Provided by: pandoc_3.1.3+ds-3build2_amd64 
NAME
pandoc - general markup converter
SYNOPSIS
pandoc [options] [input-file]...
DESCRIPTION
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. 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.
Using pandoc
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.)
Specifying formats
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.
Character encoding
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.
Creating a PDF
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, soul,
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).
Reading from the Web
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
OPTIONS
General options
-f FORMAT, -r FORMAT, --from=FORMAT, --read=FORMAT
Specify input format. FORMAT can be:
• 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)
• tsv (TSV table)
• docbook (DocBook)
• docx (Word docx)
• dokuwiki (DokuWiki markup)
• endnotexml (EndNote XML bibliography)
• epub (EPUB)
• fb2 (FictionBook2 e-book)
• gfm (GitHub-Flavored Markdown), or the deprecated and less accurate markdown_github; use
markdown_github only if you need extensions not supported in gfm.
• 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)
• ris (RIS bibliography)
• rtf (Rich Text Format)
• rst (reStructuredText)
• t2t (txt2tags)
• textile (Textile)
• tikiwiki (TikiWiki markup)
• twiki (TWiki markup)
• typst (typst)
• vimwiki (Vimwiki)
• the path of a custom Lua reader, see Custom readers and writers below
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:
• asciidoc (AsciiDoc) or asciidoctor (AsciiDoctor)
• beamer (LaTeX beamer slide show)
• bibtex (BibTeX bibliography)
• biblatex (BibLaTeX bibliography)
• chunkedhtml (zip archive of multiple linked HTML files)
• 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 only if you need extensions not supported in gfm.
• 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)
• markua (Markua)
• mediawiki (MediaWiki markup)
• ms (roff ms)
• muse (Muse)
• native (native Haskell)
• odt (OpenOffice text document)
• 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)
• typst (typst)
• xwiki (XWiki markup)
• zimwiki (ZimWiki markup)
• the path of a custom Lua writer, see Custom readers and 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. If the output format is chunkedhtml and
FILE has no extension, then instead of producing a .zip file pandoc will create a directory FILE
and unpack the zip archive there (unless FILE already exists, in which case an error will be
raised).
--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 $HOME/.pandoc exists,
it will be used (for backwards compatibility). On Windows the default user data directory is
%APPDATA%\pandoc. You can find the default user data directory on your system by looking at the
output of pandoc --version. Data files placed in this directory (for example, reference.odt,
reference.docx, epub.css, templates) will override pandoc’s normal defaults. (Note that the user
data directory is not created by pandoc, so you will need to create it yourself if you want to
make use of it.)
-d FILE, --defaults=FILE
Specify a set of default option settings. FILE is a YAML file whose fields correspond to command-
line option settings. All options for document conversion, including input and output files, can
be set using a defaults file. The file will be searched for first in the working directory, and
then in the defaults subdirectory of the user data directory (see --data-dir). The .yaml
extension may be omitted. See the section Defaults files for more information on the file format.
Settings from the defaults file may be overridden or extended by subsequent options on the command
line.
--bash-completion
Generate a bash completion script. To enable bash completion with pandoc, add this to your
.bashrc:
eval "$(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.
Reader options
--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).
--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.
If two or more files are processed using --file-scope, prefixes based on the filenames will be
added to identifiers in order to disambiguate them, and internal links will be adjusted
accordingly. For example, a header with identifier foo in subdir/file1.txt will have its
identifier changed to subdir__file1.txt__foo.
In addition, a Div with an identifier based on the filename will be added around the file’s
content, so that internal links to the filename will point to this Div’s identifier.
-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. 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 metadata file will always be parsed as Markdown. (If the input
format is Markdown or a Markdown variant, then the same variant will be used to parse the metadata
file; if it is a non-Markdown format, pandoc’s default Markdown extensions will be used.) 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. The
file will be searched for first in the working directory, and then in the metadata subdirectory of
the user data directory (see --data-dir).
-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.
--trace
Print diagnostic output tracing parser progress to stderr. This option is intended for use by
developers in diagnosing performance issues.
General writer options
-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.
Note: some readers and writers (e.g., docx) need access to data files. If these are stored on the
file system, then pandoc will not be able to find them when run in --sandbox mode and will raise
an error. For these applications, we recommend using a pandoc binary compiled with the
embed_data_files option, which causes the data files to be baked into the binary instead of being
stored on the file system.
-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). 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).
Options affecting specific writers
--self-contained
Deprecated synonym for --embed-resources --standalone.
--embed-resources
Produce a standalone HTML file with no external dependencies, using data: URIs to incorporate the
contents of linked scripts, stylesheets, images, and videos. 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, fonts may be
missing when --mathjax is used, 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 man and ms (which use hexadecimal escapes), and to a limited degree LaTeX (which
uses standard commands for accented characters when possible).
--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. In slide formats, specifying --reference-location=section will cause notes
to be rendered at the bottom of a slide.
--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.
--list-tables
Render tables as list tables in RST output.
--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. This option only affects HTML (including HTML slide
shows) and EPUB output. It should be used together with -s/--standalone, because the link to the
stylesheet goes in the document header.
