, but -o/--output must come before
--print-default-data-file on the command line.
--eol=crlf|lf|native
: Manually specify line endings: crlf (Windows), lf
(macOS/Linux/UNIX), or native (line endings appropriate
to the OS on which pandoc is being run). The default is
native.
--dpi=NUMBER
: Specify the default dpi (dots per inch) value for conversion from pixels to inch/centimeters and vice versa. (Technically, the correct term would be ppi: pixels per inch.) The default is 96dpi. When images contain information about dpi internally, the encoded value is used instead of the default specified by this option.
--wrap=auto|none|preserve
: Determine how text is wrapped in the output (the source
code, not the rendered version). With auto (the default),
pandoc will attempt to wrap lines to the column width specified by
--columns (default 72). With none, pandoc will not wrap
lines at all. With preserve, pandoc will attempt to
preserve the wrapping from the source document (that is,
where there are nonsemantic newlines in the source, there
will be nonsemantic newlines in the output as well).
Automatic wrapping does not currently work in HTML output.
In ipynb output, this option affects wrapping of the
contents of markdown cells.
--columns=NUMBER
: Specify length of lines in characters. This affects text wrapping
in the generated source code (see --wrap). It also affects
calculation of column widths for plain text tables (see [Tables] below).
--toc, --table-of-contents
: Include an automatically generated table of contents (or, in
the case of latex, context, docx, odt,
opendocument, rst, or ms, an instruction to create
one) in the output document. This option has no effect
unless -s/--standalone is used, and it has no effect
on man, docbook4, docbook5, or jats output.
Note that if you are producing a PDF via `ms`, the table
of contents will appear at the beginning of the
document, before the title. If you would prefer it to
be at the end of the document, use the option
`--pdf-engine-opt=--no-toc-relocation`.
--toc-depth=NUMBER
: Specify the number of section levels to include in the table of contents. The default is 3 (which means that level-1, 2, and 3 headings will be listed in the contents).
--strip-comments
: Strip out HTML comments in the Markdown or Textile source,
rather than passing them on to Markdown, Textile or HTML
output as raw HTML. This does not apply to HTML comments
inside raw HTML blocks when the markdown_in_html_blocks
extension is not set.
--no-highlight
: Disables syntax highlighting for code blocks and inlines, even when a language attribute is given.
--highlight-style=STYLE|FILE
: Specifies the coloring style to be used in highlighted source code.
Options are pygments (the default), kate, monochrome,
breezeDark, espresso, zenburn, haddock, and tango.
For more information on syntax highlighting in pandoc, see
[Syntax highlighting], below. See also
--list-highlight-styles.
Instead of a *STYLE* name, a JSON file with extension
`.theme` may be supplied. This will be parsed as a KDE
syntax highlighting theme and (if valid) used as the
highlighting style.
To generate the JSON version of an existing style,
use `--print-highlight-style`.
--print-highlight-style=STYLE|FILE
: Prints a JSON version of a highlighting style, which can
be modified, saved with a .theme extension, and used
with --highlight-style. This option may be used with
-o/--output to redirect output to a file, but
-o/--output must come before --print-highlight-style
on the command line.
--syntax-definition=FILE
: Instructs pandoc to load a KDE XML syntax definition file, which will be used for syntax highlighting of appropriately marked code blocks. This can be used to add support for new languages or to use altered syntax definitions for existing languages. This option may be repeated to add multiple syntax definitions.
-H FILE, --include-in-header=FILE|URL
: Include contents of FILE, verbatim, at the end of the header.
This can be used, for example, to include special
CSS or JavaScript in HTML documents. This option can be used
repeatedly to include multiple files in the header. They will be
included in the order specified. Implies --standalone.
-B FILE, --include-before-body=FILE|URL
: Include contents of FILE, verbatim, at the beginning of the
document body (e.g. after the <body> tag in HTML, or the
\begin{document} command in LaTeX). This can be used to include
navigation bars or banners in HTML documents. This option can be
used repeatedly to include multiple files. They will be included in
the order specified. Implies --standalone.
-A FILE, --include-after-body=FILE|URL
: Include contents of FILE, verbatim, at the end of the document
body (before the </body> tag in HTML, or the
\end{document} command in LaTeX). This option can be used
repeatedly to include multiple files. They will be included in the
order specified. Implies --standalone.
--resource-path=SEARCHPATH
: List of paths to search for images and other resources.
The paths should be separated by : on Linux, UNIX, and
macOS systems, and by ; on Windows. If --resource-path
is not specified, the default resource path is the working
directory. Note that, if --resource-path is specified,
the working directory must be explicitly listed or it
will not be searched. For example:
--resource-path=.:test will search the working directory
and the test subdirectory, in that order.
This option can be used repeatedly. Search path components
that come later on the command line will be searched before
those that come earlier, so
--resource-path foo:bar --resource-path baz:bim is
equivalent to --resource-path baz:bim:foo:bar.
--request-header=NAME:VAL
: Set the request header NAME to the value VAL when making
HTTP requests (for example, when a URL is given on the
command line, or when resources used in a document must be
downloaded). If you're behind a proxy, you also need to set
the environment variable http_proxy to http://....
--no-check-certificate
: Disable the certificate verification to allow access to unsecure HTTP resources (for example when the certificate is no longer valid or self signed).
--self-contained
: Produce a standalone HTML file with no external dependencies, using
data: URIs to incorporate the contents of linked scripts, stylesheets,
images, and videos. Implies --standalone. The resulting file should be
"self-contained," in the sense that it needs no external files and no net
access to be displayed properly by a browser. This option works only with
HTML output formats, including html4, html5, html+lhs, html5+lhs,
s5, slidy, slideous, dzslides, and revealjs. Scripts, images,
and stylesheets at absolute URLs will be downloaded; those at relative
URLs will be sought relative to the working directory (if the first source
file is local) or relative to the base URL (if the first source
file is remote). Elements with the attribute
data-external="1" will be left alone; the documents they
link to will not be incorporated in the document.
Limitation: resources that are loaded dynamically through
JavaScript cannot be incorporated; as a result,
--self-contained does not work with --mathjax, and some
advanced features (e.g. zoom or speaker notes) may not work
in an offline "self-contained" reveal.js slide show.
--html-q-tags
: Use <q> tags for quotes in HTML. (This option only has an
effect if the smart extension is enabled for the input
format used.)
--ascii
: Use only ASCII characters in output. Currently supported for XML and HTML formats (which use entities instead of UTF-8 when this option is selected), CommonMark, gfm, and Markdown (which use entities), roff ms (which use hexadecimal escapes), and to a limited degree LaTeX (which uses standard commands for accented characters when possible). roff man output uses ASCII by default.
--reference-links
: Use reference-style links, rather than inline links, in writing Markdown
or reStructuredText. By default inline links are used. The
placement of link references is affected by the
--reference-location option.
--reference-location=block|section|document
: Specify whether footnotes (and references, if reference-links is
set) are placed at the end of the current (top-level) block, the
current section, or the document. The default is
document. Currently this option only affects the
markdown, muse, html, epub, slidy, s5, slideous,
dzslides, and revealjs writers.
--markdown-headings=setext|atx
: Specify whether to use ATX-style (#-prefixed) or
Setext-style (underlined) headings for level 1 and 2
headings in Markdown output. (The default is atx.)
ATX-style headings are always used for levels 3+.
This option also affects Markdown cells in ipynb output.
--atx-headers
: Deprecated synonym for --markdown-headings=atx.
--top-level-division=default|section|chapter|part
: Treat top-level headings as the given division type in
LaTeX, ConTeXt, DocBook, and TEI output. The hierarchy
order is part, chapter, then section; all headings are
shifted such that the top-level heading becomes the
specified type. The default behavior is to determine the
best division type via heuristics: unless other conditions
apply, section is chosen. When the documentclass
variable is set to report, book, or memoir (unless the
article option is specified), chapter is implied as the
setting for this option. If beamer is the output format,
specifying either chapter or part will cause top-level
headings to become \part{..}, while second-level headings
remain as their default type.
-N, --number-sections
: Number section headings in LaTeX, ConTeXt, HTML, Docx, ms, or EPUB
output. By default, sections are not numbered. Sections with class
unnumbered will never be numbered, even if --number-sections
is specified.
--number-offset=NUMBER[,NUMBER,...]
: Offset for section headings in HTML output (ignored in other
output formats). The first number is added to the section number for
top-level headings, the second for second-level headings, and so on.
So, for example, if you want the first top-level heading in your
document to be numbered "6", specify --number-offset=5.
If your document starts with a level-2 heading which you want to
be numbered "1.5", specify --number-offset=1,4.
Offsets are 0 by default. Implies --number-sections.
--listings
: Use the listings package for LaTeX code blocks. The package
does not support multi-byte encoding for source code. To handle UTF-8
you would need to use a custom template. This issue is fully
documented here: Encoding issue with the listings package.
-i, --incremental
: Make list items in slide shows display incrementally (one by one). The default is for lists to be displayed all at once.
--slide-level=NUMBER
: Specifies that headings with the specified level create
slides (for beamer, s5, slidy, slideous, dzslides). Headings
above this level in the hierarchy are used to divide the slide show
into sections; headings below this level create subheads within a slide.
Valid values are 0-6. If a slide level of 0 is specified, slides will
not be split automatically on headings, and horizontal rules must be used
to indicate slide boundaries. If a slide level is not specified
explicitly, the slide level will be set automatically based on
the contents of the document; see [Structuring the slide show].
--section-divs
: Wrap sections in <section> tags (or <div> tags for html4),
and attach identifiers to the enclosing <section> (or <div>)
rather than the heading itself. See
[Heading identifiers], below.
--email-obfuscation=none|javascript|references
: Specify a method for obfuscating mailto: links in HTML documents.
none leaves mailto: links as they are. javascript obfuscates
them using JavaScript. references obfuscates them by printing their
letters as decimal or hexadecimal character references. The default
is none.
--id-prefix=STRING
: Specify a prefix to be added to all identifiers and internal links in HTML and DocBook output, and to footnote numbers in Markdown and Haddock output. This is useful for preventing duplicate identifiers when generating fragments to be included in other pages.
-T STRING, --title-prefix=STRING
: Specify STRING as a prefix at the beginning of the title
that appears in the HTML header (but not in the title as it
appears at the beginning of the HTML body). Implies --standalone.
-c URL, --css=URL
: Link to a CSS style sheet. This option can be used repeatedly to include multiple files. They will be included in the order specified.
A stylesheet is required for generating EPUB. If none is
provided using this option (or the `css` or `stylesheet`
metadata fields), pandoc will look for a file `epub.css` in the
user data directory (see `--data-dir`). If it is not
found there, sensible defaults will be used.
--reference-doc=FILE
: Use the specified file as a style reference in producing a docx or ODT file.
Docx
: For best results, the reference docx should be a modified
version of a docx file produced using pandoc. The contents
of the reference docx are ignored, but its stylesheets and
document properties (including margins, page size, header,
and footer) are used in the new docx. If no reference docx
is specified on the command line, pandoc will look for a
file `reference.docx` in the user data directory (see
`--data-dir`). If this is not found either, sensible
defaults will be used.
To produce a custom `reference.docx`, first get a copy of
the default `reference.docx`: `pandoc
-o custom-reference.docx --print-default-data-file reference.docx`.
Then open `custom-reference.docx` in Word, modify the
styles as you wish, and save the file. For best
results, do not make changes to this file other than
modifying the styles used by pandoc:
Paragraph styles:
- Normal
- Body Text
- First Paragraph
- Compact
- Title
- Subtitle
- Author
- Date
- Abstract
- Bibliography
- Heading 1
- Heading 2
- Heading 3
- Heading 4
- Heading 5
- Heading 6
- Heading 7
- Heading 8
- Heading 9
- Block Text
- Footnote Text
- Definition Term
- Definition
- Caption
- Table Caption
- Image Caption
- Figure
- Captioned Figure
- TOC Heading
Character styles:
- Default Paragraph Font
- Body Text Char
- Verbatim Char
- Footnote Reference
- Hyperlink
- Section Number
Table style:
- Table
ODT
: For best results, the reference ODT should be a modified
version of an ODT produced using pandoc. The contents of
the reference ODT are ignored, but its stylesheets are used
in the new ODT. If no reference ODT is specified on the
command line, pandoc will look for a file `reference.odt` in
the user data directory (see `--data-dir`). If this is not
found either, sensible defaults will be used.
To produce a custom `reference.odt`, first get a copy of
the default `reference.odt`: `pandoc
-o custom-reference.odt --print-default-data-file reference.odt`.
Then open `custom-reference.odt` in LibreOffice, modify
the styles as you wish, and save the file.
PowerPoint
: Templates included with Microsoft PowerPoint 2013 (either with
`.pptx` or `.potx` extension) are known to work, as are most
templates derived from these.
The specific requirement is that the template should contain layouts
with the following names (as seen within PowerPoint):
- Title Slide
- Title and Content
- Section Header
- Two Content
- Comparison
- Content with Caption
- Blank
For each name, the first layout found with that name will be used.
If no layout is found with one of the names, pandoc will output a
warning and use the layout with that name from the default reference
doc instead. (How these layouts are used is described in [PowerPoint
layout choice](#powerpoint-layout-choice).)
All templates included with a recent version of MS PowerPoint
will fit these criteria. (You can click on `Layout` under the
`Home` menu to check.)
You can also modify the default `reference.pptx`: first run
`pandoc -o custom-reference.pptx --print-default-data-file
reference.pptx`, and then modify `custom-reference.pptx`
in MS PowerPoint (pandoc will use the layouts with the names
listed above).
--epub-cover-image=FILE
: Use the specified image as the EPUB cover. It is recommended
that the image be less than 1000px in width and height. Note that
in a Markdown source document you can also specify cover-image
in a YAML metadata block (see [EPUB Metadata], below).
--epub-metadata=FILE
: Look in the specified XML file for metadata for the EPUB. The file should contain a series of Dublin Core elements. For example:
<dc:rights>Creative Commons</dc:rights>
<dc:language>es-AR</dc:language>
By default, pandoc will include the following metadata elements:
`<dc:title>` (from the document title), `<dc:creator>` (from the
document authors), `<dc:date>` (from the document date, which should
be in [ISO 8601 format]), `<dc:language>` (from the `lang`
variable, or, if is not set, the locale), and `<dc:identifier
id="BookId">` (a randomly generated UUID). Any of these may be
overridden by elements in the metadata file.
Note: if the source document is Markdown, a YAML metadata block
in the document can be used instead. See below under
[EPUB Metadata].
--epub-embed-font=FILE
: Embed the specified font in the EPUB. This option can be repeated
to embed multiple fonts. Wildcards can also be used: for example,
DejaVuSans-*.ttf. However, if you use wildcards on the command
line, be sure to escape them or put the whole filename in single quotes,
to prevent them from being interpreted by the shell. To use the
embedded fonts, you will need to add declarations like the following
to your CSS (see --css):
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src:url("DejaVuSans-Regular.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: bold;
src:url("DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: normal;
src:url("DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: bold;
src:url("DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf");
}
body { font-family: "DejaVuSans"; }
--epub-chapter-level=NUMBER
: Specify the heading level at which to split the EPUB into separate "chapter" files. The default is to split into chapters at level-1 headings. This option only affects the internal composition of the EPUB, not the way chapters and sections are displayed to users. Some readers may be slow if the chapter files are too large, so for large documents with few level-1 headings, one might want to use a chapter level of 2 or 3.
--epub-subdirectory=DIRNAME
: Specify the subdirectory in the OCF container that is to hold
the EPUB-specific contents. The default is EPUB. To put
the EPUB contents in the top level, use an empty string.
--ipynb-output=all|none|best
: Determines how ipynb output cells are treated. all means
that all of the data formats included in the original are
preserved. none means that the contents of data cells
are omitted. best causes pandoc to try to pick the
richest data block in each output cell that is compatible
with the output format. The default is best.
--pdf-engine=PROGRAM
: Use the specified engine when producing PDF output.
Valid values are pdflatex, lualatex, xelatex, latexmk,
tectonic, wkhtmltopdf, weasyprint, prince, context,
and pdfroff. If the engine is not in your PATH, the full
path of the engine may be specified here. If this option
is not specified, pandoc uses the following defaults
depending on the output format specified using -t/--to:
- `-t latex` or none: `pdflatex` (other options: `xelatex`, `lualatex`,
`tectonic`, `latexmk`)
- `-t context`: `context`
- `-t html`: `wkhtmltopdf` (other options: `prince`, `weasyprint`;
see [print-css.rocks](https://print-css.rocks) for a good
introduction to PDF generation from HTML/CSS.)
- `-t ms`: `pdfroff`
--pdf-engine-opt=STRING
: Use the given string as a command-line argument to the pdf-engine.
For example, to use a persistent directory foo for latexmk's
auxiliary files, use --pdf-engine-opt=-outdir=foo.
Note that no check for duplicate options is done.
-C, --citeproc
: Process the citations in the file, replacing them with
rendered citations and adding a bibliography.
Citation processing will not take place unless bibliographic
data is supplied, either through an external file specified
using the --bibliography option or the bibliography
field in metadata, or via a references section in metadata
containing a list of citations in CSL YAML format with
Markdown formatting. The style is controlled by a CSL
stylesheet specified using the --csl option or the csl
field in metadata. (If no stylesheet is specified,
the chicago-author-date style will be used by default.)
The citation processing transformation may be applied before
or after filters or Lua filters (see --filter,
--lua-filter): these transformations are applied in the
order they appear on the command line. For more
information, see the section on [Citations].
--bibliography=FILE
: Set the bibliography field in the document's metadata to FILE,
overriding any value set in the metadata. If you supply
this argument multiple times, each FILE will be added to
bibliography. If FILE is a URL, it will be fetched
via HTTP. If FILE is not found relative to the
working directory, it will be sought in the resource path
(see --resource-path).
--csl=FILE
: Set the csl field in the document's metadata to FILE,
overriding any value set in the metadata. (This is equivalent to
--metadata csl=FILE.) If FILE is a URL, it will be
fetched via HTTP. If FILE is not found relative to the
working directory, it will be sought in the resource path
(see --resource-path) and finally in the csl
subdirectory of the pandoc user data directory.
--citation-abbreviations=FILE
: Set the citation-abbreviations field in the document's metadata to
FILE, overriding any value set in the metadata. (This is equivalent to
--metadata citation-abbreviations=FILE.)