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|URL
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
• AbstractTitle
• Bibliography
• Heading 1
• Heading 2
• Heading 3
• Heading 4
• Heading 5
• Heading 6
• Heading 7
• Heading 8
• Heading 9
• Block Text
• Source Code
• 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.)
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).
--split-level=NUMBER
Specify the heading level at which to split an EPUB or chunked HTML document into separate files.
The default is to split into chapters at level-1 headings. In the case of EPUB, 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. For chunked HTML, this
option determines how much content goes in each “chunk.”
--chunk-template=PATHTEMPLATE
Specify a template for the filenames in a chunkedhtml document. In the template, %n will be
replaced by the chunk number (padded with leading 0s to 3 digits), %s with the section number of
the chunk, %h with the heading text (with formatting removed), %i with the section identifier.
For example, %section-%s-%i.html might be resolved to section-1.1-introduction.html. The
characters / and \ are not allowed in chunk templates and will be ignored. The default is
%s-%i.html.
--epub-chapter-level=NUMBER
Deprecated synonym for --split-level.
--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-title-page=true|false
Determines whether a the title page is included in the EPUB (default is true).
--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("../fonts/DejaVuSans-Regular.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: bold;
src:url("../fonts/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: normal;
src:url("../fonts/DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: bold;
src:url("../fonts/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf");
}
body { font-family: "DejaVuSans"; }
--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, pagedjs-cli, prince, context, pdfroff, and typst. 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, pagedjs-cli; see print-css.rocks for a
good introduction to PDF generation from HTML/CSS)
• -t ms: pdfroff
• -t typst: typst
--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.
Citation rendering
-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.
Math rendering in HTML
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. MathML is supported natively by the main web browsers and select e-book
readers.
--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
Options for wrapper scripts
--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
EXIT CODES
If pandoc completes successfully, it will return exit code 0. Nonzero exit codes have the following
meanings:
Code Error
------ -------------------------------------
1 PandocIOError
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
66 PandocMakePDFError
67 PandocSyntaxMapError
83 PandocFilterError
84 PandocLuaError
89 PandocNoScriptingEngine
91 PandocMacroLoop
92 PandocUTF8DecodingError
93 PandocIpynbDecodingError
94 PandocUnsupportedCharsetError
97 PandocCouldNotFindDataFileError
98 PandocCouldNotFindMetadataFileError
99 PandocResourceNotFound
DEFAULTS FILES
The --defaults option may be used to specify a package of options, in the form of a YAML file.
Fields that are omitted will just have their regular default values. So a defaults file can be as simple
as one line:
verbosity: INFO
In 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 defaults 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 file
This environment variable interpolation syntax only works in fields that expect file paths.
Defaults 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.
The following tables show the mapping between the command line and defaults file entries.
command line defaults file
--------------------------------- ----------------------------------
foo.md input-file: foo.md
foo.md bar.md input-files:
- foo.md
- bar.md
The value of input-files may be left empty to indicate input from stdin, and it can be an empty sequence
[] for no input.
General options
command line defaults file
--------------------------------- ----------------------------------
--from markdown+emoji from: markdown+emoji
reader: markdown+emoji
to: markdown+hard_line_breaks
--to markdown+hard_line_breaks
writer: markdown+hard_line_breaks
--output foo.pdf output-file: foo.pdf
--output - output-file:
--data-dir dir data-dir: dir
--defaults file defaults:
- file
--verbose verbosity: INFO
--quiet verbosity: ERROR
--fail-if-warnings fail-if-warnings: true
--sandbox sandbox: true
--log=FILE log-file: FILE
Options specified in a defaults file itself always have priority over those in another file included with
a defaults: entry.
verbosity can have the values ERROR, WARNING, or INFO.
Reader options
command line defaults file
--------------------------------- ----------------------------------
--shift-heading-level-by -1 shift-heading-level-by: -1
indented-code-classes:
--indented-code-classes python - python
--default-image-extension ".jpg" default-image-extension: '.jpg'
--file-scope file-scope: true
--filter pandoc-citeproc \ filters:
- pandoc-citeproc
--lua-filter count-words.lua \ - count-words.lua
--filter special.lua - type: json
path: special.lua
--metadata key=value \ metadata:
--metadata key2 key: value
key2: true
--metadata-file meta.yaml metadata-files:
- meta.yaml
metadata-file: meta.yaml
--preserve-tabs preserve-tabs: true
--tab-stop 8 tab-stop: 8
--track-changes accept track-changes: accept
--extract-media dir extract-media: dir
--abbreviations abbrevs.txt abbreviations: abbrevs.txt
--trace trace: true
Metadata values specified in a defaults file are parsed as literal string text, not Markdown.
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}.
General writer options
command line defaults file
--------------------------------- ----------------------------------
--standalone standalone: true
--template letter template: letter
--variable key=val \ variables:
--variable key2 key: val
key2: true
--eol nl eol: nl
--dpi 300 dpi: 300
--wrap 60 wrap: 60
--columns 72 columns: 72
--table-of-contents table-of-contents: true
--toc toc: true
--toc-depth 3 toc-depth: 3
--strip-comments strip-comments: true
--no-highlight highlight-style: null
--highlight-style kate highlight-style: kate
syntax-definitions:
--syntax-definition mylang.xml - mylang.xml
syntax-definition: mylang.xml
--include-in-header inc.tex include-in-header:
- inc.tex
include-before-body:
--include-before-body inc.tex - inc.tex
--include-after-body inc.tex include-after-body:
- inc.tex
--resource-path .:foo resource-path: ['.','foo']
--request-header foo:bar request-headers:
- ["User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0"]
--no-check-certificate no-check-certificate: true
Options affecting specific writers
command line defaults file
--------------------------------- ----------------------------------
--self-contained self-contained: true
--html-q-tags html-q-tags: true
--ascii ascii: true
--reference-links reference-links: true
--reference-location block reference-location: block
--markdown-headings atx markdown-headings: atx
--list-tables list-tables: true
--top-level-division chapter top-level-division: chapter
--number-sections number-sections: true
--number-offset=1,4 number-offset: \[1,4\]
--listings listings: true
--incremental incremental: true
--slide-level 2 slide-level: 2
--section-divs section-divs: true
email-obfuscation: references
--email-obfuscation references
--id-prefix ch1 identifier-prefix: ch1
--title-prefix MySite title-prefix: MySite
--css styles/screen.css \ css:
--css styles/special.css - styles/screen.css
- styles/special.css
--reference-doc my.docx reference-doc: my.docx
--epub-cover-image cover.jpg epub-cover-image: cover.jpg
--epub-title-page=false epub-title-page: false
--epub-metadata meta.xml epub-metadata: meta.xml
epub-fonts:
--epub-embed-font special.otf \ - special.otf
- headline.otf
--epub-embed-font headline.otf
--split-level 2 split-level: 2
--chunk-template="%i.html" chunk-template: "%i.html"
--epub-subdirectory="" epub-subdirectory: ''
--ipynb-output best ipynb-output: best
--pdf-engine xelatex pdf-engine: xelatex
pdf-engine-opts:
--pdf-engine-opt=--shell-escape - '-shell-escape'
pdf-engine-opt: '-shell-escape'
Citation rendering
command line defaults file
--------------------------------- ----------------------------------
--citeproc citeproc: true
--bibliography logic.bib metadata:
bibliography: logic.bib
--csl ieee.csl metadata:
csl: ieee.csl
metadata:
--citation-abbreviations ab.json
citation-abbreviations: ab.json
--natbib cite-method: natbib
--biblatex cite-method: biblatex
cite-method can be citeproc, natbib, or biblatex. This only affects LaTeX output. If you want to use
citeproc to format citations, you should also set `citeproc: true'.
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 above).
Math rendering in HTML
command line defaults file
--------------------------------- ----------------------------------
--mathjax html-math-method:
method: mathjax
--mathml html-math-method:
method: mathml
--webtex html-math-method:
method: webtex
--katex html-math-method:
method: katex
--gladtex html-math-method:
method: gladtex
In addition to the values listed above, method can have the value plain.
If the command line option accepts a URL argument, an url: field can be added to html-math-method:.
Options for wrapper scripts
command line defaults file
--------------------------------- ----------------------------------
--dump-args dump-args: true
--ignore-args ignore-args: true
TEMPLATES
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 odt output, customize the default.opendocument template.
• For pdf output, customize the default.latex template (or the default.context template, if you use -t
context, or the default.ms template, if you use -t ms, or the default.html template, if you use -t
html).
• docx and pptx have no template (however, you can use --reference-doc to 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 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.
Template syntax
Comments
Anything between the sequence $-- and the end of the line will be treated as a comment and omitted from
the output.
Delimiters
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 preceded by one or more spaces or tabs, which will be ignored.
To include a literal $ in the document, use $$.
Interpolated variables
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 a 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 true will be rendered.
• Every other value will be rendered as the empty string.
Conditionals
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$
For loops
A for loop begins with for(variable) (enclosed in matched delimiters) and ends with endfor (enclosed in
matched delimiters).
• If variable is an array, the material inside the loop will be evaluated repeatedly, with variable being
set to each value of the array in turn, and concatenated.
• If variable is 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
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.
Nesting
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:
$item.number$ $^$$item.description$ ($item.price$)
(Available til $item.sellby$.)
will produce
00123 A fine bottle of 18-year old
Oban whiskey. ($148)
(Available til March 30, 2020.)
If a variable occurs by itself on a line, preceded by whitespace and not followed by further text or
directives on the same line, and the variable’s value contains multiple lines, it will be nested
automatically.
Breakable spaces
Normally, spaces in the template itself (as opposed to values of the interpolated variables) are not
breakable, but they can be made breakable in part of the template by using the ~ keyword (ended with
another ~).