If FILE is a URL, it will be fetched via HTTP. If FILE is not
found relative to the working directory, it will be sought
in the resource path (see --resource-path) and finally in
the csl subdirectory of the pandoc user data directory.
--natbib
: Use natbib for citations in LaTeX output. This option
is not for use with the --citeproc option or with PDF
output. It is intended for use in producing a LaTeX file
that can be processed with bibtex.
--biblatex
: Use biblatex for citations in LaTeX output. This option
is not for use with the --citeproc option or with PDF
output. It is intended for use in producing a LaTeX file
that can be processed with bibtex or biber.
The default is to render TeX math as far as possible using
Unicode characters. Formulas are put inside a span with
class="math", so that they may be styled differently from the
surrounding text if needed. However, this gives acceptable
results only for basic math, usually you will want to use
--mathjax or another of the following options.
--mathjax[=URL]
: Use MathJax to display embedded TeX math in HTML output.
TeX math will be put between \(...\) (for inline math)
or \[...\] (for display math) and wrapped in <span> tags
with class math. Then the MathJax JavaScript will render it.
The URL should point to the MathJax.js load script.
If a URL is not provided, a link to the Cloudflare CDN will
be inserted.
--mathml
: Convert TeX math to MathML (in epub3, docbook4,
docbook5, jats, html4 and html5). This is the
default in odt output. Note that currently only Firefox
and Safari (and select e-book readers) natively support
MathML.
--webtex[=URL]
: Convert TeX formulas to <img> tags that link to an external script
that converts formulas to images. The formula will be URL-encoded
and concatenated with the URL provided. For SVG images you can for
example use --webtex https://latex.codecogs.com/svg.latex?.
If no URL is specified, the CodeCogs URL generating PNGs
will be used (https://latex.codecogs.com/png.latex?).
Note: the --webtex option will affect Markdown output
as well as HTML, which is useful if you're targeting a
version of Markdown without native math support.
--katex[=URL]
: Use KaTeX to display embedded TeX math in HTML output.
The URL is the base URL for the KaTeX library. That directory
should contain a katex.min.js and a katex.min.css file.
If a URL is not provided, a link to the KaTeX CDN will be inserted.
--gladtex
: Enclose TeX math in <eq> tags in HTML output. The resulting HTML
can then be processed by GladTeX to produce SVG images of the typeset
formulas and an HTML file with these images embedded.
pandoc -s --gladtex input.md -o myfile.htex
gladtex -d image_dir myfile.htex
# produces myfile.html and images in image_dir
--dump-args
: Print information about command-line arguments to stdout, then exit.
This option is intended primarily for use in wrapper scripts.
The first line of output contains the name of the output file specified
with the -o option, or - (for stdout) if no output file was
specified. The remaining lines contain the command-line arguments,
one per line, in the order they appear. These do not include regular
pandoc options and their arguments, but do include any options appearing
after a -- separator at the end of the line.
--ignore-args
: Ignore command-line arguments (for use in wrapper scripts). Regular pandoc options are not ignored. Thus, for example,
pandoc --ignore-args -o foo.html -s foo.txt -- -e latin1
is equivalent to
pandoc -o foo.html -s
If pandoc completes successfully, it will return exit code 0. Nonzero exit codes have the following meanings:
Code Error
3 PandocFailOnWarningError
4 PandocAppError
5 PandocTemplateError
6 PandocOptionError
21 PandocUnknownReaderError 22 PandocUnknownWriterError 23 PandocUnsupportedExtensionError 24 PandocCiteprocError 25 PandocBibliographyError 31 PandocEpubSubdirectoryError 43 PandocPDFError 44 PandocXMLError 47 PandocPDFProgramNotFoundError 61 PandocHttpError 62 PandocShouldNeverHappenError 63 PandocSomeError 64 PandocParseError 65 PandocParsecError 66 PandocMakePDFError 67 PandocSyntaxMapError 83 PandocFilterError 91 PandocMacroLoop 92 PandocUTF8DecodingError 93 PandocIpynbDecodingError 94 PandocUnsupportedCharsetError 97 PandocCouldNotFindDataFileError 99 PandocResourceNotFound
The --defaults option may be used to specify a package
of options. Here is a sample defaults file demonstrating all of
the fields that may be used:
from: markdown+emoji
# reader: may be used instead of from:
to: html5
# writer: may be used instead of to:
# leave blank for output to stdout:
output-file:
# leave blank for input from stdin, use [] for no input:
input-files:
- preface.md
- content.md
# or you may use input-file: with a single value
# Include options from the specified defaults files.
# The files will be searched for first in the working directory
# and then in the defaults subdirectory of the user data directory.
# The files are included in the same order in which they appear in
# the list. Options specified in this defaults file always have
# priority over the included ones.
defaults:
- defsA
- defsB
template: letter
standalone: true
self-contained: false
# note that structured variables may be specified:
variables:
documentclass: book
classoption:
- twosides
- draft
# metadata values specified here are parsed as literal
# string text, not markdown:
metadata:
author:
- Sam Smith
- Julie Liu
metadata-files:
- boilerplate.yaml
# or you may use metadata-file: with a single value
# Note that these take files, not their contents:
include-before-body: []
include-after-body: []
include-in-header: []
resource-path: ["."]
# turn on built-in citation processing. Note that if you need
# control over when the citeproc processing is done relative
# to other filters, you should instead use `citeproc` in the
# list of `filters` (see below).
citeproc: true
csl: ieee
bibliography:
- foobar.bib
- barbaz.json
citation-abbreviations: abbrevs.json
# Filters will be assumed to be Lua filters if they have
# the .lua extension, and json filters otherwise. But
# the filter type can also be specified explicitly, as shown.
# Filters are run in the order specified.
# To include the built-in citeproc filter, use either `citeproc`
# or `{type: citeproc}`.
filters:
- wordcount.lua
- type: json
path: foo.lua
file-scope: false
data-dir:
# ERROR, WARNING, or INFO
verbosity: INFO
log-file: log.json
# citeproc, natbib, or biblatex. This only affects LaTeX
# output. If you want to use citeproc to format citations,
# you should also set 'citeproc: true' (see above).
cite-method: citeproc
# part, chapter, section, or default:
top-level-division: chapter
abbreviations:
pdf-engine: pdflatex
pdf-engine-opts:
- "-shell-escape"
# you may also use pdf-engine-opt: with a single option
# pdf-engine-opt: "-shell-escape"
# auto, preserve, or none
wrap: auto
columns: 78
dpi: 72
extract-media: mediadir
table-of-contents: true
toc-depth: 2
number-sections: false
# a list of offsets at each heading level
number-offset: [0,0,0,0,0,0]
# toc: may also be used instead of table-of-contents:
shift-heading-level-by: 1
section-divs: true
identifier-prefix: foo
title-prefix: ""
strip-empty-paragraphs: true
# lf, crlf, or native
eol: lf
strip-comments: false
indented-code-classes: []
ascii: true
default-image-extension: ".jpg"
# either a style name of a style definition file:
highlight-style: pygments
syntax-definitions:
- c.xml
# or you may use syntax-definition: with a single value
listings: false
reference-doc: myref.docx
# method is plain, webtex, gladtex, mathml, mathjax, katex
# you may specify a url with webtex, mathjax, katex
html-math-method:
method: mathjax
url: "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/mathjax@3/es5/tex-mml-chtml.js"
# none, references, or javascript
email-obfuscation: javascript
tab-stop: 8
preserve-tabs: true
incremental: false
slide-level: 2
epub-subdirectory: EPUB
epub-metadata: meta.xml
epub-fonts:
- foobar.otf
epub-chapter-level: 1
epub-cover-image: cover.jpg
reference-links: true
# block, section, or document
reference-location: block
markdown-headings: setext
# accept, reject, or all
track-changes: accept
html-q-tags: false
css:
- site.css
# none, all, or best
ipynb-output: best
# A list of two-element lists
request-headers:
- ["User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0"]
fail-if-warnings: false
dump-args: false
ignore-args: false
trace: falseFields that are omitted will just have their regular default values. So a defaults file can be as simple as one line:
verbosity: INFOIn fields that expect a file path (or list of file paths), the following syntax may be used to interpolate environment variables:
csl: ${HOME}/mycsldir/special.csl${USERDATA} may also be used; this will always resolve to the
user data directory that is current when the defaults file is
parsed, regardless of the setting of the environment
variable USERDATA.
${.} will resolve to the directory containing the default
file itself. This allows you to refer to resources contained
in that directory:
epub-cover-image: ${.}/cover.jpg
epub-metadata: ${.}/meta.xml
resource-path:
- . # the working directory from which pandoc is run
- ${.}/images # the images subdirectory of the directory
# containing this defaults fileThis environment variable interpolation syntax only works in fields that expect file paths.
Default files can be placed in the defaults subdirectory of
the user data directory and used from any directory. For
example, one could create a file specifying defaults for writing
letters, save it as letter.yaml in the defaults subdirectory
of the user data directory, and then invoke these defaults
from any directory using pandoc --defaults letter
or pandoc -dletter.
When multiple defaults are used, their contents will be combined.
Note that, where command-line arguments may be repeated
(--metadata-file, --css, --include-in-header,
--include-before-body, --include-after-body, --variable,
--metadata, --syntax-definition), the values specified on
the command line will combine with values specified in the
defaults file, rather than replacing them.
When the -s/--standalone option is used, pandoc uses a template to
add header and footer material that is needed for a self-standing
document. To see the default template that is used, just type
pandoc -D *FORMAT*
where FORMAT is the name of the output format. A custom template
can be specified using the --template option. You can also override
the system default templates for a given output format FORMAT
by putting a file templates/default.*FORMAT* in the user data
directory (see --data-dir, above). Exceptions:
- For
odtoutput, customize thedefault.opendocumenttemplate. - For
pdfoutput, customize thedefault.latextemplate (or thedefault.contexttemplate, if you use-t context, or thedefault.mstemplate, if you use-t ms, or thedefault.htmltemplate, if you use-t html). docxandpptxhave no template (however, you can use--reference-docto customize the output).
Templates contain variables, which allow for the inclusion of
arbitrary information at any point in the file. They may be set at the
command line using the -V/--variable option. If a variable is not set,
pandoc will look for the key in the document's metadata, which can be set
using either [YAML metadata blocks][Extension: yaml_metadata_block]
or with the -M/--metadata option. In addition, some variables
are given default values by pandoc. See [Variables] below for
a list of variables used in pandoc's default templates.
If you use custom templates, you may need to revise them as pandoc changes. We recommend tracking the changes in the default templates, and modifying your custom templates accordingly. An easy way to do this is to fork the pandoc-templates repository and merge in changes after each pandoc release.
Anything between the sequence $-- and the end of the
line will be treated as a comment and omitted from the output.
To mark variables and control structures in the template,
either $...$ or ${...} may be used as delimiters.
The styles may also be mixed in the same template, but the
opening and closing delimiter must match in each case. The
opening delimiter may be followed by one or more spaces
or tabs, which will be ignored. The closing delimiter may
be followed by one or more spaces or tabs, which will be
ignored.
To include a literal $ in the document, use $$.
A slot for an interpolated variable is a variable name surrounded
by matched delimiters. Variable names must begin with a letter
and can contain letters, numbers, _, -, and .. The
keywords it, if, else, endif, for, sep, and endfor may
not be used as variable names. Examples:
$foo$
$foo.bar.baz$
$foo_bar.baz-bim$
$ foo $
${foo}
${foo.bar.baz}
${foo_bar.baz-bim}
${ foo }
Variable names with periods are used to get at structured
variable values. So, for example, employee.salary will return the
value of the salary field of the object that is the value of
the employee field.
- If the value of the variable is simple value, it will be rendered verbatim. (Note that no escaping is done; the assumption is that the calling program will escape the strings appropriately for the output format.)
- If the value is a list, the values will be concatenated.
- If the value is a map, the string
truewill be rendered. - Every other value will be rendered as the empty string.
A conditional begins with if(variable) (enclosed in
matched delimiters) and ends with endif (enclosed in matched
delimiters). It may optionally contain an else (enclosed in
matched delimiters). The if section is used if
variable has a non-empty value, otherwise the else
section is used (if present). Examples:
$if(foo)$bar$endif$
$if(foo)$
$foo$
$endif$
$if(foo)$
part one
$else$
part two
$endif$
${if(foo)}bar${endif}
${if(foo)}
${foo}
${endif}
${if(foo)}
${ foo.bar }
${else}
no foo!
${endif}
The keyword elseif may be used to simplify complex nested
conditionals:
$if(foo)$
XXX
$elseif(bar)$
YYY
$else$
ZZZ
$endif$
A for loop begins with for(variable) (enclosed in
matched delimiters) and ends with endfor (enclosed in matched
delimiters.
- If
variableis an array, the material inside the loop will be evaluated repeatedly, withvariablebeing set to each value of the array in turn, and concatenated. - If
variableis a map, the material inside will be set to the map. - If the value of the associated variable is not an array or a map, a single iteration will be performed on its value.
Examples:
$for(foo)$$foo$$sep$, $endfor$
$for(foo)$
- $foo.last$, $foo.first$
$endfor$
${ for(foo.bar) }
- ${ foo.bar.last }, ${ foo.bar.first }
${ endfor }
$for(mymap)$
$it.name$: $it.office$
$endfor$
You may optionally specify a separator between consecutive
values using sep (enclosed in matched delimiters). The
material between sep and the endfor is the separator.
${ for(foo) }${ foo }${ sep }, ${ endfor }
Instead of using variable inside the loop, the special
anaphoric keyword it may be used.
${ for(foo.bar) }
- ${ it.last }, ${ it.first }
${ endfor }
Partials (subtemplates stored in different files) may be
included by using the name of the partial, followed
by (), for example:
${ styles() }
Partials will be sought in the directory containing the main template. The file name will be assumed to have the same extension as the main template if it lacks an extension. When calling the partial, the full name including file extension can also be used:
${ styles.html() }
(If a partial is not found in the directory of the
template and the template path is given as a relative
path, it will also be sought in the templates
subdirectory of the user data directory.)
Partials may optionally be applied to variables using a colon:
${ date:fancy() }
${ articles:bibentry() }
If articles is an array, this will iterate over its
values, applying the partial bibentry() to each one. So the
second example above is equivalent to
${ for(articles) }
${ it:bibentry() }
${ endfor }
Note that the anaphoric keyword it must be used when
iterating over partials. In the above examples,
the bibentry partial should contain it.title
(and so on) instead of articles.title.
Final newlines are omitted from included partials.
Partials may include other partials.
A separator between values of an array may be specified in square brackets, immediately after the variable name or partial:
${months[, ]}$
${articles:bibentry()[; ]$
The separator in this case is literal and (unlike with sep
in an explicit for loop) cannot contain interpolated
variables or other template directives.
To ensure that content is "nested," that is, subsequent lines
indented, use the ^ directive:
$item.number$ $^$$item.description$ ($item.price$)
In this example, if item.description has multiple lines,
they will all be indented to line up with the first line:
00123 A fine bottle of 18-year old
Oban whiskey. ($148)
To nest multiple lines to the same level, align them
with the ^ directive in the template. For example:
$item.number$ $^$$item.description$ ($item.price$)
(Available til $item.sellby$.)
will produce
00123 A fine bottle of 18-year old
Oban whiskey. ($148)
(Available til March 30, 2020.)
If a variable occurs by itself on a line, preceded by whitespace and not followed by further text or directives on the same line, and the variable's value contains multiple lines, it will be nested automatically.
Normally, spaces in the template itself (as opposed to values of
the interpolated variables) are not breakable, but they can be
made breakable in part of the template by using the ~ keyword
(ended with another ~).
$~$This long line may break if the document is rendered
with a short line length.$~$
A pipe transforms the value of a variable or partial. Pipes are
specified using a slash (/) between the variable name (or partial)
and the pipe name. Example:
$for(name)$
$name/uppercase$
$endfor$
$for(metadata/pairs)$
- $it.key$: $it.value$
$endfor$
$employee:name()/uppercase$
Pipes may be chained:
$for(employees/pairs)$
$it.key/alpha/uppercase$. $it.name$
$endfor$
Some pipes take parameters:
|----------------------|------------|
$for(employee)$
$it.name.first/uppercase/left 20 "| "$$it.name.salary/right 10 " | " " |"$
$endfor$
|----------------------|------------|
Currently the following pipes are predefined:
-
pairs: Converts a map or array to an array of maps, each withkeyandvaluefields. If the original value was an array, thekeywill be the array index, starting with 1. -
uppercase: Converts text to uppercase. -
lowercase: Converts text to lowercase. -
length: Returns the length of the value: number of characters for a textual value, number of elements for a map or array. -
reverse: Reverses a textual value or array, and has no effect on other values. -
first: Returns the first value of an array, if applied to a non-empty array; otherwise returns the original value. -
last: Returns the last value of an array, if applied to a non-empty array; otherwise returns the original value. -
rest: Returns all but the first value of an array, if applied to a non-empty array; otherwise returns the original value. -
allbutlast: Returns all but the last value of an array, if applied to a non-empty array; otherwise returns the original value. -
chomp: Removes trailing newlines (and breakable space). -
nowrap: Disables line wrapping on breakable spaces. -
alpha: Converts textual values that can be read as an integer into lowercase alphabetic charactersa..z(mod 26). This can be used to get lettered enumeration from array indices. To get uppercase letters, chain withuppercase. -
roman: Converts textual values that can be read as an integer into lowercase roman numerials. This can be used to get lettered enumeration from array indices. To get uppercase roman, chain withuppercase. -
left n "leftborder" "rightborder": Renders a textual value in a block of widthn, aligned to the left, with an optional left and right border. Has no effect on other values. This can be used to align material in tables. Widths are positive integers indicating the number of characters. Borders are strings inside double quotes; literal"and\characters must be backslash-escaped. -
right n "leftborder" "rightborder": Renders a textual value in a block of widthn, aligned to the right, and has no effect on other values. -
center n "leftborder" "rightborder": Renders a textual value in a block of widthn, aligned to the center, and has no effect on other values.
title, author, date
: allow identification of basic aspects of the document. Included
in PDF metadata through LaTeX and ConTeXt. These can be set
through a [pandoc title block][Extension: pandoc_title_block],
which allows for multiple authors, or through a
[YAML metadata block][Extension: yaml_metadata_block]:
---
author:
- Aristotle
- Peter Abelard
...