$~$This long line may break if the document is rendered
with a short line length.$~$
Pipes
A pipe transforms the value of a variable or partial. Pipes are specified using a slash (/) between the
variable name (or partial) and the pipe name. Example:
$for(name)$
$name/uppercase$
$endfor$
$for(metadata/pairs)$
- $it.key$: $it.value$
$endfor$
$employee:name()/uppercase$
Pipes may be chained:
$for(employees/pairs)$
$it.key/alpha/uppercase$. $it.name$
$endfor$
Some pipes take parameters:
|----------------------|------------|
$for(employee)$
$it.name.first/uppercase/left 20 "| "$$it.name.salary/right 10 " | " " |"$
$endfor$
|----------------------|------------|
Currently the following pipes are predefined:
• pairs: Converts a map or array to an array of maps, each with key and value fields. If the original
value was an array, the key will 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 characters a..z
(mod 26). This can be used to get lettered enumeration from array indices. To get uppercase letters,
chain with uppercase.
• roman: Converts textual values that can be read as an integer into lowercase roman numerals. This can
be used to get lettered enumeration from array indices. To get uppercase roman, chain with uppercase.
• left n "leftborder" "rightborder": Renders a textual value in a block of width n, 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 width n, aligned to the
right, and has no effect on other values.
• center n "leftborder" "rightborder": Renders a textual value in a block of width n, aligned to the
center, and has no effect on other values.
Variables
Metadata variables
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, which allows for multiple authors, or
through a 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 HTML, LaTeX, ConTeXt, AsciiDoc, and docx documents
abstract-title
title of abstract, currently used only in HTML and EPUB. This will be set automatically to a
localized value, depending on lang, but can be manually overridden.
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.
Language variables
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 spans and divs 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).
Variables for HTML
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.
maxwidth
sets the CSS max-width property (default is 32em).
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>
---
Variables for HTML math
classoption
when using KaTeX, you can render display math equations flush left using YAML metadata or with -M
classoption=fleqn.
Variables for HTML slides
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,
beamer, and pptx 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.
Variables for Beamer slides
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)
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
Variables for PowerPoint
These variables control the visual aspects of a slide show that are not easily controlled via templates.
monofont
font to use for code.
Variables for LaTeX
Pandoc uses these variables when creating a PDF with a LaTeX engine.
Layout
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)
beamerarticle
produce an article from Beamer slides
Fonts
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, CJKsansfont, CJKmonofont
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
...
babelfonts
a map of Babel language names (e.g. chinese) to the font to be used with the language:
* * * * *
babelfonts: chinese-hant: “Noto Serif CJK TC” russian: “Noto Serif” ...
microtypeoptions
options to pass to the microtype package
Links
colorlinks
add color to link text; automatically enabled if any of linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor,
or toccolor are set
boxlinks
add visible box around links (has no effect if colorlinks is 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
urlstyle
style for URLs (e.g., tt, rm, sf, and, the default, same)
Front matter
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
BibLaTeX Bibliographies
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
Variables for ConTeXt
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)
urlstyle
typeface style for links without link text, e.g. normal, bold, slanted, boldslanted, type, cap,
small
whitespace
spacing between paragraphs, e.g. none, small (using setupwhitespace)
includesource
include all source documents as file attachments in the PDF file
Variables for wkhtmltopdf
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
Variables for man pages
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
Variables for Typst
margin A dictionary with the fields defined in the Typst documentation: x, y, top, bottom, left, right.
papersize
Paper size: a4, us-letter, etc.
mainfont
Name of system font to use for the main font.
fontsize
Font size (e.g., 12pt).
section-numbering
Schema to use for numbering sections, e.g. 1.A.1.
columns
Number of columns for body text.
Variables for ms
fontfamily
A (Avant Garde), B (Bookman), C (Helvetica), HN (Helvetica Narrow), P (Palatino), or T (Times New
Roman). This setting does not affect source code, which is always displayed using monospace
Courier. These built-in fonts are limited in their coverage of characters. Additional fonts may
be installed using the script install-font.sh provided by Peter Schaffter and documented in detail
on his web site.
indent paragraph indent (e.g. 2m)
lineheight
line height (e.g. 12p)
pointsize
point size (e.g. 10p)
Variables set automatically
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.
pandoc-version
pandoc version.
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)
EXTENSIONS
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 --markdown-headings).
Typography
Extension: smart
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, html
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.
Headings and sections
Extension: auto_identifiers
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.
Extension: ascii_identifiers
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.
Extension: gfm_auto_identifiers
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.
Math Input
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.
Raw HTML/TeX
The following extensions are described in more detail in their respective sections of Pandoc’s Markdown:
• raw_html allows 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_tex allows raw LaTeX, TeX, and ConTeXt to be included in a document. This extension can be
enabled/disabled for the following formats (in addition to markdown):
input formats
latex, textile, html (environments, \ref, and \eqref only), ipynb
output formats
textile, commonmark
Note: as applied to ipynb, raw_html and raw_tex affect not only raw TeX in markdown cells, but data
with mime type text/html in output cells. Since the ipynb reader attempts to preserve the richest
possible outputs when several options are given, you will get best results if you disable raw_html and
raw_tex when converting to formats like docx which don’t allow raw html or tex.
• native_divs causes HTML div elements 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_spans causes HTML span elements 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 all divs and spans when
converting HTML to Markdown, you can use pandoc -f html-native_divs-native_spans -t markdown.
Literate Haskell support
Extension: literate_haskell
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 haskell and literate will 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 haskell will be rendered using bird tracks.
• In LaTeX input, text in code environments will be parsed as Haskell code.