Note that if you just want to set PDF or HTML metadata, without
including a title block in the document itself, you can
set the `title-meta`, `author-meta`, and `date-meta`
variables. (By default these are set automatically, based
on `title`, `author`, and `date`.) The page title in HTML
is set by `pagetitle`, which is equal to `title` by default.
subtitle
: document subtitle, included in HTML, EPUB, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and docx
documents
abstract
: document summary, included in LaTeX, ConTeXt, AsciiDoc, and docx
documents
keywords
: list of keywords to be included in HTML, PDF, ODT, pptx, docx
and AsciiDoc metadata; repeat as for author, above
subject
: document subject, included in ODT, PDF, docx, EPUB, and pptx metadata
description
: document description, included in ODT, docx and pptx metadata. Some
applications show this as Comments metadata.
category
: document category, included in docx and pptx metadata
Additionally, any root-level string metadata, not included in ODT, docx or pptx metadata is added as a custom property. The following YAML metadata block for instance:
---
title: 'This is the title'
subtitle: "This is the subtitle"
author:
- Author One
- Author Two
description: |
This is a long
description.
It consists of two paragraphs
...
will include title, author and description as standard document
properties and subtitle as a custom property when converting to docx,
ODT or pptx.
lang
: identifies the main language of the document using IETF language
tags (following the BCP 47 standard), such as en or en-GB.
The Language subtag lookup tool can look up or verify these tags.
This affects most formats, and controls hyphenation in PDF output
when using LaTeX (through babel and polyglossia) or ConTeXt.
Use native pandoc [Divs and Spans] with the `lang` attribute to
switch the language:
---
lang: en-GB
...
Text in the main document language (British English).
::: {lang=fr-CA}
> Cette citation est écrite en français canadien.
:::
More text in English. ['Zitat auf Deutsch.']{lang=de}
dir
: the base script direction, either rtl (right-to-left)
or ltr (left-to-right).
For bidirectional documents, native pandoc `span`s and
`div`s with the `dir` attribute (value `rtl` or `ltr`) can
be used to override the base direction in some output
formats. This may not always be necessary if the final
renderer (e.g. the browser, when generating HTML) supports
the [Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm].
When using LaTeX for bidirectional documents, only the
`xelatex` engine is fully supported (use
`--pdf-engine=xelatex`).
document-css
: Enables inclusion of most of the CSS in the styles.html
partial (have a look with
pandoc --print-default-data-file=templates/styles.html).
Unless you use --css, this variable
is set to true by default. You can disable it with
e.g. pandoc -M document-css=false.
mainfont
: sets the CSS font-family property on the html element.
fontsize
: sets the base CSS font-size, which you'd usually set
to e.g. 20px, but it also accepts pt
(12pt = 16px in most browsers).
fontcolor
: sets the CSS color property on the html element.
linkcolor
: sets the CSS color property on all links.
monofont
: sets the CSS font-family property on code elements.
monobackgroundcolor
: sets the CSS background-color property on code elements
and adds extra padding.
linestretch
: sets the CSS line-height property on the html element,
which is preferred to be unitless.
backgroundcolor
: sets the CSS background-color property on the html element.
margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
: sets the corresponding CSS padding properties on the body element.
To override or extend some CSS for just one document, include for example:
---
header-includes: |
<style>
blockquote {
font-style: italic;
}
tr.even {
background-color: #f0f0f0;
}
td, th {
padding: 0.5em 2em 0.5em 0.5em;
}
tbody {
border-bottom: none;
}
</style>
---
classoption
: when using KaTeX, you can render display
math equations flush left using YAML metadata or with
-M classoption=fleqn.
These affect HTML output when [producing slide shows with pandoc].
institute
: author affiliations: can be a list when there are multiple authors
revealjs-url
: base URL for reveal.js documents (defaults to
https://unpkg.com/reveal.js@^4/)
s5-url
: base URL for S5 documents (defaults to s5/default)
slidy-url
: base URL for Slidy documents (defaults to
https://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy2)
slideous-url
: base URL for Slideous documents (defaults to slideous)
title-slide-attributes
: additional attributes for the title slide of reveal.js slide shows.
See [background in reveal.js and beamer] for an example.
All reveal.js configuration options are available as variables.
To turn off boolean flags that default to true in reveal.js, use 0.
These variables change the appearance of PDF slides using beamer.
aspectratio
: slide aspect ratio (43 for 4:3 [default], 169 for 16:9,
1610 for 16:10, 149 for 14:9, 141 for 1.41:1, 54 for 5:4,
32 for 3:2)
beamerarticle
: produce an article from Beamer slides
beameroption
: add extra beamer option with \setbeameroption{}
institute
: author affiliations: can be a list when there are multiple authors
logo
: logo image for slides
navigation
: controls navigation symbols (default is empty for no navigation
symbols; other valid values are frame, vertical, and horizontal)
section-titles
: enables "title pages" for new sections (default is true)
theme, colortheme, fonttheme, innertheme, outertheme
: beamer themes
themeoptions
: options for LaTeX beamer themes (a list).
titlegraphic
: image for title slide
These variables control the visual aspects of a slide show that are not easily controlled via templates.
monofont
: font to use for code.
Pandoc uses these variables when [creating a PDF] with a LaTeX engine.
block-headings
: make \paragraph and \subparagraph (fourth- and
fifth-level headings, or fifth- and sixth-level with book
classes) free-standing rather than run-in; requires further
formatting to distinguish from \subsubsection (third- or
fourth-level headings). Instead of using this option,
KOMA-Script can adjust headings more extensively:
---
documentclass: scrartcl
header-includes: |
\RedeclareSectionCommand[
beforeskip=-10pt plus -2pt minus -1pt,
afterskip=1sp plus -1sp minus 1sp,
font=\normalfont\itshape]{paragraph}
\RedeclareSectionCommand[
beforeskip=-10pt plus -2pt minus -1pt,
afterskip=1sp plus -1sp minus 1sp,
font=\normalfont\scshape,
indent=0pt]{subparagraph}
...
classoption
: option for document class, e.g. oneside; repeat for multiple options:
---
classoption:
- twocolumn
- landscape
...
documentclass
: document class: usually one of the standard classes,
article, book, and report; the KOMA-Script
equivalents, scrartcl, scrbook, and scrreprt, which
default to smaller margins; or memoir
geometry
: option for geometry package, e.g. margin=1in;
repeat for multiple options:
---
geometry:
- top=30mm
- left=20mm
- heightrounded
...
hyperrefoptions
: option for hyperref package, e.g. linktoc=all;
repeat for multiple options:
---
hyperrefoptions:
- linktoc=all
- pdfwindowui
- pdfpagemode=FullScreen
...
indent
: if true, pandoc will use document class settings for
indentation (the default LaTeX template otherwise removes
indentation and adds space between paragraphs)
linestretch
: adjusts line spacing using the setspace
package, e.g. 1.25, 1.5
margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
: sets margins if geometry is not used (otherwise geometry
overrides these)
pagestyle
: control \pagestyle{}: the default article class
supports plain (default), empty (no running heads or page numbers),
and headings (section titles in running heads)
papersize
: paper size, e.g. letter, a4
secnumdepth
: numbering depth for sections (with --number-sections option
or numbersections variable)
fontenc
: allows font encoding to be specified through fontenc package (with
pdflatex); default is T1 (see LaTeX font encodings guide)
fontfamily
: font package for use with pdflatex:
TeX Live includes many options, documented in the LaTeX Font Catalogue.
The default is Latin Modern.
fontfamilyoptions
: options for package used as fontfamily; repeat for multiple options.
For example, to use the Libertine font with proportional lowercase
(old-style) figures through the libertinus package:
---
fontfamily: libertinus
fontfamilyoptions:
- osf
- p
...
fontsize
: font size for body text. The standard classes allow 10pt, 11pt, and
12pt. To use another size, set documentclass to one of
the KOMA-Script classes, such as scrartcl or scrbook.
mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont, CJKmainfont
: font families for use with xelatex or
lualatex: take the name of any system font, using the
fontspec package. CJKmainfont uses the xecjk package.
mainfontoptions, sansfontoptions, monofontoptions, mathfontoptions, CJKoptions
: options to use with mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont,
CJKmainfont in xelatex and lualatex. Allow for any
choices available through fontspec; repeat for multiple
options. For example, to use the TeX Gyre version of
Palatino with lowercase figures:
---
mainfont: TeX Gyre Pagella
mainfontoptions:
- Numbers=Lowercase
- Numbers=Proportional
...
microtypeoptions
: options to pass to the microtype package
colorlinks
: add color to link text; automatically enabled if any of
linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor, or toccolor are set
linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor, toccolor
: color for internal links, external links, citation links, linked
URLs, and links in table of contents, respectively: uses options
allowed by xcolor, including the dvipsnames, svgnames, and
x11names lists
links-as-notes
: causes links to be printed as footnotes
lof, lot
: include list of figures, list of tables
thanks
: contents of acknowledgments footnote after document title
toc
: include table of contents (can also be set using
--toc/--table-of-contents)
toc-depth
: level of section to include in table of contents
These variables function when using BibLaTeX for [citation rendering].
biblatexoptions
: list of options for biblatex
biblio-style
: bibliography style, when used with --natbib and --biblatex.
biblio-title
: bibliography title, when used with --natbib and --biblatex.
bibliography
: bibliography to use for resolving references
natbiboptions
: list of options for natbib
Pandoc uses these variables when [creating a PDF] with ConTeXt.
fontsize
: font size for body text (e.g. 10pt, 12pt)
headertext, footertext
: text to be placed in running header or footer (see ConTeXt Headers and
Footers); repeat up to four times for different placement
indenting
: controls indentation of paragraphs, e.g. yes,small,next (see
ConTeXt Indentation); repeat for multiple options
interlinespace
: adjusts line spacing, e.g. 4ex (using setupinterlinespace);
repeat for multiple options
layout
: options for page margins and text arrangement (see ConTeXt Layout);
repeat for multiple options
linkcolor, contrastcolor
: color for links outside and inside a page, e.g. red, blue (see
ConTeXt Color)
linkstyle
: typeface style for links, e.g. normal, bold, slanted, boldslanted,
type, cap, small
lof, lot
: include list of figures, list of tables
mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont
: font families: take the name of any system font (see
ConTeXt Font Switching)
margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
: sets margins, if layout is not used (otherwise layout
overrides these)
pagenumbering
: page number style and location (using setuppagenumbering);
repeat for multiple options
papersize
: paper size, e.g. letter, A4, landscape (see ConTeXt Paper Setup);
repeat for multiple options
pdfa
: adds to the preamble the setup necessary to generate PDF/A
of the type specified, e.g. 1a:2005, 2a. If no type is
specified (i.e. the value is set to True, by e.g.
--metadata=pdfa or pdfa: true in a YAML metadata block),
1b:2005 will be used as default, for reasons of backwards
compatibility. Using --variable=pdfa without specified value
is not supported. To successfully generate PDF/A the required
ICC color profiles have to be available and the content and all
included files (such as images) have to be standard conforming.
The ICC profiles and output intent may be specified using the
variables pdfaiccprofile and pdfaintent. See also ConTeXt
PDFA for more details.
pdfaiccprofile
: when used in conjunction with pdfa, specifies the ICC profile to use
in the PDF, e.g. default.cmyk. If left unspecified, sRGB.icc is
used as default. May be repeated to include multiple profiles. Note that
the profiles have to be available on the system. They can be obtained
from ConTeXt ICC Profiles.
pdfaintent
: when used in conjunction with pdfa, specifies the output intent for
the colors, e.g. ISO coated v2 300\letterpercent\space (ECI)
If left unspecified, sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is used as default.
toc
: include table of contents (can also be set using
--toc/--table-of-contents)
whitespace
: spacing between paragraphs, e.g. none, small (using
setupwhitespace)
includesource
: include all source documents as file attachments in the PDF file
Pandoc uses these variables when [creating a PDF] with wkhtmltopdf.
The --css option also affects the output.
footer-html, header-html
: add information to the header and footer
margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
: set the page margins
papersize
: sets the PDF paper size
adjusting
: adjusts text to left (l), right (r), center (c),
or both (b) margins
footer
: footer in man pages
header
: header in man pages
hyphenate
: if true (the default), hyphenation will be used
section
: section number in man pages
fontfamily
: font family (e.g. T or P)
indent
: paragraph indent (e.g. 2m)
lineheight
: line height (e.g. 12p)
pointsize
: point size (e.g. 10p)
Pandoc sets these variables automatically in response to [options] or document contents; users can also modify them. These vary depending on the output format, and include the following:
body
: body of document
date-meta
: the date variable converted to ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD,
included in all HTML based formats (dzslides, epub,
html, html4, html5, revealjs, s5, slideous, slidy).
The recognized formats for date are: mm/dd/yyyy,
mm/dd/yy, yyyy-mm-dd (ISO 8601), dd MM yyyy
(e.g. either 02 Apr 2018 or 02 April 2018),
MM dd, yyyy (e.g. Apr. 02, 2018 or April 02, 2018), yyyy[mm[dd]]](e.g.20180402, 201804 or 2018).
header-includes
: contents specified by -H/--include-in-header (may have multiple
values)
include-before
: contents specified by -B/--include-before-body (may have
multiple values)
include-after
: contents specified by -A/--include-after-body (may have
multiple values)
meta-json
: JSON representation of all of the document's metadata. Field
values are transformed to the selected output format.
numbersections
: non-null value if -N/--number-sections was specified
sourcefile, outputfile
: source and destination filenames, as given on the command line.
sourcefile can also be a list if input comes from multiple files,
or empty if input is from stdin. You can use the following snippet in
your template to distinguish them:
$if(sourcefile)$
$for(sourcefile)$
$sourcefile$
$endfor$
$else$
(stdin)
$endif$
Similarly, `outputfile` can be `-` if output goes to the terminal.
If you need absolute paths, use e.g. `$curdir$/$sourcefile$`.
curdir
: working directory from which pandoc is run.
toc
: non-null value if --toc/--table-of-contents was specified
toc-title
: title of table of contents (works only with EPUB,
HTML, revealjs, opendocument, odt, docx, pptx, beamer, LaTeX)
The behavior of some of the readers and writers can be adjusted by enabling or disabling various extensions.
An extension can be enabled by adding +EXTENSION
to the format name and disabled by adding -EXTENSION. For example,
--from markdown_strict+footnotes is strict Markdown with footnotes
enabled, while --from markdown-footnotes-pipe_tables is pandoc's
Markdown without footnotes or pipe tables.
The markdown reader and writer make by far the most use of extensions.
Extensions only used by them are therefore covered in the
section [Pandoc's Markdown] below (See [Markdown variants] for
commonmark and gfm.) In the following, extensions that also work
for other formats are covered.
Note that markdown extensions added to the ipynb format
affect Markdown cells in Jupyter notebooks (as do command-line
options like --atx-headers).
Interpret straight quotes as curly quotes, --- as em-dashes,
-- as en-dashes, and ... as ellipses. Nonbreaking spaces are
inserted after certain abbreviations, such as "Mr."
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
input formats
: markdown, commonmark, latex, mediawiki, org, rst, twiki
output formats
: markdown, latex, context, rst
enabled by default in
: markdown, latex, context (both input and output)
Note: If you are writing Markdown, then the smart extension
has the reverse effect: what would have been curly quotes comes
out straight.
In LaTeX, smart means to use the standard TeX ligatures
for quotation marks (`` and '' for double quotes,
` and ' for single quotes) and dashes (-- for
en-dash and --- for em-dash). If smart is disabled,
then in reading LaTeX pandoc will parse these characters
literally. In writing LaTeX, enabling smart tells pandoc
to use the ligatures when possible; if smart is disabled
pandoc will use unicode quotation mark and dash characters.
A heading without an explicitly specified identifier will be automatically assigned a unique identifier based on the heading text.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
input formats
: markdown, latex, rst, mediawiki, textile
output formats
: markdown, muse
enabled by default in
: markdown, muse
The default algorithm used to derive the identifier from the heading text is:
- Remove all formatting, links, etc.
- Remove all footnotes.
- Remove all non-alphanumeric characters, except underscores, hyphens, and periods.
- Replace all spaces and newlines with hyphens.
- Convert all alphabetic characters to lowercase.
- Remove everything up to the first letter (identifiers may not begin with a number or punctuation mark).
- If nothing is left after this, use the identifier
section.
Thus, for example,
Heading Identifier
Heading identifiers in HTML heading-identifiers-in-html
Maître d'hôtel maître-dhôtel
*Dogs*?--in *my* house? dogs--in-my-house
[HTML], [S5], or [RTF]? html-s5-or-rtf
3. Applications applications
33 section
These rules should, in most cases, allow one to determine the identifier
from the heading text. The exception is when several headings have the
same text; in this case, the first will get an identifier as described
above; the second will get the same identifier with -1 appended; the
third with -2; and so on.
(However, a different algorithm is used if
gfm_auto_identifiers is enabled; see below.)
These identifiers are used to provide link targets in the table of
contents generated by the --toc|--table-of-contents option. They
also make it easy to provide links from one section of a document to
another. A link to this section, for example, might look like this:
See the section on
[heading identifiers](#heading-identifiers-in-html-latex-and-context).
Note, however, that this method of providing links to sections works only in HTML, LaTeX, and ConTeXt formats.
If the --section-divs option is specified, then each section will
be wrapped in a section (or a div, if html4 was specified),
and the identifier will be attached to the enclosing <section>
(or <div>) tag rather than the heading itself. This allows entire
sections to be manipulated using JavaScript or treated differently in
CSS.
Causes the identifiers produced by auto_identifiers to be pure ASCII.
Accents are stripped off of accented Latin letters, and non-Latin
letters are omitted.
Changes the algorithm used by auto_identifiers to conform to
GitHub's method. Spaces are converted to dashes (-),
uppercase characters to lowercase characters, and punctuation
characters other than - and _ are removed.
Emojis are replaced by their names.
The extensions tex_math_dollars,
tex_math_single_backslash, and
tex_math_double_backslash
are described in the section about Pandoc's Markdown.
However, they can also be used with HTML input. This is handy for reading web pages formatted using MathJax, for example.
The following extensions are described in more detail in their respective sections of [Pandoc's Markdown]:
-
raw_htmlallows HTML elements which are not representable in pandoc's AST to be parsed as raw HTML. By default, this is disabled for HTML input. -
raw_texallows raw LaTeX, TeX, and ConTeXt to be included in a document. This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats (in addition tomarkdown):input formats :
latex,textile,html(environments,\ref, and\eqrefonly),ipynboutput formats :
textile,commonmarkNote: as applied to
ipynb,raw_htmlandraw_texaffect not only raw TeX in markdown cells, but data with mime typetext/htmlin output cells. Since theipynbreader attempts to preserve the richest possible outputs when several options are given, you will get best results if you disableraw_htmlandraw_texwhen converting to formats likedocxwhich don't allow rawhtmlortex. -
native_divscauses HTMLdivelements to be parsed as native pandoc Div blocks. If you want them to be parsed as raw HTML, use-f html-native_divs+raw_html. -
native_spanscauses HTMLspanelements to be parsed as native pandoc Span inlines. If you want them to be parsed as raw HTML, use-f html-native_spans+raw_html. If you want to drop alldivs andspans when converting HTML to Markdown, you can usepandoc -f html-native_divs-native_spans -t markdown.
Treat the document as literate Haskell source.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
input formats
: markdown, rst, latex
output formats
: markdown, rst, latex, html
If you append +lhs (or +literate_haskell) to one of the formats
above, pandoc will treat the document as literate Haskell source.
This means that
-
In Markdown input, "bird track" sections will be parsed as Haskell code rather than block quotations. Text between
\begin{code}and\end{code}will also be treated as Haskell code. For ATX-style headings the character '=' will be used instead of '#'. -
In Markdown output, code blocks with classes
haskellandliteratewill be rendered using bird tracks, and block quotations will be indented one space, so they will not be treated as Haskell code. In addition, headings will be rendered setext-style (with underlines) rather than ATX-style (with '#' characters). (This is because ghc treats '#' characters in column 1 as introducing line numbers.) -
In restructured text input, "bird track" sections will be parsed as Haskell code.
-
In restructured text output, code blocks with class
haskellwill be rendered using bird tracks. -
In LaTeX input, text in
codeenvironments will be parsed as Haskell code. -
In LaTeX output, code blocks with class
haskellwill be rendered insidecodeenvironments. -
In HTML output, code blocks with class
haskellwill be rendered with classliteratehaskelland bird tracks.
Examples:
pandoc -f markdown+lhs -t html
reads literate Haskell source formatted with Markdown conventions and writes ordinary HTML (without bird tracks).
pandoc -f markdown+lhs -t html+lhs
writes HTML with the Haskell code in bird tracks, so it can be copied and pasted as literate Haskell source.
Note that GHC expects the bird tracks in the first column, so indented literate code blocks (e.g. inside an itemized environment) will not be picked up by the Haskell compiler.
Allows empty paragraphs. By default empty paragraphs are omitted.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
input formats
: docx, html
output formats
: docx, odt, opendocument, html
Enables native numbering of figures and tables. Enumeration starts at 1.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
output formats
: odt, opendocument, docx
Links to headings, figures and tables inside the document are
substituted with cross-references that will use the name or caption
of the referenced item. The original link text is replaced once
the generated document is refreshed. This extension can be combined
with xrefs_number in which case numbers will appear before the
name.
Text in cross-references is only made consistent with the referenced item once the document has been refreshed.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
output formats
: odt, opendocument
Links to headings, figures and tables inside the document are
substituted with cross-references that will use the number
of the referenced item. The original link text is discarded.
This extension can be combined with xrefs_name in which case
the name or caption numbers will appear after the number.
For the xrefs_number to be useful heading numbers must be enabled
in the generated document, also table and figure captions must be enabled
using for example the native_numbering extension.
Numbers in cross-references are only visible in the final document once it has been refreshed.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
output formats
: odt, opendocument
When converting from docx, read all docx styles as divs (for paragraph styles) and spans (for character styles) regardless of whether pandoc understands the meaning of these styles. This can be used with docx custom styles. Disabled by default.
input formats
: docx
In the muse input format, this enables Text::Amuse
extensions to Emacs Muse markup.
In the ipynb input format, this causes Markdown cells
to be included as raw Markdown blocks (allowing lossless
round-tripping) rather than being parsed. Use this only
when you are targeting ipynb or a markdown-based
output format.
Some aspects of Pandoc's Markdown citation syntax
are also accepted in org input.
In the jats output formats, this causes reference items to
be replaced with <element-citation> elements. These
elements are not influenced by CSL styles, but all information
on the item is included in tags.
In the context output format this enables the use of Natural Tables
(TABLE) instead of the default
Extreme Tables (xtables).
Natural tables allow more fine-grained global customization but come
at a performance penalty compared to extreme tables.
Pandoc understands an extended and slightly revised version of
John Gruber's Markdown syntax. This document explains the syntax,
noting differences from standard Markdown. Except where noted, these
differences can be suppressed by using the markdown_strict format instead
of markdown. Extensions can be enabled or disabled to specify the
behavior more granularly. They are described in the following. See also
[Extensions] above, for extensions that work also on other formats.
Markdown is designed to be easy to write, and, even more importantly, easy to read:
A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. -- John Gruber
This principle has guided pandoc's decisions in finding syntax for tables, footnotes, and other extensions.
There is, however, one respect in which pandoc's aims are different from the original aims of Markdown. Whereas Markdown was originally designed with HTML generation in mind, pandoc is designed for multiple output formats. Thus, while pandoc allows the embedding of raw HTML, it discourages it, and provides other, non-HTMLish ways of representing important document elements like definition lists, tables, mathematics, and footnotes.
A paragraph is one or more lines of text followed by one or more blank lines. Newlines are treated as spaces, so you can reflow your paragraphs as you like. If you need a hard line break, put two or more spaces at the end of a line.
A backslash followed by a newline is also a hard line break. Note: in multiline and grid table cells, this is the only way to create a hard line break, since trailing spaces in the cells are ignored.
There are two kinds of headings: Setext and ATX.
A setext-style heading is a line of text "underlined" with a row of = signs
(for a level-one heading) or - signs (for a level-two heading):
A level-one heading
===================
A level-two heading
-------------------
The heading text can contain inline formatting, such as emphasis (see [Inline formatting], below).
An ATX-style heading consists of one to six # signs and a line of
text, optionally followed by any number of # signs. The number of
# signs at the beginning of the line is the heading level:
## A level-two heading
### A level-three heading ###
As with setext-style headings, the heading text can contain formatting:
# A level-one heading with a [link](/url) and *emphasis*
Standard Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a heading.
Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at the beginning of the
document). The reason for the requirement is that it is all too easy for a
# to end up at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line
wrapping). Consider, for example:
I like several of their flavors of ice cream:
#22, for example, and #5.
Many Markdown implementations do not require a space between the
opening #s of an ATX heading and the heading text, so that
#5 bolt and #hashtag count as headings. With this extension,
pandoc does require the space.
See also the auto_identifiers
extension above.
Headings can be assigned attributes using this syntax at the end of the line containing the heading text:
{#identifier .class .class key=value key=value}
Thus, for example, the following headings will all be assigned the identifier
foo:
# My heading {#foo}
## My heading ## {#foo}
My other heading {#foo}
---------------
(This syntax is compatible with PHP Markdown Extra.)
Note that although this syntax allows assignment of classes and key/value attributes, writers generally don't use all of this information. Identifiers, classes, and key/value attributes are used in HTML and HTML-based formats such as EPUB and slidy. Identifiers are used for labels and link anchors in the LaTeX, ConTeXt, Textile, Jira markup, and AsciiDoc writers.
Headings with the class unnumbered will not be numbered, even if
--number-sections is specified. A single hyphen (-) in an attribute
context is equivalent to .unnumbered, and preferable in non-English
documents. So,
# My heading {-}
is just the same as
# My heading {.unnumbered}
If the unlisted class is present in addition to unnumbered,
the heading will not be included in a table of contents.
(Currently this feature is only implemented for certain
formats: those based on LaTeX and HTML, PowerPoint, and RTF.)
Pandoc behaves as if reference links have been defined for each heading. So, to link to a heading
# Heading identifiers in HTML
you can simply write
[Heading identifiers in HTML]
or
[Heading identifiers in HTML][]
or
[the section on heading identifiers][heading identifiers in
HTML]
instead of giving the identifier explicitly:
[Heading identifiers in HTML](#heading-identifiers-in-html)
If there are multiple headings with identical text, the corresponding reference will link to the first one only, and you will need to use explicit links to link to the others, as described above.
Like regular reference links, these references are case-insensitive.
Explicit link reference definitions always take priority over
implicit heading references. So, in the following example, the
link will point to bar, not to #foo:
# Foo
[foo]: bar
See [foo]
Markdown uses email conventions for quoting blocks of text.
A block quotation is one or more paragraphs or other block elements
(such as lists or headings), with each line preceded by a > character
and an optional space. (The > need not start at the left margin, but
it should not be indented more than three spaces.)
> This is a block quote. This
> paragraph has two lines.
>
> 1. This is a list inside a block quote.
> 2. Second item.
A "lazy" form, which requires the > character only on the first
line of each block, is also allowed:
> This is a block quote. This
paragraph has two lines.
> 1. This is a list inside a block quote.
2. Second item.
Among the block elements that can be contained in a block quote are other block quotes. That is, block quotes can be nested:
> This is a block quote.
>
> > A block quote within a block quote.
If the > character is followed by an optional space, that space
will be considered part of the block quote marker and not part of
the indentation of the contents. Thus, to put an indented code
block in a block quote, you need five spaces after the >:
> code
Standard Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a
block quote. Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at
the beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement
is that it is all too easy for a > to end up at the beginning
of a line by accident (perhaps through line wrapping). So,
unless the markdown_strict format is used, the following does
not produce a nested block quote in pandoc:
> This is a block quote.
>> Nested.
A block of text indented four spaces (or one tab) is treated as verbatim text: that is, special characters do not trigger special formatting, and all spaces and line breaks are preserved. For example,
if (a > 3) {
moveShip(5 * gravity, DOWN);
}
The initial (four space or one tab) indentation is not considered part of the verbatim text, and is removed in the output.
Note: blank lines in the verbatim text need not begin with four spaces.
In addition to standard indented code blocks, pandoc supports
fenced code blocks. These begin with a row of three or more
tildes (~) and end with a row of tildes that must be at least as long as
the starting row. Everything between these lines is treated as code. No
indentation is necessary:
~~~~~~~
if (a > 3) {
moveShip(5 * gravity, DOWN);
}
~~~~~~~
Like regular code blocks, fenced code blocks must be separated from surrounding text by blank lines.
If the code itself contains a row of tildes or backticks, just use a longer row of tildes or backticks at the start and end:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~
code including tildes
~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Same as fenced_code_blocks, but uses backticks (`) instead of tildes
(~).
Optionally, you may attach attributes to fenced or backtick code block using this syntax:
~~~~ {#mycode .haskell .numberLines startFrom="100"}
qsort [] = []
qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter (< x) xs) ++ [x] ++
qsort (filter (>= x) xs)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here mycode is an identifier, haskell and numberLines are
classes, and startFrom is an attribute with value 100. Some
output formats can use this information to do syntax
highlighting. Currently, the only output formats that uses this
information are HTML, LaTeX, Docx, Ms, and PowerPoint. If
highlighting is supported for your output format and language,
then the code block above will appear highlighted, with numbered
lines. (To see which languages are supported, type pandoc --list-highlight-languages.) Otherwise, the code block above
will appear as follows:
<pre id="mycode" class="haskell numberLines" startFrom="100">
<code>
...
</code>
</pre>
The numberLines (or number-lines) class will cause the lines
of the code block to be numbered, starting with 1 or the value
of the startFrom attribute. The lineAnchors (or
line-anchors) class will cause the lines to be clickable
anchors in HTML output.
A shortcut form can also be used for specifying the language of the code block:
```haskell
qsort [] = []
```
This is equivalent to:
``` {.haskell}
qsort [] = []
```
If the fenced_code_attributes extension is disabled, but
input contains class attribute(s) for the code block, the first
class attribute will be printed after the opening fence as a bare
word.
To prevent all highlighting, use the --no-highlight flag.
To set the highlighting style, use --highlight-style.
For more information on highlighting, see [Syntax highlighting],
below.
A line block is a sequence of lines beginning with a vertical bar (|)
followed by a space. The division into lines will be preserved in
the output, as will any leading spaces; otherwise, the lines will
be formatted as Markdown. This is useful for verse and addresses:
| The limerick packs laughs anatomical
| In space that is quite economical.
| But the good ones I've seen
| So seldom are clean
| And the clean ones so seldom are comical
| 200 Main St.
| Berkeley, CA 94718
The lines can be hard-wrapped if needed, but the continuation line must begin with a space.
| The Right Honorable Most Venerable and Righteous Samuel L.
Constable, Jr.
| 200 Main St.
| Berkeley, CA 94718
Inline formatting (such as emphasis) is allowed in the content, but not block-level formatting (such as block quotes or lists).
This syntax is borrowed from reStructuredText.
A bullet list is a list of bulleted list items. A bulleted list
item begins with a bullet (*, +, or -). Here is a simple
example:
* one
* two
* three
This will produce a "compact" list. If you want a "loose" list, in which each item is formatted as a paragraph, put spaces between the items:
* one
* two
* three
The bullets need not be flush with the left margin; they may be indented one, two, or three spaces. The bullet must be followed by whitespace.
List items look best if subsequent lines are flush with the first line (after the bullet):
* here is my first
list item.
* and my second.
But Markdown also allows a "lazy" format:
* here is my first
list item.
* and my second.
A list item may contain multiple paragraphs and other block-level content. However, subsequent paragraphs must be preceded by a blank line and indented to line up with the first non-space content after the list marker.
* First paragraph.
Continued.
* Second paragraph. With a code block, which must be indented
eight spaces:
{ code }
Exception: if the list marker is followed by an indented code block, which must begin 5 spaces after the list marker, then subsequent paragraphs must begin two columns after the last character of the list marker:
* code
continuation paragraph
List items may include other lists. In this case the preceding blank line is optional. The nested list must be indented to line up with the first non-space character after the list marker of the containing list item.
* fruits
+ apples
- macintosh
- red delicious
+ pears
+ peaches
* vegetables
+ broccoli
+ chard
As noted above, Markdown allows you to write list items "lazily," instead of indenting continuation lines. However, if there are multiple paragraphs or other blocks in a list item, the first line of each must be indented.
+ A lazy, lazy, list
item.
+ Another one; this looks
bad but is legal.
Second paragraph of second
list item.
Ordered lists work just like bulleted lists, except that the items begin with enumerators rather than bullets.
In standard Markdown, enumerators are decimal numbers followed by a period and a space. The numbers themselves are ignored, so there is no difference between this list:
1. one
2. two
3. three
and this one:
5. one
7. two
1. three
Unlike standard Markdown, pandoc allows ordered list items to be marked with uppercase and lowercase letters and roman numerals, in addition to Arabic numerals. List markers may be enclosed in parentheses or followed by a single right-parentheses or period. They must be separated from the text that follows by at least one space, and, if the list marker is a capital letter with a period, by at least two spaces.1
The fancy_lists extension also allows '#' to be used as an
ordered list marker in place of a numeral:
#. one
#. two
Pandoc also pays attention to the type of list marker used, and to the starting number, and both of these are preserved where possible in the output format. Thus, the following yields a list with numbers followed by a single parenthesis, starting with 9, and a sublist with lowercase roman numerals:
9) Ninth
10) Tenth
11) Eleventh
i. subone
ii. subtwo
iii. subthree
Pandoc will start a new list each time a different type of list marker is used. So, the following will create three lists:
(2) Two
(5) Three
1. Four
* Five
If default list markers are desired, use #.:
#. one
#. two
#. three
Pandoc supports task lists, using the syntax of GitHub-Flavored Markdown.
- [ ] an unchecked task list item
- [x] checked item
Pandoc supports definition lists, using the syntax of PHP Markdown Extra with some extensions.2
Term 1
: Definition 1
Term 2 with *inline markup*
: Definition 2
{ some code, part of Definition 2 }
Third paragraph of definition 2.
Each term must fit on one line, which may optionally be followed by a blank line, and must be followed by one or more definitions. A definition begins with a colon or tilde, which may be indented one or two spaces.
A term may have multiple definitions, and each definition may consist of one or more block elements (paragraph, code block, list, etc.), each indented four spaces or one tab stop. The body of the definition (not including the first line) should be indented four spaces. However, as with other Markdown lists, you can "lazily" omit indentation except at the beginning of a paragraph or other block element:
Term 1
: Definition
with lazy continuation.
Second paragraph of the definition.
If you leave space before the definition (as in the example above), the text of the definition will be treated as a paragraph. In some output formats, this will mean greater spacing between term/definition pairs. For a more compact definition list, omit the space before the definition:
Term 1
~ Definition 1
Term 2
~ Definition 2a
~ Definition 2b
Note that space between items in a definition list is required.
(A variant that loosens this requirement, but disallows "lazy"
hard wrapping, can be activated with compact_definition_lists: see
[Non-default extensions], below.)
The special list marker @ can be used for sequentially numbered
examples. The first list item with a @ marker will be numbered '1',
the next '2', and so on, throughout the document. The numbered examples
need not occur in a single list; each new list using @ will take up
where the last stopped. So, for example:
(@) My first example will be numbered (1).
(@) My second example will be numbered (2).
Explanation of examples.
(@) My third example will be numbered (3).
Numbered examples can be labeled and referred to elsewhere in the document:
(@good) This is a good example.
As (@good) illustrates, ...
The label can be any string of alphanumeric characters, underscores, or hyphens.
Note: continuation paragraphs in example lists must always
be indented four spaces, regardless of the length of the
list marker. That is, example lists always behave as if the
four_space_rule extension is set. This is because example
labels tend to be long, and indenting content to the
first non-space character after the label would be awkward.
What if you want to put an indented code block after a list?
- item one
- item two
{ my code block }
Trouble! Here pandoc (like other Markdown implementations) will treat
{ my code block } as the second paragraph of item two, and not as
a code block.