• In LaTeX output, code blocks with class haskell will be rendered inside code environments.
• In HTML output, code blocks with class haskell will be rendered with class literatehaskell and 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.
Other extensions
Extension: empty_paragraphs
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
Extension: native_numbering
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
Extension: xrefs_name
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
Extension: xrefs_number
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
Extension: styles
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
Extension: amuse
In the muse input format, this enables Text::Amuse extensions to Emacs Muse markup.
Extension: raw_markdown
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.
Extension: citations
When the citations extension is enabled in org, org-cite and org-ref style citations will be parsed as
native pandoc citations.
When citations is enabled in docx, citations inserted by Zotero or Mendeley or EndNote plugins will be
parsed as native pandoc citations. (Otherwise, the formatted citations generated by the bibliographic
software will be parsed as regular text.)
Extension: fancy_lists
Some aspects of Pandoc’s Markdown fancy lists are also accepted in org input, mimicking the option org-
list-allow-alphabetical in Emacs. As in Org Mode, enabling this extension allows lowercase and uppercase
alphabetical markers for ordered lists to be parsed in addition to arabic ones. Note that for Org, this
does not include roman numerals or the # placeholder that are enabled by the extension in Pandoc’s
Markdown.
Extension: element_citations
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.
Extension: ntb
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.
Extension: tagging
Enabling this extension with context output will produce markup suitable for the production of tagged
PDFs. This includes additional markers for paragraphs and alternative markup for emphasized text. The
emphasis-command template variable is set if the extension is enabled.
PANDOC’S MARKDOWN
Pandoc understands an extended and slightly revised version of John Gruber’s Markdown syntax. This
document explains the syntax, noting differences from original 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.
Philosophy
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.
Paragraphs
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.
Extension: escaped_line_breaks
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.
Headings
There are two kinds of headings: Setext and ATX.
Setext-style headings
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).
ATX-style headings
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*
Extension: blank_before_header
Original 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.
Extension: space_in_atx_header
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.
Heading identifiers
See also the auto_identifiers extension above.
Extension: header_attributes
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.)
Extension: implicit_header_references
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]
Block quotations
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
Extension: blank_before_blockquote
Original 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.
>> Not nested, since `blank_before_blockquote` is enabled by default
Verbatim (code) blocks
Indented code blocks
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.
Fenced code blocks
Extension: fenced_code_blocks
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
~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Extension: backtick_code_blocks
Same as fenced_code_blocks, but uses backticks (`) instead of tildes (~).
Extension: fenced_code_attributes
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 use 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 [] = []
```
This shortcut form may be combined with attributes:
```haskell {.numberLines}
qsort [] = []
```
Which is equivalent to:
``` {.haskell .numberLines}
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.
Line blocks
Extension: line_blocks
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.
Lists
Bullet lists
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.
Block content in list items
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
Ordered lists work just like bulleted lists, except that the items begin with enumerators rather than
bullets.
In original 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
Extension: fancy_lists
Unlike original 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-parenthesis 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.
The fancy_lists extension also allows `#' to be used as an ordered list marker in place of a numeral:
#. one
#. two
Note: the `#' ordered list marker doesn’t work with commonmark.
Extension: startnum
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
Extension: task_lists
Pandoc supports task lists, using the syntax of GitHub-Flavored Markdown.
- [ ] an unchecked task list item
- [x] checked item
Definition lists
Extension: definition_lists
Pandoc supports definition lists, using the syntax of PHP Markdown Extra with some extensions.
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 the compact_definition_lists
extension.)
Numbered example lists
Extension: example_lists
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.
Ending a list
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
Horizontal rules
A line containing a row of three or more *, -, or _ characters (optionally separated by spaces) produces
a horizontal rule:
* * * *
---------------
We strongly recommend that horizontal rules be separated from surrounding text by blank lines. If a
horizontal rule is not followed by a blank line, pandoc may try to interpret the lines that follow as a
YAML metadata block or a table.
Tables
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.
Extension: table_captions
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 table: or just :), which will be stripped
off. It may appear either before or after the table.
Extension: simple_tables
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:
• 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.
Extension: multiline_tables
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.
Extension: grid_tables
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 can span multiple columns or rows:
+---------------------+----------+
| Property | Earth |
+=============+=======+==========+
| | min | -89.2 °C |
| Temperature +-------+----------+
| 1961-1990 | mean | 14 °C |
| +-------+----------+
| | max | 56.7 °C |
+-------------+-------+----------+
A table header may contain more than one row:
+---------------------+-----------------------+
| Location | Temperature 1961-1990 |
| | in degree Celsius |
| +-------+-------+-------+
| | min | mean | max |
+=====================+=======+=======+=======+
| Antarctica | -89.2 | N/A | 19.8 |
+---------------------+-------+-------+-------+
| Earth | -89.2 | 14 | 56.7 |
+---------------------+-------+-------+-------+
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 |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
A table foot can be defined by enclosing it with separator lines that use = instead of -:
+---------------+---------------+
| Fruit | Price |
+===============+===============+
| Bananas | $1.34 |
+---------------+---------------+
| Oranges | $2.10 |
+===============+===============+
| Sum | $3.44 |
+===============+===============+
The foot must always be placed at the very bottom of the table.