To "cut off" the list after item two, you can insert some non-indented content, like an HTML comment, which won't produce visible output in any format:
- item one
- item two
<!-- end of list -->
{ my code block }
You can use the same trick if you want two consecutive lists instead of one big list:
1. one
2. two
3. three
<!-- -->
1. uno
2. dos
3. tres
A line containing a row of three or more *, -, or _ characters
(optionally separated by spaces) produces a horizontal rule:
* * * *
---------------
Four kinds of tables may be used. The first three kinds presuppose the use of a fixed-width font, such as Courier. The fourth kind can be used with proportionally spaced fonts, as it does not require lining up columns.
A caption may optionally be provided with all 4 kinds of tables (as
illustrated in the examples below). A caption is a paragraph beginning
with the string Table: (or just :), which will be stripped off.
It may appear either before or after the table.
Simple tables look like this:
Right Left Center Default
------- ------ ---------- -------
12 12 12 12
123 123 123 123
1 1 1 1
Table: Demonstration of simple table syntax.
The header and table rows must each fit on one line. Column alignments are determined by the position of the header text relative to the dashed line below it:3
- If the dashed line is flush with the header text on the right side but extends beyond it on the left, the column is right-aligned.
- If the dashed line is flush with the header text on the left side but extends beyond it on the right, the column is left-aligned.
- If the dashed line extends beyond the header text on both sides, the column is centered.
- If the dashed line is flush with the header text on both sides, the default alignment is used (in most cases, this will be left).
The table must end with a blank line, or a line of dashes followed by a blank line.
The column header row may be omitted, provided a dashed line is used to end the table. For example:
------- ------ ---------- -------
12 12 12 12
123 123 123 123
1 1 1 1
------- ------ ---------- -------
When the header row is omitted, column alignments are determined on the basis of the first line of the table body. So, in the tables above, the columns would be right, left, center, and right aligned, respectively.
Multiline tables allow header and table rows to span multiple lines of text (but cells that span multiple columns or rows of the table are not supported). Here is an example:
-------------------------------------------------------------
Centered Default Right Left
Header Aligned Aligned Aligned
----------- ------- --------------- -------------------------
First row 12.0 Example of a row that
spans multiple lines.
Second row 5.0 Here's another one. Note
the blank line between
rows.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Table: Here's the caption. It, too, may span
multiple lines.
These work like simple tables, but with the following differences:
- They must begin with a row of dashes, before the header text (unless the header row is omitted).
- They must end with a row of dashes, then a blank line.
- The rows must be separated by blank lines.
In multiline tables, the table parser pays attention to the widths of the columns, and the writers try to reproduce these relative widths in the output. So, if you find that one of the columns is too narrow in the output, try widening it in the Markdown source.
The header may be omitted in multiline tables as well as simple tables:
----------- ------- --------------- -------------------------
First row 12.0 Example of a row that
spans multiple lines.
Second row 5.0 Here's another one. Note
the blank line between
rows.
----------- ------- --------------- -------------------------
: Here's a multiline table without a header.
It is possible for a multiline table to have just one row, but the row should be followed by a blank line (and then the row of dashes that ends the table), or the table may be interpreted as a simple table.
Grid tables look like this:
: Sample grid table.
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
| Fruit | Price | Advantages |
+===============+===============+====================+
| Bananas | $1.34 | - built-in wrapper |
| | | - bright color |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
| Oranges | $2.10 | - cures scurvy |
| | | - tasty |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
The row of =s separates the header from the table body, and can be
omitted for a headerless table. The cells of grid tables may contain
arbitrary block elements (multiple paragraphs, code blocks, lists,
etc.). Cells that span multiple columns or rows are not
supported. Grid tables can be created easily using Emacs' table-mode
(M-x table-insert).
Alignments can be specified as with pipe tables, by putting colons at the boundaries of the separator line after the header:
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
| Right | Left | Centered |
+==============:+:==============+:==================:+
| Bananas | $1.34 | built-in wrapper |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
For headerless tables, the colons go on the top line instead:
+--------------:+:--------------+:------------------:+
| Right | Left | Centered |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
Pandoc does not support grid tables with row spans or column spans. This means that neither variable numbers of columns across rows nor variable numbers of rows across columns are supported by Pandoc. All grid tables must have the same number of columns in each row, and the same number of rows in each column. For example, the Docutils sample grid tables will not render as expected with Pandoc.
Pipe tables look like this:
| Right | Left | Default | Center |
|------:|:-----|---------|:------:|
| 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 |
| 123 | 123 | 123 | 123 |
| 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
: Demonstration of pipe table syntax.
The syntax is identical to PHP Markdown Extra tables. The beginning and ending pipe characters are optional, but pipes are required between all columns. The colons indicate column alignment as shown. The header cannot be omitted. To simulate a headerless table, include a header with blank cells.
Since the pipes indicate column boundaries, columns need not be vertically aligned, as they are in the above example. So, this is a perfectly legal (though ugly) pipe table:
fruit| price
-----|-----:
apple|2.05
pear|1.37
orange|3.09
The cells of pipe tables cannot contain block elements like paragraphs
and lists, and cannot span multiple lines. If a pipe table contains a
row whose Markdown content is wider than the column width (see
--columns), then the table will take up the full text width and
the cell contents will wrap, with the relative cell widths determined
by the number of dashes in the line separating the table header from
the table body. (For example ---|- would make the first column 3/4
and the second column 1/4 of the full text width.)
On the other hand, if no lines are wider than column width, then
cell contents will not be wrapped, and the cells will be sized
to their contents.
Note: pandoc also recognizes pipe tables of the following form, as can be produced by Emacs' orgtbl-mode:
| One | Two |
|-----+-------|
| my | table |
| is | nice |
The difference is that + is used instead of |. Other orgtbl features
are not supported. In particular, to get non-default column alignment,
you'll need to add colons as above.
If the file begins with a title block
% title
% author(s) (separated by semicolons)
% date
it will be parsed as bibliographic information, not regular text. (It will be used, for example, in the title of standalone LaTeX or HTML output.) The block may contain just a title, a title and an author, or all three elements. If you want to include an author but no title, or a title and a date but no author, you need a blank line:
%
% Author
% My title
%
% June 15, 2006
The title may occupy multiple lines, but continuation lines must begin with leading space, thus:
% My title
on multiple lines
If a document has multiple authors, the authors may be put on separate lines with leading space, or separated by semicolons, or both. So, all of the following are equivalent:
% Author One
Author Two
% Author One; Author Two
% Author One;
Author Two
The date must fit on one line.
All three metadata fields may contain standard inline formatting (italics, links, footnotes, etc.).
Title blocks will always be parsed, but they will affect the output only
when the --standalone (-s) option is chosen. In HTML output, titles
will appear twice: once in the document head -- this is the title that
will appear at the top of the window in a browser -- and once at the
beginning of the document body. The title in the document head can have
an optional prefix attached (--title-prefix or -T option). The title
in the body appears as an H1 element with class "title", so it can be
suppressed or reformatted with CSS. If a title prefix is specified with
-T and no title block appears in the document, the title prefix will
be used by itself as the HTML title.
The man page writer extracts a title, man page section number, and
other header and footer information from the title line. The title
is assumed to be the first word on the title line, which may optionally
end with a (single-digit) section number in parentheses. (There should
be no space between the title and the parentheses.) Anything after
this is assumed to be additional footer and header text. A single pipe
character (|) should be used to separate the footer text from the header
text. Thus,
% PANDOC(1)
will yield a man page with the title PANDOC and section 1.
% PANDOC(1) Pandoc User Manuals
will also have "Pandoc User Manuals" in the footer.
% PANDOC(1) Pandoc User Manuals | Version 4.0
will also have "Version 4.0" in the header.
A YAML metadata block is a valid YAML object, delimited by a line of three
hyphens (---) at the top and a line of three hyphens (---) or three dots
(...) at the bottom. A YAML metadata block may occur anywhere in the
document, but if it is not at the beginning, it must be preceded by a blank
line. (Note that, because of the way pandoc concatenates input files when
several are provided, you may also keep the metadata in a separate YAML file
and pass it to pandoc as an argument, along with your Markdown files:
pandoc chap1.md chap2.md chap3.md metadata.yaml -s -o book.html
Just be sure that the YAML file begins with --- and ends with --- or
....) Alternatively, you can use the --metadata-file option. Using
that approach however, you cannot reference content (like footnotes)
from the main markdown input document.
Metadata will be taken from the fields of the YAML object and added to any
existing document metadata. Metadata can contain lists and objects (nested
arbitrarily), but all string scalars will be interpreted as Markdown. Fields
with names ending in an underscore will be ignored by pandoc. (They may be
given a role by external processors.) Field names must not be
interpretable as YAML numbers or boolean values (so, for
example, yes, True, and 15 cannot be used as field names).
A document may contain multiple metadata blocks. If two metadata blocks attempt to set the same field, the value from the second block will be taken.
Each metadata block is handled internally as an independent YAML document. This means, for example, that any YAML anchors defined in a block cannot be referenced in another block.
When pandoc is used with -t markdown to create a Markdown document,
a YAML metadata block will be produced only if the -s/--standalone
option is used. All of the metadata will appear in a single block
at the beginning of the document.
Note that YAML escaping rules must be followed. Thus, for example,
if a title contains a colon, it must be quoted, and if it contains a
backslash escape, then it must be ensured that it is not treated as a
YAML escape sequence. The pipe character (|) can be used to begin
an indented block that will be interpreted literally, without need for
escaping. This form is necessary when the field contains blank lines
or block-level formatting:
---
title: 'This is the title: it contains a colon'
author:
- Author One
- Author Two
keywords: [nothing, nothingness]
abstract: |
This is the abstract.
It consists of two paragraphs.
...
The literal block after the | must be indented relative to the
line containing the |. If it is not, the YAML will be invalid
and pandoc will not interpret it as metadata. For an overview
of the complex rules governing YAML, see the Wikipedia entry on
YAML syntax.
Template variables will be set automatically from the metadata. Thus, for
example, in writing HTML, the variable abstract will be set to the HTML
equivalent of the Markdown in the abstract field:
<p>This is the abstract.</p>
<p>It consists of two paragraphs.</p>
Variables can contain arbitrary YAML structures, but the template must match
this structure. The author variable in the default templates expects a
simple list or string, but can be changed to support more complicated
structures. The following combination, for example, would add an affiliation
to the author if one is given:
---
title: The document title
author:
- name: Author One
affiliation: University of Somewhere
- name: Author Two
affiliation: University of Nowhere
...
To use the structured authors in the example above, you would need a custom template:
$for(author)$
$if(author.name)$
$author.name$$if(author.affiliation)$ ($author.affiliation$)$endif$
$else$
$author$
$endif$
$endfor$
Raw content to include in the document's header may be specified
using header-includes; however, it is important to mark up
this content as raw code for a particular output format, using
the raw_attribute extension), or it
will be interpreted as markdown. For example:
header-includes:
- |
```{=latex}
\let\oldsection\section
\renewcommand{\section}[1]{\clearpage\oldsection{#1}}
```
Note: the yaml_metadata_block extension works with
commonmark as well as markdown (and it is enabled by default
in gfm and commonmark_x). However, in these formats the
following restrictions apply:
-
The YAML metadata block must occur at the beginning of the document (and there can be only one). If multiple files are given as arguments to pandoc, only the first can be a YAML metadata block.
-
The leaf nodes of the YAML structure are parsed in isolation from each other and from the rest of the document. So, for example, you can't use a reference link in these contexts if the link definition is somewhere else in the document.
Except inside a code block or inline code, any punctuation or space character preceded by a backslash will be treated literally, even if it would normally indicate formatting. Thus, for example, if one writes
*\*hello\**
one will get
<em>*hello*</em>
instead of
<strong>hello</strong>
This rule is easier to remember than standard Markdown's rule, which allows only the following characters to be backslash-escaped:
\`*_{}[]()>#+-.!
(However, if the markdown_strict format is used, the standard Markdown rule
will be used.)
A backslash-escaped space is parsed as a nonbreaking space. In TeX output,
it will appear as ~. In HTML and XML output, it will appear as a
literal unicode nonbreaking space character (note that it will thus
actually look "invisible" in the generated HTML source; you can still
use the --ascii command-line option to make it appear as an explicit
entity).
A backslash-escaped newline (i.e. a backslash occurring at the end of
a line) is parsed as a hard line break. It will appear in TeX output as
\\ and in HTML as <br />. This is a nice alternative to
Markdown's "invisible" way of indicating hard line breaks using
two trailing spaces on a line.
Backslash escapes do not work in verbatim contexts.
To emphasize some text, surround it with *s or _, like this:
This text is _emphasized with underscores_, and this
is *emphasized with asterisks*.
Double * or _ produces strong emphasis:
This is **strong emphasis** and __with underscores__.
A * or _ character surrounded by spaces, or backslash-escaped,
will not trigger emphasis:
This is * not emphasized *, and \*neither is this\*.
Because _ is sometimes used inside words and identifiers,
pandoc does not interpret a _ surrounded by alphanumeric
characters as an emphasis marker. If you want to emphasize
just part of a word, use *:
feas*ible*, not feas*able*.
To strikeout a section of text with a horizontal line, begin and end it
with ~~. Thus, for example,
This ~~is deleted text.~~
Superscripts may be written by surrounding the superscripted text by ^
characters; subscripts may be written by surrounding the subscripted
text by ~ characters. Thus, for example,
H~2~O is a liquid. 2^10^ is 1024.
The text between ^...^ or ~...~ may not contain spaces or
newlines. If the superscripted or subscripted text contains
spaces, these spaces must be escaped with backslashes. (This is
to prevent accidental superscripting and subscripting through
the ordinary use of ~ and ^, and also bad interactions with
footnotes.) Thus, if you want the letter P with 'a cat' in
subscripts, use P~a\ cat~, not P~a cat~.
To make a short span of text verbatim, put it inside backticks:
What is the difference between `>>=` and `>>`?
If the verbatim text includes a backtick, use double backticks:
Here is a literal backtick `` ` ``.
(The spaces after the opening backticks and before the closing backticks will be ignored.)
The general rule is that a verbatim span starts with a string of consecutive backticks (optionally followed by a space) and ends with a string of the same number of backticks (optionally preceded by a space).
Note that backslash-escapes (and other Markdown constructs) do not work in verbatim contexts:
This is a backslash followed by an asterisk: `\*`.
Attributes can be attached to verbatim text, just as with [fenced code blocks]:
`<$>`{.haskell}
To underline text, use the underline class:
[Underline]{.underline}
Or, without the bracketed_spans extension (but with native_spans):
<span class="underline">Underline</span>
This will work in all output formats that support underline.
To write small caps, use the smallcaps class:
[Small caps]{.smallcaps}
Or, without the bracketed_spans extension:
<span class="smallcaps">Small caps</span>
For compatibility with other Markdown flavors, CSS is also supported:
<span style="font-variant:small-caps;">Small caps</span>
This will work in all output formats that support small caps.
Anything between two $ characters will be treated as TeX math. The
opening $ must have a non-space character immediately to its right,
while the closing $ must have a non-space character immediately to its
left, and must not be followed immediately by a digit. Thus,
$20,000 and $30,000 won't parse as math. If for some reason
you need to enclose text in literal $ characters, backslash-escape
them and they won't be treated as math delimiters.
For display math, use $$ delimiters. (In this case, the delimiters
may be separated from the formula by whitespace. However, there can be
no blank lines betwen the opening and closing $$ delimiters.)
TeX math will be printed in all output formats. How it is rendered depends on the output format:
LaTeX
~ It will appear verbatim surrounded by \(...\) (for inline
math) or \[...\] (for display math).
Markdown, Emacs Org mode, ConTeXt, ZimWiki
~ It will appear verbatim surrounded by $...$ (for inline
math) or $$...$$ (for display math).
XWiki
~ It will appear verbatim surrounded by {{formula}}..{{/formula}}.
reStructuredText
~ It will be rendered using an interpreted text role :math:.
AsciiDoc
~ For AsciiDoc output format (-t asciidoc) it will appear verbatim
surrounded by latexmath:[$...$] (for inline math) or
[latexmath]++++\[...\]+++ (for display math).
For AsciiDoctor output format (-t asciidoctor) the LaTex delimiters
($..$ and \[..\]) are omitted.
Texinfo
~ It will be rendered inside a @math command.
roff man, Jira markup
~ It will be rendered verbatim without $'s.
MediaWiki, DokuWiki
~ It will be rendered inside <math> tags.
Textile
~ It will be rendered inside <span class="math"> tags.
RTF, OpenDocument ~ It will be rendered, if possible, using Unicode characters, and will otherwise appear verbatim.
ODT ~ It will be rendered, if possible, using MathML.
DocBook
~ If the --mathml flag is used, it will be rendered using MathML
in an inlineequation or informalequation tag. Otherwise it
will be rendered, if possible, using Unicode characters.
Docx ~ It will be rendered using OMML math markup.
FictionBook2
~ If the --webtex option is used, formulas are rendered as images
using CodeCogs or other compatible web service, downloaded
and embedded in the e-book. Otherwise, they will appear verbatim.
HTML, Slidy, DZSlides, S5, EPUB ~ The way math is rendered in HTML will depend on the command-line options selected. Therefore see [Math rendering in HTML] above.
Markdown allows you to insert raw HTML (or DocBook) anywhere in a document
(except verbatim contexts, where <, >, and & are interpreted
literally). (Technically this is not an extension, since standard
Markdown allows it, but it has been made an extension so that it can
be disabled if desired.)
The raw HTML is passed through unchanged in HTML, S5, Slidy, Slideous, DZSlides, EPUB, Markdown, CommonMark, Emacs Org mode, and Textile output, and suppressed in other formats.
For a more explicit way of including raw HTML in a Markdown
document, see the [raw_attribute extension][Extension: raw_attribute].
In the CommonMark format, if raw_html is enabled, superscripts,
subscripts, strikeouts and small capitals will be represented as HTML.
Otherwise, plain-text fallbacks will be used. Note that even if
raw_html is disabled, tables will be rendered with HTML syntax if
they cannot use pipe syntax.
Standard Markdown allows you to include HTML "blocks": blocks
of HTML between balanced tags that are separated from the surrounding text
with blank lines, and start and end at the left margin. Within
these blocks, everything is interpreted as HTML, not Markdown;
so (for example), * does not signify emphasis.
Pandoc behaves this way when the markdown_strict format is used; but
by default, pandoc interprets material between HTML block tags as Markdown.