Grid tables can be created easily using Emacs’ table-mode (M-x table-insert).
Extension: pipe_tables
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 any line of the markdown source is longer 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.
Metadata blocks
Extension: pandoc_title_block
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.
Extension: yaml_metadata_block
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. The initial line --- must not be followed
by a blank line. 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.
Backslash escapes
Extension: all_symbols_escapable
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 original Markdown’s rule, which allows only the following characters
to be backslash-escaped:
\`*_{}[]()>#+-.!
(However, if the markdown_strict format is used, the original 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.
Inline formatting
Emphasis
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\*.
Extension: intraword_underscores
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*.
Strikeout
Extension: strikeout
To strike out a section of text with a horizontal line, begin and end it with ~~. Thus, for example,
This ~~is deleted text.~~
Superscripts and subscripts
Extension: superscript, subscript
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~.
Verbatim
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: `\*`.
Extension: inline_code_attributes
Attributes can be attached to verbatim text, just as with fenced code blocks:
`<$>`{.haskell}
Underline
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.
Small caps
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.
Highlighting
To highlight text, use the mark class:
[Mark]{.mark}
Or, without the bracketed_spans extension (but with native_spans):
<span class="mark">Mark</span>
This will work in all output formats that support highlighting.
Math
Extension: tex_math_dollars
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 between 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 and PowerPoint
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.
Raw HTML
Extension: raw_html
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.
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.
Extension: markdown_in_html_blocks
Original 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 original 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.
Extension: native_divs
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.
Extension: native_spans
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.
Extension: raw_tex
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.
Inline LaTeX is ignored in output formats other than Markdown, LaTeX, Emacs Org mode, and ConTeXt.
Generic raw attribute
Extension: raw_attribute
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.
LaTeX macros
Extension: latex_macros
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.
Links
Markdown allows links to be specified in several ways.
Automatic links
If you enclose a URL or email address in pointy brackets, it will become a link:
<https://google.com>
<sam@green.eggs.ham>
Inline links
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)
Reference links
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
Extension: shortcut_reference_links
In a shortcut reference link, the second pair of brackets may be omitted entirely:
See [my website].
[my website]: http://foo.bar.baz
Internal links
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.
Images
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
Extension: implicit_figures
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 r-stretch class will
fill the screen, and the caption and figure tags will be omitted.
Extension: link_attributes
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 --dpi option (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 configure graphicx as in the default template.)
• ConTeXt: \externalfigure[file.jpg][width=0.5\textwidth]
• Some output formats have a notion of a class (ConTeXt) or a unique identifier (LaTeX \caption), or both
(HTML).
• When no width or height attributes are specified, the fallback is to look at the image resolution and
the dpi metadata embedded in the image file.
Divs and Spans
Using the native_divs and native_spans extensions (see above), 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:
Extension: fenced_divs
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.
Note: the commonmark parser doesn’t permit colons after the attributes.
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.
Extension: bracketed_spans
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"}
Footnotes
Extension: footnotes
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.
Extension: inline_notes
Inline footnotes are also allowed (though, unlike regular notes, they cannot contain multiple
paragraphs). The syntax is as follows:
Here is an inline note.^[Inline 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.
Citation syntax
Extension: citations
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 starts 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.
Non-default extensions
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.
Extension: rebase_relative_paths
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 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.
Extension: mark
To highlight out a section of text, begin and end it with with ==. Thus, for example,
This ==is deleted text.==
Extension: attributes
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.
• 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_attributes and
link_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.
Extension: old_dashes
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.
Extension: angle_brackets_escapable
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.
Extension: lists_without_preceding_blankline
Allow a list to occur right after a paragraph, with no intervening blank space.
Extension: four_space_rule
Selects the pandoc <= 2.0 behavior for parsing lists, so that four spaces indent are needed for list item
continuation paragraphs.
Extension: spaced_reference_links
Allow whitespace between the two components of a reference link, for example,
[foo] [bar].
Extension: hard_line_breaks
Causes all newlines within a paragraph to be interpreted as hard line breaks instead of spaces.
Extension: ignore_line_breaks
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.
Extension: east_asian_line_breaks
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.
Extension: emoji
Parses textual emojis like :smile: as Unicode emoticons.
Extension: tex_math_single_backslash
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 [.
Extension: tex_math_double_backslash
Causes anything between \\( and \\) to be interpreted as inline TeX math, and anything between \\[ and
\\] to be interpreted as display TeX math.
Extension: markdown_attribute
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.
Extension: mmd_title_block
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.
Extension: abbreviations
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).
Extension: autolink_bare_uris
Makes all absolute URIs into links, even when not surrounded by pointy braces <...>.
Extension: mmd_link_attributes
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"
Extension: mmd_header_identifiers
Parses multimarkdown style heading identifiers (in square brackets, after the heading but before any
trailing #s in an ATX heading).
Extension: compact_definition_lists
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.
Extension: gutenberg
Use Project Gutenberg conventions for plain output: all-caps for strong emphasis, surround by underscores
for regular emphasis, add extra blank space around headings.
Extension: sourcepos
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 element with a data-pos
attribute.