Thus, for example, pandoc will turn
<table>
<tr>
<td>*one*</td>
<td>[a link](https://google.com)</td>
</tr>
</table>
into
<table>
<tr>
<td><em>one</em></td>
<td><a href="https://google.com">a link</a></td>
</tr>
</table>
whereas Markdown.pl will preserve it as is.
There is one exception to this rule: text between <script>,
<style>, and <textarea> tags is not interpreted as Markdown.
This departure from standard Markdown should make it easier to mix
Markdown with HTML block elements. For example, one can surround
a block of Markdown text with <div> tags without preventing it
from being interpreted as Markdown.
Use native pandoc Div blocks for content inside <div> tags.
For the most part this should give the same output as
markdown_in_html_blocks, but it makes it easier to write pandoc
filters to manipulate groups of blocks.
Use native pandoc Span blocks for content inside <span> tags.
For the most part this should give the same output as raw_html,
but it makes it easier to write pandoc filters to manipulate groups
of inlines.
In addition to raw HTML, pandoc allows raw LaTeX, TeX, and ConTeXt to be included in a document. Inline TeX commands will be preserved and passed unchanged to the LaTeX and ConTeXt writers. Thus, for example, you can use LaTeX to include BibTeX citations:
This result was proved in \cite{jones.1967}.
Note that in LaTeX environments, like
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}\hline
Age & Frequency \\ \hline
18--25 & 15 \\
26--35 & 33 \\
36--45 & 22 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
the material between the begin and end tags will be interpreted as raw LaTeX, not as Markdown.
For a more explicit and flexible way of including raw TeX in a
Markdown document, see the [raw_attribute
extension][Extension: raw_attribute].
Inline LaTeX is ignored in output formats other than Markdown, LaTeX, Emacs Org mode, and ConTeXt.
Inline spans and fenced code blocks with a special
kind of attribute will be parsed as raw content with the
designated format. For example, the following produces a raw
roff ms block:
```{=ms}
.MYMACRO
blah blah
```
And the following produces a raw html inline element:
This is `<a>html</a>`{=html}
This can be useful to insert raw xml into docx documents, e.g.
a pagebreak:
```{=openxml}
<w:p>
<w:r>
<w:br w:type="page"/>
</w:r>
</w:p>
```
The format name should match the target format name (see
-t/--to, above, for a list, or use pandoc --list-output-formats). Use openxml for docx output,
opendocument for odt output, html5 for epub3 output,
html4 for epub2 output, and latex, beamer,
ms, or html5 for pdf output (depending on what you
use for --pdf-engine).
This extension presupposes that the relevant kind of
inline code or fenced code block is enabled. Thus, for
example, to use a raw attribute with a backtick code block,
backtick_code_blocks must be enabled.
The raw attribute cannot be combined with regular attributes.
When this extension is enabled, pandoc will parse LaTeX macro definitions and apply the resulting macros to all LaTeX math and raw LaTeX. So, for example, the following will work in all output formats, not just LaTeX:
\newcommand{\tuple}[1]{\langle #1 \rangle}
$\tuple{a, b, c}$
Note that LaTeX macros will not be applied if they occur
inside a raw span or block marked with the
raw_attribute extension.
When latex_macros is disabled, the raw LaTeX and math will
not have macros applied. This is usually a better approach when
you are targeting LaTeX or PDF.
Macro definitions in LaTeX will be passed through as raw LaTeX
only if latex_macros is not enabled. Macro definitions in
Markdown source (or other formats allowing raw_tex) will
be passed through regardless of whether latex_macros is
enabled.
Markdown allows links to be specified in several ways.
If you enclose a URL or email address in pointy brackets, it will become a link:
<https://google.com>
<sam@green.eggs.ham>
An inline link consists of the link text in square brackets, followed by the URL in parentheses. (Optionally, the URL can be followed by a link title, in quotes.)
This is an [inline link](/url), and here's [one with
a title](https://fsf.org "click here for a good time!").
There can be no space between the bracketed part and the parenthesized part. The link text can contain formatting (such as emphasis), but the title cannot.
Email addresses in inline links are not autodetected, so they have to be
prefixed with mailto:
[Write me!](mailto:sam@green.eggs.ham)
An explicit reference link has two parts, the link itself and the link definition, which may occur elsewhere in the document (either before or after the link).
The link consists of link text in square brackets, followed by a label in
square brackets. (There cannot be space between the two unless the
spaced_reference_links extension is enabled.) The link definition
consists of the bracketed label, followed by a colon and a space, followed by
the URL, and optionally (after a space) a link title either in quotes or in
parentheses. The label must not be parseable as a citation (assuming
the citations extension is enabled): citations take precedence over
link labels.
Here are some examples:
[my label 1]: /foo/bar.html "My title, optional"
[my label 2]: /foo
[my label 3]: https://fsf.org (The free software foundation)
[my label 4]: /bar#special 'A title in single quotes'
The URL may optionally be surrounded by angle brackets:
[my label 5]: <http://foo.bar.baz>
The title may go on the next line:
[my label 3]: https://fsf.org
"The free software foundation"
Note that link labels are not case sensitive. So, this will work:
Here is [my link][FOO]
[Foo]: /bar/baz
In an implicit reference link, the second pair of brackets is empty:
See [my website][].
[my website]: http://foo.bar.baz
Note: In Markdown.pl and most other Markdown implementations,
reference link definitions cannot occur in nested constructions
such as list items or block quotes. Pandoc lifts this arbitrary
seeming restriction. So the following is fine in pandoc, though
not in most other implementations:
> My block [quote].
>
> [quote]: /foo
In a shortcut reference link, the second pair of brackets may be omitted entirely:
See [my website].
[my website]: http://foo.bar.baz
To link to another section of the same document, use the automatically generated identifier (see [Heading identifiers]). For example:
See the [Introduction](#introduction).
or
See the [Introduction].
[Introduction]: #introduction
Internal links are currently supported for HTML formats (including HTML slide shows and EPUB), LaTeX, and ConTeXt.
A link immediately preceded by a ! will be treated as an image.
The link text will be used as the image's alt text:
![movie reel]
[movie reel]: movie.gif
An image with nonempty alt text, occurring by itself in a paragraph, will be rendered as a figure with a caption. The image's alt text will be used as the caption.
How this is rendered depends on the output format. Some output formats (e.g. RTF) do not yet support figures. In those formats, you'll just get an image in a paragraph by itself, with no caption.
If you just want a regular inline image, just make sure it is not the only thing in the paragraph. One way to do this is to insert a nonbreaking space after the image:
\
Note that in reveal.js slide shows, an image in a paragraph
by itself that has the stretch class will fill the screen,
and the caption and figure tags will be omitted.
Attributes can be set on links and images:
An inline {#id .class width=30 height=20px}
and a reference ![image][ref] with attributes.
[ref]: foo.jpg "optional title" {#id .class key=val key2="val 2"}
(This syntax is compatible with PHP Markdown Extra when only #id
and .class are used.)
For HTML and EPUB, all known HTML5 attributes except width and
height (but including srcset and sizes) are passed through
as is. Unknown attributes are passed through as custom
attributes, with data- prepended. The other writers ignore
attributes that are not specifically supported by their output format.
The width and height attributes on images are treated specially. When
used without a unit, the unit is assumed to be pixels. However, any of
the following unit identifiers can be used: px, cm, mm, in, inch
and %. There must not be any spaces between the number and the unit.
For example:
{ width=50% }
- Dimensions may be converted to a form that is compatible with
the output format (for example, dimensions given in pixels will
be converted to inches when converting HTML to LaTeX). Conversion
between pixels and physical measurements is affected by the
--dpioption (by default, 96 dpi is assumed, unless the image itself contains dpi information). - The
%unit is generally relative to some available space. For example the above example will render to the following.- HTML:
<img href="file.jpg" style="width: 50%;" /> - LaTeX:
\includegraphics[width=0.5\textwidth,height=\textheight]{file.jpg}(If you're using a custom template, you need to configuregraphicxas in the default template.) - ConTeXt:
\externalfigure[file.jpg][width=0.5\textwidth]
- HTML:
- Some output formats have a notion of a class
(ConTeXt)
or a unique identifier (LaTeX
\caption), or both (HTML). - When no
widthorheightattributes are specified, the fallback is to look at the image resolution and the dpi metadata embedded in the image file.
Using the native_divs and native_spans extensions
(see [above][Extension: native_divs]), HTML syntax can
be used as part of markdown to create native Div and Span
elements in the pandoc AST (as opposed to raw HTML).
However, there is also nicer syntax available:
Allow special fenced syntax for native Div blocks. A Div
starts with a fence containing at least three consecutive
colons plus some attributes. The attributes may optionally
be followed by another string of consecutive colons.
The attribute syntax is exactly as in fenced code blocks (see
[Extension: fenced_code_attributes]). As with fenced
code blocks, one can use either attributes in curly braces
or a single unbraced word, which will be treated as a class
name. The Div ends with another line containing a string of at
least three consecutive colons. The fenced Div should be
separated by blank lines from preceding and following blocks.
Example:
::::: {#special .sidebar}
Here is a paragraph.
And another.
:::::
Fenced divs can be nested. Opening fences are distinguished because they must have attributes:
::: Warning ::::::
This is a warning.
::: Danger
This is a warning within a warning.
:::
::::::::::::::::::
Fences without attributes are always closing fences. Unlike with fenced code blocks, the number of colons in the closing fence need not match the number in the opening fence. However, it can be helpful for visual clarity to use fences of different lengths to distinguish nested divs from their parents.
A bracketed sequence of inlines, as one would use to begin
a link, will be treated as a Span with attributes if it is
followed immediately by attributes:
[This is *some text*]{.class key="val"}
Pandoc's Markdown allows footnotes, using the following syntax:
Here is a footnote reference,[^1] and another.[^longnote]
[^1]: Here is the footnote.
[^longnote]: Here's one with multiple blocks.
Subsequent paragraphs are indented to show that they
belong to the previous footnote.
{ some.code }
The whole paragraph can be indented, or just the first
line. In this way, multi-paragraph footnotes work like
multi-paragraph list items.
This paragraph won't be part of the note, because it
isn't indented.
The identifiers in footnote references may not contain spaces, tabs, or newlines. These identifiers are used only to correlate the footnote reference with the note itself; in the output, footnotes will be numbered sequentially.
The footnotes themselves need not be placed at the end of the document. They may appear anywhere except inside other block elements (lists, block quotes, tables, etc.). Each footnote should be separated from surrounding content (including other footnotes) by blank lines.
Inline footnotes are also allowed (though, unlike regular notes, they cannot contain multiple paragraphs). The syntax is as follows:
Here is an inline note.^[Inlines notes are easier to write, since
you don't have to pick an identifier and move down to type the
note.]
Inline and regular footnotes may be mixed freely.
To cite a bibliographic item with an identifier foo, use the
syntax @foo. Normal citations should be included in square
brackets, with semicolons separating distinct items:
Blah blah [@doe99; @smith2000; @smith2004].
How this is rendered depends on the citation style. In an author-date style, it might render as
Blah blah (Doe 1999, Smith 2000, 2004).
In a footnote style, it might render as
Blah blah.[^1]
[^1]: John Doe, "Frogs," *Journal of Amphibians* 44 (1999);
Susan Smith, "Flies," *Journal of Insects* (2000);
Susan Smith, "Bees," *Journal of Insects* (2004).
See the CSL user documentation for more information about CSL styles and how they affect rendering.
Unless a citation key start with a letter, digit, or _,
and contains only alphanumerics and single internal punctuation
characters (:.#$%&-+?<>~/), it must be surrounded
by curly braces, which are not considered part of the key.
In @Foo_bar.baz., the key is Foo_bar.baz because the final
period is not internal punctuation, so it is not included in
the key. In @{Foo_bar.baz.}, the key is Foo_bar.baz., including
the final period.
In @Foo_bar--baz, the key is Foo_bar because the repeated internal
punctuation characters terminate the key.
The curly braces are recommended if you use URLs as
keys: [@{https://example.com/bib?name=foobar&date=2000}, p. 33].
Citation items may optionally include a prefix, a locator, and a suffix. In
Blah blah [see @doe99, pp. 33-35 and *passim*; @smith04, chap. 1].
The first item (doe99) has prefix see , locator pp. 33-35,
and suffix and *passim*. The second item (smith04) has
locator chap. 1 and no prefix or suffix.
Pandoc uses some heuristics to separate the locator from the
rest of the subject. It is sensitive to the locator terms
defined in the CSL locale files. Either abbreviated or
unabbreviated forms are accepted. In the en-US locale, locator
terms can be written in either singular or plural forms, as
book, bk./bks.; chapter, chap./chaps.; column,
col./cols.; figure, fig./figs.; folio,
fol./fols.; number, no./nos.; line, l./ll.;
note, n./nn.; opus, op./opp.; page, p./pp.;
paragraph, para./paras.; part, pt./pts.; section,
sec./secs.; sub verbo, s.v./s.vv.; verse,
v./vv.; volume, vol./vols.; ¶/¶¶; §/§§. If no
locator term is used, "page" is assumed.
In complex cases, you can force something to be treated as a locator by enclosing it in curly braces or prevent parsing the suffix as locator by prepending curly braces:
[@smith{ii, A, D-Z}, with a suffix]
[@smith, {pp. iv, vi-xi, (xv)-(xvii)} with suffix here]
[@smith{}, 99 years later]
A minus sign (-) before the @ will suppress mention of
the author in the citation. This can be useful when the
author is already mentioned in the text:
Smith says blah [-@smith04].
You can also write an author-in-text citation, by omitting the square brackets:
@smith04 says blah.
@smith04 [p. 33] says blah.
This will cause the author's name to be rendered, followed by the bibliographical details. Use this form when you want to make the citation the subject of a sentence.
When you are using a note style, it is usually better to let citeproc create the footnotes from citations rather than writing an explicit note. If you do write an explicit note that contains a citation, note that normal citations will be put in parentheses, while author-in-text citations will not. For this reason, it is sometimes preferable to use the author-in-text style inside notes when using a note style.
The following Markdown syntax extensions are not enabled by default
in pandoc, but may be enabled by adding +EXTENSION to the format
name, where EXTENSION is the name of the extension. Thus, for
example, markdown+hard_line_breaks is Markdown with hard line breaks.
Rewrite relative paths for Markdown links and images, depending on the path of the file containing the link or image link. For each link or image, pandoc will compute the directory of the containing file, relative to the working directory, and prepend the resulting path to the link or image path.
The use of this extension is best understood by example.
Suppose you have a a subdirectory for each chapter of a book,
chap1, chap2, chap3. Each contains a file text.md and a
number of images used in the chapter. You would like to have
 in chap1/text.md refer to
chap1/spider.jpg and  in chap2/text.md
refer to chap2/spider.jpg. To do this, use
pandoc chap*/*.md -f markdown+rebase_relative_paths
Without this extension, you would have to use
 in chap1/text.md and
 in chap2/text.md. Links with
relative paths will be rewritten in the same way as images.
Absolute paths and URLs are not changed. Neither are empty
paths or paths consisting entirely of a fragment, e.g., #foo.
Note that relative paths in reference links and images will be rewritten relative to the file containing the link reference definition, not the file containing the reference link or image itself, if these differ.
Allows attributes to be attached to any inline or block-level
element when parsing commonmark.
The syntax for the attributes is the same as that
used in [header_attributes][Extension: header_attributes].
- Attributes that occur immediately after an inline
element affect that element. If they follow a space, then they
belong to the space. (Hence, this option subsumes
inline_code_attributesandlink_attributes.) - Attributes that occur immediately before a block element, on a line by themselves, affect that element.
- Consecutive attribute specifiers may be used, either for blocks or for inlines. Their attributes will be combined.
- Attributes that occur at the end of the text of
a Setext or ATX heading (separated by whitespace
from the text) affect the heading element. (Hence, this
option subsumes
header_attributes.) - Attributes that occur after the opening fence
in a fenced code block affect the code block element. (Hence,
this option subsumes
fenced_code_attributes.) - Attributes that occur at the end of a reference link definition affect links that refer to that definition.
Note that pandoc's AST does not currently allow attributes to be attached to arbitrary elements. Hence a Span or Div container will be added if needed.
Selects the pandoc <= 1.8.2.1 behavior for parsing smart dashes:
- before a numeral is an en-dash, and -- is an em-dash.
This option only has an effect if smart is enabled. It is
selected automatically for textile input.
Allow < and > to be backslash-escaped, as they can be in
GitHub flavored Markdown but not original Markdown. This is
implied by pandoc's default all_symbols_escapable.
Allow a list to occur right after a paragraph, with no intervening blank space.
Selects the pandoc <= 2.0 behavior for parsing lists, so that four spaces indent are needed for list item continuation paragraphs.
Allow whitespace between the two components of a reference link, for example,
[foo] [bar].
Causes all newlines within a paragraph to be interpreted as hard line breaks instead of spaces.
Causes newlines within a paragraph to be ignored, rather than being treated as spaces or as hard line breaks. This option is intended for use with East Asian languages where spaces are not used between words, but text is divided into lines for readability.
Causes newlines within a paragraph to be ignored, rather than
being treated as spaces or as hard line breaks, when they occur
between two East Asian wide characters. This is a better choice
than ignore_line_breaks for texts that include a mix of East
Asian wide characters and other characters.
Parses textual emojis like :smile: as Unicode emoticons.
Causes anything between \( and \) to be interpreted as inline
TeX math, and anything between \[ and \] to be interpreted
as display TeX math. Note: a drawback of this extension is that
it precludes escaping ( and [.
Causes anything between \\( and \\) to be interpreted as inline
TeX math, and anything between \\[ and \\] to be interpreted
as display TeX math.
By default, pandoc interprets material inside block-level tags as Markdown.
This extension changes the behavior so that Markdown is only parsed
inside block-level tags if the tags have the attribute markdown=1.
Enables a MultiMarkdown style title block at the top of the document, for example:
Title: My title
Author: John Doe
Date: September 1, 2008
Comment: This is a sample mmd title block, with
a field spanning multiple lines.
See the MultiMarkdown documentation for details. If pandoc_title_block or
yaml_metadata_block is enabled, it will take precedence over
mmd_title_block.
Parses PHP Markdown Extra abbreviation keys, like
*[HTML]: Hypertext Markup Language
Note that the pandoc document model does not support abbreviations, so if this extension is enabled, abbreviation keys are simply skipped (as opposed to being parsed as paragraphs).
Makes all absolute URIs into links, even when not surrounded by
pointy braces <...>.
Parses multimarkdown style key-value attributes on link
and image references. This extension should not be confused with the
link_attributes extension.
This is a reference ![image][ref] with multimarkdown attributes.
[ref]: https://path.to/image "Image title" width=20px height=30px
id=myId class="myClass1 myClass2"
Parses multimarkdown style heading identifiers (in square brackets,
after the heading but before any trailing #s in an ATX heading).
Activates the definition list syntax of pandoc 1.12.x and earlier. This syntax differs from the one described above under [Definition lists] in several respects:
- No blank line is required between consecutive items of the definition list.
- To get a "tight" or "compact" list, omit space between consecutive items; the space between a term and its definition does not affect anything.
- Lazy wrapping of paragraphs is not allowed: the entire definition must be indented four spaces.4
Use Project Gutenberg conventions for plain output:
all-caps for strong emphasis, surround by underscores
for regular emphasis, add extra blank space around headings.
Include source position attributes when parsing commonmark.
For elements that accept attributes, a data-pos attribute
is added; other elements are placed in a surrounding
Div or Span elemnet with a data-pos attribute.
Parse multimarkdown style subscripts and superscripts, which start with a '~' or '^' character, respectively, and include the alphanumeric sequence that follows. For example:
x^2 = 4
or
Oxygen is O~2.
In addition to pandoc's extended Markdown, the following Markdown variants are supported:
markdown_phpextra(PHP Markdown Extra)markdown_github(deprecated GitHub-Flavored Markdown)markdown_mmd(MultiMarkdown)markdown_strict(Markdown.pl)commonmark(CommonMark)gfm(Github-Flavored Markdown)commonmark_x(CommonMark with many pandoc extensions)
To see which extensions are supported for a given format, and which are enabled by default, you can use the command
pandoc --list-extensions=FORMAT
where FORMAT is replaced with the name of the format.
Note that the list of extensions for commonmark,
gfm, and commonmark_x are defined relative to default
commonmark. So, for example, backtick_code_blocks
does not appear as an extension, since it is enabled by
default and cannot be disabled.
When the --citeproc option is used, pandoc can automatically generate
citations and a bibliography in a number of styles. Basic usage is
pandoc --citeproc myinput.txt
To use this feature, you will need to have
- a document containing citations (see [Extension:
citations]); - a source of bibliographic data: either an external bibliography
file or a list of
referencesin the document's YAML metadata - optionally, a CSL citation style.
You can specify an external bibliography using the
bibliography metadata field in a YAML metadata section or the
--bibliography command line argument. If you want to use
multiple bibliography files, you can supply multiple
--bibliography arguments or set bibliography metadata field
to YAML array. A bibliography may have any of these formats:
Format File extension
BibLaTeX .bib BibTeX .bibtex CSL JSON .json CSL YAML .yaml
Note that .bib can be used with both BibTeX and BibLaTeX files;
use the extension .bibtex to force interpretation as BibTeX.
In BibTeX and BibLaTeX databases, pandoc parses LaTeX markup
inside fields such as title; in CSL YAML databases, pandoc
Markdown; and in CSL JSON databases, an HTML-like markup:
<i>...</i>
: italics
<b>...</b>
: bold
<span style="font-variant:small-caps;">...</span> or <sc>...</sc>
: small capitals
<sub>...</sub>
: subscript
<sup>...</sup>
: superscript
<span class="nocase">...</span>
: prevent a phrase from being capitalized as title case
As an alternative to specifying a bibliography file using
--bibliography or the YAML metadata field bibliography, you
can include the citation data directly in the references field
of the document's YAML metadata. The field should contain an
array of YAML-encoded references, for example:
---
references:
- type: article-journal
id: WatsonCrick1953
author:
- family: Watson
given: J. D.
- family: Crick
given: F. H. C.
issued:
date-parts:
- - 1953
- 4
- 25
title: 'Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for
deoxyribose nucleic acid'
title-short: Molecular structure of nucleic acids
container-title: Nature
volume: 171
issue: 4356
page: 737-738
DOI: 10.1038/171737a0
URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/171737a0
language: en-GB
...
If both an external bibliography and inline (YAML metadata)
references are provided, both will be used. In case of
conflicting ids, the inline references will take precedence.
Note that pandoc can be used to produce such a YAML metadata
section from a BibTeX, BibLaTeX, or CSL JSON bibliography:
pandoc chem.bib -s -f biblatex -t markdown
pandoc chem.json -s -f csljson -t markdown
Indeed, pandoc can convert between any of these
citation formats:
pandoc chem.bib -s -f biblatex -t csljson
pandoc chem.yaml -s -f markdown -t biblatex
Running pandoc on a bibliography file with the --citeproc
option will create a formatted bibliography in the format
of your choice:
pandoc chem.bib -s --citeproc -o chem.html
pandoc chem.bib -s --citeproc -o chem.pdf
If you are using a bibtex or biblatex bibliography, then observe the following rules:
-
English titles should be in title case. Non-English titles should be in sentence case, and the
langidfield in biblatex should be set to the relevant language. (The following values are treated as English:american,british,canadian,english,australian,newzealand,USenglish, orUKenglish.) -
As is standard with bibtex/biblatex, proper names should be protected with curly braces so that they won't be lowercased in styles that call for sentence case. For example:
title = {My Dinner with {Andre}} -
In addition, words that should remain lowercase (or camelCase) should be protected:
title = {Spin Wave Dispersion on the {nm} Scale}Though this is not necessary in bibtex/biblatex, it is necessary with citeproc, which stores titles internally in sentence case, and converts to title case in styles that require it. Here we protect "nm" so that it doesn't get converted to "Nm" at this stage.
If you are using a CSL bibliography (either JSON or YAML), then observe the following rules:
-
All titles should be in sentence case.
-
Use the
languagefield for non-English titles to prevent their conversion to title case in styles that call for this. (Conversion happens only iflanguagebegins withenor is left empty.) -
Protect words that should not be converted to title case using this syntax:
Spin wave dispersion on the <span class="nocase">nm</span> scale
For a formally published conference paper, use the biblatex entry type
inproceedings (which will be mapped to CSL paper-conference).
For an unpublished manuscript, use the biblatex entry type
unpublished without an eventtitle field (this entry type
will be mapped to CSL manuscript).
For a talk, an unpublished conference paper, or a poster
presentation, use the biblatex entry type unpublished with an
eventtitle field (this entry type will be mapped to CSL
speech). Use the biblatex type field to indicate the type,
e.g. "Paper", or "Poster". venue and eventdate may be useful
too, though eventdate will not be rendered by most CSL styles.
Note that venue is for the event's venue, unlike location
which describes the publisher's location; do not use the latter
for an unpublished conference paper.
Citations and references can be formatted using any style supported by the
Citation Style Language, listed in the Zotero Style Repository.
These files are specified using the --csl option or the csl
(or citation-style) metadata field. By default, pandoc will
use the Chicago Manual of Style author-date format. (You can
override this default by copying a CSL style of your choice
to default.csl in your user data directory.)
The CSL project provides further information on finding and
editing styles.
The --citation-abbreviations option (or the
citation-abbreviations metadata field) may be used to specify
a JSON file containing abbreviations of journals that should be
used in formatted bibliographies when form="short" is
specified. The format of the file can be illustrated with an
example:
{ "default": {
"container-title": {
"Lloyd's Law Reports": "Lloyd's Rep",
"Estates Gazette": "EG",
"Scots Law Times": "SLT"
}
}
}
Pandoc's citation processing is designed to allow you to move between author-date, numerical, and note styles without modifying the markdown source. When you're using a note style, avoid inserting footnotes manually. Instead, insert citations just as you would in an author-date style---for example,
Blah blah [@foo, p. 33].
The footnote will be created automatically. Pandoc will take
care of removing the space and moving the note before or
after the period, depending on the setting of
notes-after-punctuation, as described below in [Other relevant
metadata fields].
In some cases you may need to put a citation inside a regular
footnote. Normal citations in footnotes (such as [@foo, p. 33]) will be rendered in parentheses. In-text citations (such
as @foo [p. 33]) will be rendered without parentheses. (A
comma will be added if appropriate.) Thus:
[^1]: Some studies [@foo; @bar, p. 33] show that
frubulicious zoosnaps are quantical. For a survey
of the literature, see @baz [chap. 1].
To include raw content in a prefix, suffix, delimiter, or term, surround it with these tags indicating the format:
{{jats}}<ref>{{/jats}}
Without the tags, the string will be interpreted as a string and escaped in the output, rather than being passed through raw.
This feature allows stylesheets to be customized to give different output for different output formats. However, stylesheets customized in this way will not be usable by other CSL implementations.
If the style calls for a list of works cited, it will be placed
in a div with id refs, if one exists:
::: {#refs}
:::
Otherwise, it will be placed at the end of the document.
Generation of the bibliography can be suppressed by setting
suppress-bibliography: true in the YAML metadata.
If you wish the bibliography to have a section heading, you can
set reference-section-title in the metadata, or put the heading
at the beginning of the div with id refs (if you are using it)
or at the end of your document:
last paragraph...
# References
The bibliography will be inserted after this heading. Note that
the unnumbered class will be added to this heading, so that the
section will not be numbered.
If you want to include items in the bibliography without actually
citing them in the body text, you can define a dummy nocite metadata
field and put the citations there:
---
nocite: |
@item1, @item2
...
@item3
In this example, the document will contain a citation for item3
only, but the bibliography will contain entries for item1, item2, and
item3.
It is possible to create a bibliography with all the citations, whether or not they appear in the document, by using a wildcard:
---
nocite: |
@*
...
For LaTeX output, you can also use natbib or biblatex to
render the bibliography. In order to do so, specify bibliography
files as outlined above, and add --natbib or --biblatex
argument to pandoc invocation. Bear in mind that bibliography
files have to be in either BibTeX (for --natbib)
or BibLaTeX (for --biblatex) format.
A few other metadata fields affect bibliography formatting:
link-citations
: If true, citations will be hyperlinked to the
corresponding bibliography entries (for author-date and
numerical styles only). Defaults to false.
link-bibliography
: If true, DOIs, PMCIDs, PMID, and URLs in bibliographies will
be rendered as hyperlinks. (If an entry contains a DOI, PMCID,
PMID, or URL, but none of these fields are rendered by the style,
then the title, or in the absence of a title the whole entry, will
be hyperlinked.) Defaults to true.
lang
: The lang field will affect how the style is localized,
for example in the translation of labels, the use
of quotation marks, and the way items are sorted.
(For backwards compatibility, locale may be used instead
of lang, but this use is deprecated.)
A BCP 47 language tag is expected: for example, `en`,
`de`, `en-US`, `fr-CA`, `ug-Cyrl`. The unicode extension
syntax (after `-u-`) may be used to specify options for
collation (sorting) more precisely. Here are some examples:
- `zh-u-co-pinyin` -- Chinese with the Pinyin collation.
- `es-u-co-trad` -- Spanish with the traditional collation
(with `Ch` sorting after `C`).
- `fr-u-kb` -- French with "backwards" accent sorting
(with `coté` sorting after `côte`).
- `en-US-u-kf-upper` -- English with uppercase letters sorting
before lower (default is lower before upper).
notes-after-punctuation
: If true (the default), pandoc will put footnote citations
after following punctuation. For example, if the source
contains blah blah [@jones99]., the result will look like
blah blah.[^1], with the note moved after the period and
the space collapsed. If false, the space will still be
collapsed, but the footnote will not be moved after the
punctuation.
You can use pandoc to produce an HTML + JavaScript slide presentation
that can be viewed via a web browser. There are five ways to do this,
using S5, DZSlides, Slidy, Slideous, or reveal.js.
You can also produce a PDF slide show using LaTeX beamer, or
slides shows in Microsoft PowerPoint format.
Here's the Markdown source for a simple slide show, habits.txt:
% Habits
% John Doe
% March 22, 2005
# In the morning
## Getting up
- Turn off alarm
- Get out of bed
## Breakfast
- Eat eggs
- Drink coffee
# In the evening
## Dinner
- Eat spaghetti
- Drink wine
------------------
## Going to sleep
- Get in bed
- Count sheep
To produce an HTML/JavaScript slide show, simply type
pandoc -t FORMAT -s habits.txt -o habits.html
where FORMAT is either s5, slidy, slideous, dzslides, or revealjs.
For Slidy, Slideous, reveal.js, and S5, the file produced by
pandoc with the -s/--standalone option embeds a link to
JavaScript and CSS files, which are assumed to be available at
the relative path s5/default (for S5), slideous (for
Slideous), reveal.js (for reveal.js), or at the Slidy website
at w3.org (for Slidy). (These paths can be changed by setting
the slidy-url, slideous-url, revealjs-url, or s5-url
variables; see [Variables for HTML slides], above.) For
DZSlides, the (relatively short) JavaScript and CSS are included
in the file by default.
With all HTML slide formats, the --self-contained option can
be used to produce a single file that contains all of the data
necessary to display the slide show, including linked scripts,
stylesheets, images, and videos.
To produce a PDF slide show using beamer, type
pandoc -t beamer habits.txt -o habits.pdf
Note that a reveal.js slide show can also be converted to a PDF by printing it to a file from the browser.
To produce a Powerpoint slide show, type
pandoc habits.txt -o habits.pptx
By default, the slide level is the highest heading level in
the hierarchy that is followed immediately by content, and not another
heading, somewhere in the document. In the example above, level-1 headings
are always followed by level-2 headings, which are followed by content,
so the slide level is 2. This default can be overridden using the
--slide-level option.
The document is carved up into slides according to the following rules:
-
A horizontal rule always starts a new slide.
-
A heading at the slide level always starts a new slide.
-
Headings below the slide level in the hierarchy create headings within a slide. (In beamer, a "block" will be created. If the heading has the class
example, anexampleblockenvironment will be used; if it has the classalert, analertblockwill be used; otherwise a regularblockwill be used.) -
Headings above the slide level in the hierarchy create "title slides," which just contain the section title and help to break the slide show into sections. Non-slide content under these headings will be included on the title slide (for HTML slide shows) or in a subsequent slide with the same title (for beamer).
-
A title page is constructed automatically from the document's title block, if present. (In the case of beamer, this can be disabled by commenting out some lines in the default template.)
These rules are designed to support many different styles of slide show. If
you don't care about structuring your slides into sections and subsections,
you can either just use level-1 headings for all slides (in that case, level 1
will be the slide level) or you can set --slide-level=0.
Note: in reveal.js slide shows, if slide level is 2, a two-dimensional
layout will be produced, with level-1 headings building horizontally
and level-2 headings building vertically. It is not recommended that
you use deeper nesting of section levels with reveal.js unless you set
--slide-level=0 (which lets reveal.js produce a one-dimensional layout
and only interprets horizontal rules as slide boundaries).
When creating slides, the pptx writer chooses from a number of pre-defined layouts, based on the content of the slide:
Title Slide
: This layout is used for the initial slide, which is generated and
filled from the metadata fields date, author, and title, if
they are present.
Section Header : This layout is used for what pandoc calls “title slides”, i.e. slides which start with a header which is above the slide level in the hierarchy.
Two Content
: This layout is used for two-column slides, i.e. slides containing a
div with class columns which contains at least two divs with class
column.
Comparison : This layout is used instead of “Two Content” for any two-column slides in which at least one column contains text followed by non-text (e.g. an image or a table).
Content with Caption : This layout is used for any non-two-column slides which contain text followed by non-text (e.g. an image or a table).
Blank : This layout is used for any slides which only contain blank content, e.g. a slide containing only speaker notes, or a slide containing only a non-breaking space.
Title and Content : This layout is used for all slides which do not match the criteria for another layout.
These layouts are chosen from the default pptx reference doc included with
pandoc, unless an alternative reference doc is specified using
--reference-doc.
By default, these writers produce lists that display "all at once."
If you want your lists to display incrementally (one item at a time),
use the -i option. If you want a particular list to depart from the
default, put it in a div block with class incremental or
nonincremental. So, for example, using the fenced div syntax, the
following would be incremental regardless of the document default:
::: incremental
- Eat spaghetti
- Drink wine
:::
or
::: nonincremental
- Eat spaghetti
- Drink wine
:::
While using incremental and nonincremental divs are the
recommended method of setting incremental lists on a per-case basis,
an older method is also supported: putting lists inside a blockquote
will depart from the document default (that is, it will display
incrementally without the -i option and all at once with the -i
option):
> - Eat spaghetti
> - Drink wine
Both methods allow incremental and nonincremental lists to be mixed in a single document.
You can add "pauses" within a slide by including a paragraph containing three dots, separated by spaces:
# Slide with a pause
content before the pause
. . .
content after the pause
Note: this feature is not yet implemented for PowerPoint output.
You can change the style of HTML slides by putting customized CSS files
in $DATADIR/s5/default (for S5), $DATADIR/slidy (for Slidy),
or $DATADIR/slideous (for Slideous),
where $DATADIR is the user data directory (see --data-dir, above).
The originals may be found in pandoc's system data directory (generally
$CABALDIR/pandoc-VERSION/s5/default). Pandoc will look there for any
files it does not find in the user data directory.
For dzslides, the CSS is included in the HTML file itself, and may be modified there.
All reveal.js configuration options can be set through variables.
For example, themes can be used by setting the theme variable:
-V theme=moon
Or you can specify a custom stylesheet using the --css option.
To style beamer slides, you can specify a theme, colortheme,
fonttheme, innertheme, and outertheme, using the -V option:
pandoc -t beamer habits.txt -V theme:Warsaw -o habits.pdf
Note that heading attributes will turn into slide attributes
(on a <div> or <section>) in HTML slide formats, allowing you
to style individual slides. In beamer, the only heading attribute
that affects slides is the allowframebreaks class, which sets the
allowframebreaks option, causing multiple slides to be created
if the content overfills the frame. This is recommended especially for
bibliographies:
# References {.allowframebreaks}
Speaker notes are supported in reveal.js and PowerPoint (pptx) output. You can add notes to your Markdown document thus:
::: notes
This is my note.
- It can contain Markdown
- like this list
:::
To show the notes window in reveal.js, press s while viewing the
presentation. Speaker notes in PowerPoint will be available, as usual,
in handouts and presenter view.