Extension: short_subsuperscripts
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.
Extension: wikilinks_title_after_pipe
Pandoc supports multiple markdown wikilink syntaxes, regardless of whether the title is before or after
the pipe.
Using --from=markdown+wikilinks_title_after_pipe results in
[[URL|title]]
while using --from=markdown+wikilinks_title_before_pipe results in
[[title|URL]]
Markdown variants
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.
CITATIONS
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 Citation syntax);
• a source of bibliographic data: either an external bibliography file or a list of references in the
document’s YAML metadata;
• optionally, a CSL citation style.
Specifying bibliographic data
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
RIS .ris
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
Capitalization in titles
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 langid
field in biblatex should be set to the relevant language. (The following values are treated as
English: american, british, canadian, english, australian, newzealand, USenglish, or UKenglish.)
• 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 language field for non-English titles to prevent their conversion to title case in styles that
call for this. (Conversion happens only if language begins with en or 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
Conference Papers, Published vs. Unpublished
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.
Specifying a citation style
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"
}
}
}
Citations in note styles
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].
Placement of the bibliography
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 put the bibliography into a variable in your template, one way to do that is to put the
div with id refs into a metadata field, e.g.
---
refs: |
::: {#refs}
:::
...
You can then put the variable $refs$ into your template where you want the bibliography to be placed.
Including uncited items in the bibliography
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.
Other relevant metadata fields
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 for note styles), pandoc will put footnote references or superscripted
numerical 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. The option may also be used in numerical styles that use
superscripts for citation numbers (but for these styles the default is not to move the citation).
SLIDE SHOWS
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 slide 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
Structuring the slide show
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, an exampleblock environment will be used; if it
has the class alert, an alertblock will be used; otherwise a regular block will 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).
PowerPoint layout choice
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.
Incremental lists
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 is 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.
If you want to include a block-quoted list, you can work around this behavior by putting the list inside
a fenced div, so that it is not the direct child of the block quote:
> ::: wrapper
> - a
> - list in a quote
> :::
Inserting pauses
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.
Styling the slides
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, a number of heading classes and attributes
are recognized as frame options and will be passed through as options to the frame: see Frame attributes
in beamer, below.
Speaker notes
Speaker notes are supported in reveal.js, PowerPoint (pptx), and beamer 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.
Columns
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...
:::
::::::::::::::
Additional columns attributes in beamer
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.
Frame attributes in beamer
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, s, t, environment, label, plain, shrink, standout,
noframenumbering, squeeze. allowframebreaks is recommended especially for bibliographies, as it allows
multiple slides to be created if the content overfills the frame:
# References {.allowframebreaks}
In addition, the frameoptions attribute may be used to pass arbitrary frame options to a beamer slide:
# Heading {frameoptions="squeeze,shrink,customoption=foobar"}
Background in reveal.js, beamer, and pptx
Background images can be added to self-contained reveal.js slide shows, beamer slide shows, and pptx
slide shows.
On all slides (beamer, reveal.js, pptx)
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.
Note that for reveal.js, the background-image will be used as a parallaxBackgroundImage (see below).
For pptx, you can use a reference doc in which background images have been set on the relevant layouts.
parallaxBackgroundImage (reveal.js)
For reveal.js, there is also the reveal.js-native option parallaxBackgroundImage, which produces 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.
On individual slides (reveal.js, pptx)
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.
On the title slide (reveal.js, pptx)
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.
Example (reveal.js)
---
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.
EPUBS
EPUB Metadata
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. 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
The epub:type attribute
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
Linked media
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 require
the use of raw HTML.
EPUB styling
By default, pandoc will include some basic styling contained in its epub.css data file. (To see this,
use pandoc --print-default-data-file epub.css.) To use a different CSS file, just use the --css command
line option. A few inline styles are defined in addition; these are essential for correct formatting of
pandoc’s HTML output.
The document-css variable may be set if the more opinionated styling of pandoc’s default HTML templates
is desired (and in that case the variables defined in Variables for HTML may be used to fine-tune the
style).
CHUNKED HTML
pandoc -t chunkedhtml will produce a zip archive of linked HTML files, one for each section of the
original document. Internal links will automatically be adjusted to point to the right place, images
linked to under the working directory will be incorporated, and navigation links will be added. In
addition, a JSON file sitemap.json will be included describing the hierarchical structure of the files.
If an output file without an extension is specified, then it will be interpreted as a directory and the
zip archive will be automatically unpacked into it (unless it already exists, in which case an error will
be raised). Otherwise a .zip file will be produced.
The navigation links can be customized by adjusting the template. By default, a table of contents is
included only on the top page. To include it on every page, set the toc variable manually.
JUPYTER NOTEBOOKS
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 or 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, 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;
--markdown-headings=setext will cause Setext-style headings to be used; and --preserve-tabs will prevent
tabs from being turned to spaces.
SYNTAX HIGHLIGHTING
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 to 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
Custom styles can be used in the docx and ICML formats.
Output
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.
Input
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.
CUSTOM READERS AND WRITERS
Pandoc can be extended with custom readers and writers written in Lua. (Pandoc includes a Lua
interpreter, so Lua need not be installed separately.)