Notes are not yet supported for other slide formats, but the notes will not appear on the slides themselves.
To put material in side by side columns, you can use a native
div container with class columns, containing two or more div
containers with class column and a width attribute:
:::::::::::::: {.columns}
::: {.column width="40%"}
contents...
:::
::: {.column width="60%"}
contents...
:::
::::::::::::::
The div containers with classes columns and column can optionally have
an align attribute.
The class columns can optionally have a totalwidth attribute or an
onlytextwidth class.
:::::::::::::: {.columns align=center totalwidth=8em}
::: {.column width="40%"}
contents...
:::
::: {.column width="60%" align=bottom}
contents...
:::
::::::::::::::
The align attributes on columns and column can be used with the
values top, top-baseline, center and bottom to vertically align
the columns. It defaults to top in columns.
The totalwidth attribute limits the width of the columns to the given value.
:::::::::::::: {.columns align=top .onlytextwidth}
::: {.column width="40%" align=center}
contents...
:::
::: {.column width="60%"}
contents...
:::
::::::::::::::
The class onlytextwidth sets the totalwidth to \textwidth.
See Section 12.7 of the Beamer User's Guide for more details.
Sometimes it is necessary to add the LaTeX [fragile] option to
a frame in beamer (for example, when using the minted environment).
This can be forced by adding the fragile class to the heading
introducing the slide:
# Fragile slide {.fragile}
All of the other frame attributes described in Section 8.1 of
the Beamer User's Guide may also be used: allowdisplaybreaks,
allowframebreaks, b, c, t, environment, label, plain,
shrink, standout, noframenumbering.
Background images can be added to self-contained reveal.js slide shows, beamer slide shows, and pptx slide shows.
With beamer and reveal.js, the configuration option background-image can be
used either in the YAML metadata block or as a command-line variable to get the
same image on every slide.
For pptx, you can use a reference doc in which background images have been set on the relevant layouts.
For reveal.js, there is also the reveal.js-native option
parallaxBackgroundImage, which can be used instead of background-image to
produce a parallax scrolling background. You must also set
parallaxBackgroundSize, and can optionally set parallaxBackgroundHorizontal
and parallaxBackgroundVertical to configure the scrolling behaviour. See the
reveal.js documentation
for more details about the meaning of these options.
In reveal.js's overview mode, the parallaxBackgroundImage will show up only on the first slide.
To set an image for a particular reveal.js or pptx slide, add
{background-image="/path/to/image"} to the first slide-level heading on the
slide (which may even be empty).
As the HTML writers pass unknown attributes
through, other reveal.js background settings also
work on individual slides, including background-size, background-repeat,
background-color, transition, and transition-speed. (The data- prefix
will automatically be added.)
Note: data-background-image is also supported in pptx for consistency with
reveal.js – if background-image isn’t found, data-background-image will be
checked.
To add a background image to the automatically generated title slide for
reveal.js, use the title-slide-attributes variable in the YAML metadata block.
It must contain a map of attribute names and values. (Note that the data-
prefix is required here, as it isn’t added automatically.)
For pptx, pass a reference doc with the background image set on the “Title Slide” layout.
---
title: My Slide Show
parallaxBackgroundImage: /path/to/my/background_image.png
title-slide-attributes:
data-background-image: /path/to/title_image.png
data-background-size: contain
---
## Slide One
Slide 1 has background_image.png as its background.
## {background-image="/path/to/special_image.jpg"}
Slide 2 has a special image for its background, even though the heading has no content.
EPUB metadata may be specified using the --epub-metadata option, but
if the source document is Markdown, it is better to use a [YAML metadata
block][Extension: yaml_metadata_block]. Here is an example:
---
title:
- type: main
text: My Book
- type: subtitle
text: An investigation of metadata
creator:
- role: author
text: John Smith
- role: editor
text: Sarah Jones
identifier:
- scheme: DOI
text: doi:10.234234.234/33
publisher: My Press
rights: © 2007 John Smith, CC BY-NC
ibooks:
version: 1.3.4
...
The following fields are recognized:
identifier
~ Either a string value or an object with fields text and
scheme. Valid values for scheme are ISBN-10,
GTIN-13, UPC, ISMN-10, DOI, LCCN, GTIN-14,
ISBN-13, Legal deposit number, URN, OCLC,
ISMN-13, ISBN-A, JP, OLCC.
title
~ Either a string value, or an object with fields file-as and
type, or a list of such objects. Valid values for type are
main, subtitle, short, collection, edition, extended.
creator
~ Either a string value, or an object with fields role, file-as,
and text, or a list of such objects. Valid values for role are
MARC relators, but
pandoc will attempt to translate the human-readable versions
(like "author" and "editor") to the appropriate marc relators.
contributor
~ Same format as creator.
date
~ A string value in YYYY-MM-DD format. (Only the year is necessary.)
Pandoc will attempt to convert other common date formats.
lang (or legacy: language)
~ A string value in BCP 47 format. Pandoc will default to the local
language if nothing is specified.
subject
~ Either a string value, or an object with fields text, authority,
and term, or a list of such objects. Valid values for authority
are either a reserved authority value (currently AAT, BIC,
BISAC, CLC, DDC, CLIL, EuroVoc, MEDTOP, LCSH, NDC,
Thema, UDC, and WGS) or an absolute IRI identifying a custom
scheme. Valid values for term are defined by the scheme.
description
~ A string value.
type
~ A string value.
format
~ A string value.
relation
~ A string value.
coverage
~ A string value.
rights
~ A string value.
belongs-to-collection
~ A string value. identifies the name of a collection to which
the EPUB Publication belongs.
group-position
~ The group-position field indicates the numeric position in which
the EPUB Publication belongs relative to other works belonging to
the same belongs-to-collection field.
cover-image
~ A string value (path to cover image).
css (or legacy: stylesheet)
~ A string value (path to CSS stylesheet).
page-progression-direction
~ Either ltr or rtl. Specifies the page-progression-direction
attribute for the spine element.
ibooks
~ iBooks-specific metadata, with the following fields:
- `version`: (string)
- `specified-fonts`: `true`|`false` (default `false`)
- `ipad-orientation-lock`: `portrait-only`|`landscape-only`
- `iphone-orientation-lock`: `portrait-only`|`landscape-only`
- `binding`: `true`|`false` (default `true`)
- `scroll-axis`: `vertical`|`horizontal`|`default`
For epub3 output, you can mark up the heading that corresponds to an EPUB
chapter using the epub:type attribute. For example, to set
the attribute to the value prologue, use this markdown:
# My chapter {epub:type=prologue}
Which will result in:
<body epub:type="frontmatter">
<section epub:type="prologue">
<h1>My chapter</h1>
Pandoc will output <body epub:type="bodymatter">, unless
you use one of the following values, in which case either
frontmatter or backmatter will be output.
epub:type of first section epub:type of body
prologue frontmatter abstract frontmatter acknowledgments frontmatter copyright-page frontmatter dedication frontmatter credits frontmatter keywords frontmatter imprint frontmatter contributors frontmatter other-credits frontmatter errata frontmatter revision-history frontmatter titlepage frontmatter halftitlepage frontmatter seriespage frontmatter foreword frontmatter preface frontmatter frontispiece frontmatter appendix backmatter colophon backmatter bibliography backmatter index backmatter
By default, pandoc will download media referenced from any <img>, <audio>,
<video> or <source> element present in the generated EPUB,
and include it in the EPUB container, yielding a completely
self-contained EPUB. If you want to link to external media resources
instead, use raw HTML in your source and add data-external="1" to the tag
with the src attribute. For example:
<audio controls="1">
<source src="https://example.com/music/toccata.mp3"
data-external="1" type="audio/mpeg">
</source>
</audio>
If the input format already is HTML then data-external="1" will work
as expected for <img> elements. Similarly, for Markdown, external
images can be declared with {external=1}. Note that this
only works for images; the other media elements have no native
representation in pandoc's AST and requires the use of raw HTML.
When creating a Jupyter notebook, pandoc will try to infer the
notebook structure. Code blocks with the class code will be
taken as code cells, and intervening content will be taken as
Markdown cells. Attachments will automatically be created for
images in Markdown cells. Metadata will be taken from the
jupyter metadata field. For example:
---
title: My notebook
jupyter:
nbformat: 4
nbformat_minor: 5
kernelspec:
display_name: Python 2
language: python
name: python2
language_info:
codemirror_mode:
name: ipython
version: 2
file_extension: ".py"
mimetype: "text/x-python"
name: "python"
nbconvert_exporter: "python"
pygments_lexer: "ipython2"
version: "2.7.15"
---
# Lorem ipsum
**Lorem ipsum** dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc luctus
bibendum felis dictum sodales.
``` code
print("hello")
```
## Pyout
``` code
from IPython.display import HTML
HTML("""
<script>
console.log("hello");
</script>
<b>HTML</b>
""")
```
## Image
This image  will be
included as a cell attachment.
If you want to add cell attributes, group cells differently, or
add output to code cells, then you need to include divs to
indicate the structure. You can use either [fenced
divs][Extension: fenced_divs] or [native divs][Extension:
native_divs] for this. Here is an example:
:::::: {.cell .markdown}
# Lorem
**Lorem ipsum** dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc luctus
bibendum felis dictum sodales.
::::::
:::::: {.cell .code execution_count=1}
``` {.python}
print("hello")
```
::: {.output .stream .stdout}
```
hello
```
:::
::::::
:::::: {.cell .code execution_count=2}
``` {.python}
from IPython.display import HTML
HTML("""
<script>
console.log("hello");
</script>
<b>HTML</b>
""")
```
::: {.output .execute_result execution_count=2}
```{=html}
<script>
console.log("hello");
</script>
<b>HTML</b>
hello
```
:::
::::::
If you include raw HTML or TeX in an output cell, use the
[raw attribute][Extension: fenced_attribute], as shown
in the last cell of the example above. Although pandoc can
process "bare" raw HTML and TeX, the result is often
interspersed raw elements and normal textual elements, and
in an output cell pandoc expects a single, connected raw
block. To avoid using raw HTML or TeX except when
marked explicitly using raw attributes, we recommend
specifying the extensions -raw_html-raw_tex+raw_attribute when
translating between Markdown and ipynb notebooks.
Note that options and extensions that affect reading and
writing of Markdown will also affect Markdown cells in ipynb
notebooks. For example, --wrap=preserve will preserve
soft line breaks in Markdown cells; --atx-headers will
cause ATX-style headings to be used; and --preserve-tabs will
prevent tabs from being turned to spaces.
Pandoc will automatically highlight syntax in [fenced code blocks] that
are marked with a language name. The Haskell library skylighting is
used for highlighting. Currently highlighting is supported only for
HTML, EPUB, Docx, Ms, and LaTeX/PDF output. To see a list of language names
that pandoc will recognize, type pandoc --list-highlight-languages.
The color scheme can be selected using the --highlight-style option.
The default color scheme is pygments, which imitates the default color
scheme used by the Python library pygments (though pygments is not actually
used to do the highlighting). To see a list of highlight styles,
type pandoc --list-highlight-styles.
If you are not satisfied with the predefined styles, you can
use --print-highlight-style to generate a JSON .theme file which
can be modified and used as the argument to --highlight-style. To
get a JSON version of the pygments style, for example:
pandoc --print-highlight-style pygments > my.theme
Then edit my.theme and use it like this:
pandoc --highlight-style my.theme
If you are not satisfied with the built-in highlighting, or you
want highlight a language that isn't supported, you can use the
--syntax-definition option to load a KDE-style XML syntax definition
file.
Before writing your own, have a look at KDE's repository of syntax
definitions.
To disable highlighting, use the --no-highlight option.
Custom styles can be used in the docx and ICML formats.
By default, pandoc's docx and ICML output applies a predefined set of styles
for blocks such as paragraphs and block quotes, and uses largely default
formatting (italics, bold) for inlines. This will work for most
purposes, especially alongside a reference.docx file. However, if you
need to apply your own styles to blocks, or match a preexisting set of
styles, pandoc allows you to define custom styles for blocks and text
using divs and spans, respectively.
If you define a div or span with the attribute custom-style,
pandoc will apply your specified style to the contained elements (with
the exception of elements whose function depends on a style, like
headings, code blocks, block quotes, or links). So, for example, using
the bracketed_spans syntax,
[Get out]{custom-style="Emphatically"}, he said.
would produce a docx file with "Get out" styled with character
style Emphatically. Similarly, using the fenced_divs syntax,
Dickinson starts the poem simply:
::: {custom-style="Poetry"}
| A Bird came down the Walk---
| He did not know I saw---
:::
would style the two contained lines with the Poetry paragraph style.
For docx output, styles will be defined in the output file as inheriting from normal text, if the styles are not yet in your reference.docx. If they are already defined, pandoc will not alter the definition.
This feature allows for greatest customization in conjunction with
pandoc filters. If you want all paragraphs after block quotes to be
indented, you can write a filter to apply the styles necessary. If you
want all italics to be transformed to the Emphasis character style
(perhaps to change their color), you can write a filter which will
transform all italicized inlines to inlines within an Emphasis
custom-style span.
For docx output, you don't need to enable any extensions for custom styles to work.
The docx reader, by default, only reads those styles that it can convert into pandoc elements, either by direct conversion or interpreting the derivation of the input document's styles.
By enabling the styles extension in the docx reader
(-f docx+styles), you can produce output that maintains the styles
of the input document, using the custom-style class. Paragraph
styles are interpreted as divs, while character styles are interpreted
as spans.
For example, using the custom-style-reference.docx file in the test
directory, we have the following different outputs:
Without the +styles extension:
$ pandoc test/docx/custom-style-reference.docx -f docx -t markdown
This is some text.
This is text with an *emphasized* text style. And this is text with a
**strengthened** text style.
> Here is a styled paragraph that inherits from Block Text.
And with the extension:
$ pandoc test/docx/custom-style-reference.docx -f docx+styles -t markdown
::: {custom-style="First Paragraph"}
This is some text.
:::
::: {custom-style="Body Text"}
This is text with an [emphasized]{custom-style="Emphatic"} text style.
And this is text with a [strengthened]{custom-style="Strengthened"}
text style.
:::
::: {custom-style="My Block Style"}
> Here is a styled paragraph that inherits from Block Text.
:::
With these custom styles, you can use your input document as a reference-doc while creating docx output (see below), and maintain the same styles in your input and output files.
Pandoc can be extended with custom writers written in Lua. (Pandoc includes a Lua interpreter, so Lua need not be installed separately.)
To use a custom writer, simply specify the path to the Lua script in place of the output format. For example:
pandoc -t data/sample.lua
Creating a custom writer requires writing a Lua function for each possible element in a pandoc document. To get a documented example which you can modify according to your needs, do
pandoc --print-default-data-file sample.lua
Note that custom writers have no default template. If you want
to use --standalone with a custom writer, you will need to
specify a template manually using --template or add a new
default template with the name
default.NAME_OF_CUSTOM_WRITER.lua to the templates
subdirectory of your user data directory (see [Templates]).
Some of the document formats pandoc targets (such as EPUB,
docx, and ODT) include build timestamps in the generated document.
That means that the files generated on successive builds will
differ, even if the source does not. To avoid this, set the
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH environment variable, and the timestamp will
be taken from it instead of the current time.
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH should contain an integer unix timestamp
(specifying the number of second since midnight UTC January 1, 1970).
Some document formats also include a unique identifier. For
EPUB, this can be set explicitly by setting the identifier
metadata field (see [EPUB Metadata], above).
If you use pandoc to convert user-contributed content in a web application, here are some things to keep in mind:
-
Although pandoc itself will not create or modify any files other than those you explicitly ask it create (with the exception of temporary files used in producing PDFs), a filter or custom writer could in principle do anything on your file system. Please audit filters and custom writers very carefully before using them.
-
Several input formats (including HTML, Org, and RST) support
includedirectives that allow the contents of a file to be included in the output. An untrusted attacker could use these to view the contents of files on the file system. (Using the--sandboxoption can protect against this threat.) -
Several output formats (including RTF, FB2, HTML with
--self-contained, EPUB, Docx, and ODT) will embed encoded or raw images into the output file. An untrusted attacker could exploit this to view the contents of non-image files on the file system. (Using the--sandboxoption can protect against this threat, but will also prevent including images in these formats.) -
If your application uses pandoc as a Haskell library (rather than shelling out to the executable), it is possible to use it in a mode that fully isolates pandoc from your file system, by running the pandoc operations in the
PandocPuremonad. See the document Using the pandoc API for more details. -
Pandoc's parsers can exhibit pathological performance on some corner cases. It is wise to put any pandoc operations under a timeout, to avoid DOS attacks that exploit these issues. If you are using the pandoc executable, you can add the command line options
+RTS -M512M -RTS(for example) to limit the heap size to 512MB. Note that thecommonmarkparser (includingcommonmark_xandgfm) is much less vulnerable to pathological performance than themarkdownparser, so it is a better choice when processing untrusted input. -
The HTML generated by pandoc is not guaranteed to be safe. If
raw_htmlis enabled for the Markdown input, users can inject arbitrary HTML. Even ifraw_htmlis disabled, users can include dangerous content in URLs and attributes. To be safe, you should run all the generated HTML through an HTML sanitizer.
Copyright 2006--2021 John MacFarlane (jgm@berkeley.edu). Released under the GPL, version 2 or greater. This software carries no warranty of any kind. (See COPYRIGHT for full copyright and warranty notices.) For a full list of contributors, see the file AUTHORS.md in the pandoc source code.
Footnotes
-
The point of this rule is to ensure that normal paragraphs starting with people's initials, like
B. Russell was an English philosopher.do not get treated as list items.
This rule will not prevent
(C) 2007 Joe Smithfrom being interpreted as a list item. In this case, a backslash escape can be used:
↩(C\) 2007 Joe Smith -
I have been influenced by the suggestions of David Wheeler. ↩
-
This scheme is due to Michel Fortin, who proposed it on the Markdown discussion list. ↩
-
To see why laziness is incompatible with relaxing the requirement of a blank line between items, consider the following example:
bar : definition foo : definitionIs this a single list item with two definitions of "bar," the first of which is lazily wrapped, or two list items? To remove the ambiguity we must either disallow lazy wrapping or require a blank line between list items. ↩