To use a custom reader or writer, simply specify the path to the Lua script in place of the input or
output format. For example:
pandoc -t data/sample.lua
pandoc -f my_custom_markup_language.lua -t latex -s
If the script is not found relative to the working directory, it will be sought in the custom
subdirectory of the user data directory (see --data-dir).
A custom reader is a Lua script that defines one function, Reader, which takes a string as input and
returns a Pandoc AST. See the Lua filters documentation for documentation of the functions that are
available for creating pandoc AST elements. For parsing, the lpeg parsing library is available by
default. To see a sample custom reader:
pandoc --print-default-data-file creole.lua
If you want your custom reader to have access to reader options (e.g. the tab stop setting), you give
your Reader function a second options parameter.
A custom writer is a Lua script that defines a function that specifies how to render each element in a
Pandoc AST. See the djot-writer.lua for a full-featured example.
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).
REPRODUCIBLE BUILDS
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 seconds 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).
ACCESSIBLE PDFS AND PDF ARCHIVING STANDARDS
PDF is a flexible format, and using PDF in certain contexts requires additional conventions. For
example, PDFs are not accessible by default; they define how characters are placed on a page but do not
contain semantic information on the content. However, it is possible to generate accessible PDFs, which
use tagging to add semantic information to the document.
Pandoc defaults to LaTeX to generate PDF. Tagging support in LaTeX is in development and not readily
available, so PDFs generated in this way will always be untagged and not accessible. This means that
alternative engines must be used to generate accessible PDFs.
The PDF standards PDF/A and PDF/UA define further restrictions intended to optimize PDFs for archiving
and accessibility. Tagging is commonly used in combination with these standards to ensure best results.
Note, however, that standard compliance depends on many things, including the colorspace of embedded
images. Pandoc cannot check this, and external programs must be used to ensure that generated PDFs are
in compliance.
ConTeXt
ConTeXt always produces tagged PDFs, but the quality depends on the input. The default ConTeXt markup
generated by pandoc is optimized for readability and reuse, not tagging. Enable the tagging format
extension to force markup that is optimized for tagging. This can be combined with the pdfa variable to
generate standard-compliant PDFs. E.g.:
pandoc --to=context+tagging -V pdfa=3a
A recent context version should be used, as older versions contained a bug that lead to invalid PDF
metadata.
WeasyPrint
The HTML-based engine WeasyPrint includes experimental support for PDF/A and PDF/UA since version 57.
Tagged PDFs can created with
pandoc --pdf-engine=weasyprint \
--pdf-engine-opt=--pdf-variant=pdf/ua-1 ...
The feature is experimental and standard compliance should not be assumed.
Prince XML
The non-free HTML-to-PDf converter prince has extensive support for various PDF standards as well as
tagging. E.g.:
pandoc --pdf-engine=prince \
--pdf-engine-opt=--tagged-pdf ...
See the prince documentation for more info.
Word Processors
Word processors like LibreOffice and MS Word can also be used to generate standardized and tagged PDF
output. Pandoc does not support direct conversions via these tools. However, pandoc can convert a
document to a docx or odt file, which can then be opened and converted to PDF with the respective word
processor. See the documentation for Word and LibreOffice.
RUNNING PANDOC AS A WEB SERVER
If you rename (or symlink) the pandoc executable to pandoc-server, or if you call pandoc with server as
the first argument, it will start up a web server with a JSON API. This server exposes most of the
conversion functionality of pandoc. For full documentation, see the pandoc-server man page.
If you rename (or symlink) the pandoc executable to pandoc-server.cgi, it will function as a CGI program
exposing the same API as pandoc-server.
pandoc-server is designed to be maximally secure; it uses Haskell’s type system to provide strong
guarantees that no I/O will be performed on the server during pandoc conversions.
RUNNING PANDOC AS A LUA INTERPRETER
Calling the pandoc executable under the name pandoc-lua or with lua as the first argument will make it
function as a standalone Lua interpreter. The behavior is mostly identical to that of the standalone lua
executable, version 5.4. However, there is no REPL yet, and the -i option has no effect. For full
documentation, see the pandoc-lua man page.
A NOTE ON SECURITY
1. 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.
2. Several input formats (including HTML, Org, and RST) support include directives 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 --sandbox option can protect against this threat.)
3. 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 --sandbox option can protect against
this threat, but will also prevent including images in these formats.)
4. 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 PandocPure monad. See the document Using the pandoc API for more details.
(This corresponds to the use of the --sandbox option on the command line.)
5. 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 the commonmark parser (including commonmark_x and gfm) is much less
vulnerable to pathological performance than the markdown parser, so it is a better choice when
processing untrusted input.
6. The HTML generated by pandoc is not guaranteed to be safe. If raw_html is enabled for the Markdown
input, users can inject arbitrary HTML. Even if raw_html is disabled, users can include dangerous
content in URLs and attributes. To be safe, you should run all HTML generated from untrusted user
input through an HTML sanitizer.
AUTHORS
Copyright 2006–2022 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. The Pandoc source code may be downloaded from <https://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc> or <https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases>. Further documentation is available at <https://pandoc.org>.