Provided by: pandoc_2.9.2.1-3ubuntu2_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 pro‐
duce 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 interme‐
diate 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 mod‐
el. While conversions from pandoc's Markdown to all formats aspire to be perfect, conversions from for‐
mats 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) be‐
fore 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 ex‐
tensions 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 in‐
put 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), infor‐
mation 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 intermedi‐
ate 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 pdfla‐
tex 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, ifxetex, ifluatex, listings (if the --listings option
is used), fancyvrb, longtable, booktabs, graphicx (if the document contains images), hyperref, xcolor,
ulem, geometry (with the geometry variable set), setspace (with linestretch), and babel (with lang). The
use of xelatex or lualatex as the PDF engine requires fontspec. xelatex uses polyglossia (with lang),
xecjk, and 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 pack‐
ages 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:
• commonmark (CommonMark Markdown)
• creole (Creole 1.0)
• csv (CSV table)
• docbook (DocBook)
• docx (Word docx)
• dokuwiki (DokuWiki markup)
• epub (EPUB)
• fb2 (FictionBook2 e-book)
• gfm (GitHub-Flavored Markdown), or the deprecated and less accurate markdown_github; use mark‐
down_github only if you need extensions not supported in gfm.
• haddock (Haddock markup)
• html (HTML)
• ipynb (Jupyter notebook)
• jats (JATS XML)
• jira (Jira 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)
• rst (reStructuredText)
• t2t (txt2tags)
• textile (Textile)
• tikiwiki (TikiWiki markup)
• twiki (TWiki markup)
• vimwiki (Vimwiki)
Extensions can be individually enabled or disabled by appending +EXTENSION or -EXTENSION to the
format name. See Extensions below, for a list of extensions and their names. See --list-input-
formats and --list-extensions, below.
-t FORMAT, -w FORMAT, --to=FORMAT, --write=FORMAT
Specify output format. FORMAT can be:
• asciidoc (AsciiDoc) or asciidoctor (AsciiDoctor)
• beamer (LaTeX beamer slide show)
• commonmark (CommonMark Markdown)
• context (ConTeXt)
• 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 mark‐
down_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 wiki markup)
• json (JSON version of native AST)
• latex (LaTeX)
• man (roff man)
• markdown (Pandoc's Markdown)
• markdown_mmd (MultiMarkdown)
• markdown_phpextra (PHP Markdown Extra)
• markdown_strict (original unextended Markdown)
• mediawiki (MediaWiki markup)
• ms (roff ms)
• muse (Muse),
• native (native Haskell),
• odt (OpenOffice text document)
• opml (OPML)
• opendocument (OpenDocument)
• org (Emacs Org mode)
• pdf (PDF)
• plain (plain text),
• pptx (PowerPoint slide show)
• rst (reStructuredText)
• rtf (Rich Text Format)
• texinfo (GNU Texinfo)
• textile (Textile)
• slideous (Slideous HTML and JavaScript slide show)
• slidy (Slidy HTML and JavaScript slide show)
• dzslides (DZSlides HTML5 + JavaScript slide show),
• revealjs (reveal.js HTML5 + JavaScript slide show)
• s5 (S5 HTML and JavaScript slide show)
• tei (TEI Simple)
• xwiki (XWiki markup)
• zimwiki (ZimWiki markup)
• the path of a custom Lua writer, see Custom writers below
Note that odt, docx, epub, and pdf output will not be directed to stdout unless forced with -o -.
Extensions can be individually enabled or disabled by appending +EXTENSION or -EXTENSION to the
format name. See Extensions below, for a list of extensions and their names. See --list-output-
formats and --list-extensions, below.
-o FILE, --output=FILE
Write output to FILE instead of stdout. If FILE is -, output will go to stdout, even if a non-
textual format (docx, odt, epub2, epub3) is specified.
--data-dir=DIRECTORY
Specify the user data directory to search for pandoc data files. If this option is not specified,
the default user data directory will be used. On *nix and macOS systems this will be the pandoc
subdirectory of the XDG data directory (by default, $HOME/.local/share, overridable by setting the
XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable). If that directory does not exist, $HOME/.pandoc will be used
(for backwards compatibility). In Windows the default user data directory is C:\Users\USER‐
NAME\AppData\Roaming\pandoc. You can find the default user data directory on your system by look‐
ing at the output of pandoc --version. A reference.odt, reference.docx, epub.css, templates,
slidy, slideous, or s5 directory placed in this directory will override pandoc's normal defaults.
-d FILE, --defaults=FILE
Specify a set of default option settings. FILE is a YAML file whose fields correspond to command-
line option settings. All options for document conversion, including input and output files, can
be set using a defaults file. The file will be searched for first in the working directory, and
then in the defaults subdirectory of the user data directory (see --data-dir). The .yaml exten‐
sion may be omitted. See the section Default files for more information on the file format. Set‐
tings from the defaults file may be overridden or extended by subsequent options on the command
line.
--bash-completion
Generate a bash completion script. To enable bash completion with pandoc, add this to your
.bashrc:
eval "$(pandoc --bash-completion)"
--verbose
Give verbose debugging output. Currently this only has an effect with PDF 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 giv‐
en.
--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 convert‐
ing HTML or Markdown documents that use an initial level-1 heading for the document title and lev‐
el-2+ headings for sections. --shift-heading-level-by=1 may be a good choice for converting Mark‐
down documents that use level-1 headings for sections to HTML, since pandoc uses a level-1 heading
to render the document title.
--base-header-level=NUMBER
Deprecated. Use --shift-heading-level-by=X instead, where X = NUMBER - 1. Specify the base level
for headings (defaults to 1).
--strip-empty-paragraphs
Deprecated. Use the +empty_paragraphs extension instead. Ignore paragraphs with no content. This
option is useful for converting word processing documents where users have used empty paragraphs
to create inter-paragraph space.
--indented-code-classes=CLASSES
Specify classes to use for indented code blocks--for example, perl,numberLines or haskell. Multi‐
ple 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 on‐
ly 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, foot‐
notes and links will not work across files. Reading binary files (docx, odt, epub) implies
--file-scope.
-F PROGRAM, --filter=PROGRAM
Specify an executable to be used as a filter transforming the pandoc AST after the input is parsed
and before the output is written. The executable should read JSON from stdin and write JSON to
stdout. The JSON must be formatted like pandoc's own JSON input and output. The name of the out‐
put 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 writ‐
ing filters in Haskell. Those who would prefer to write filters in python can use the module pan‐
docfilters, 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 and Lua-filters 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
build-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 in‐
dexed 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.
The following is an example Lua script for macro-expansion:
function expand_hello_world(inline)
if inline.c == '{{helloworld}}' then
return pandoc.Emph{ pandoc.Str "Hello, World" }
else
return inline
end
end
return {{Str = expand_hello_world}}
In order of preference, pandoc will look for Lua 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).
-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 af‐
fects the metadata of the underlying document (which is accessible from filters and may be printed
in some output formats) and metadata values will be escaped when inserted into the template.
--metadata-file=FILE
Read metadata from the supplied YAML (or JSON) file. This option can be used with every input
format, but string scalars in the YAML file will always be parsed as Markdown. Generally, the in‐
put will be handled the same as in YAML metadata blocks. This option can be used repeatedly to
include multiple metadata files; values in files specified later on the command line will be pre‐
ferred over those specified in earlier files. Metadata values specified inside the document, or
by using -M, overwrite values specified with this option.
-p, --preserve-tabs
Preserve tabs instead of converting them to spaces. (By default, pandoc converts tabs to spaces
before parsing its input.) Note that this will only affect tabs in literal code spans and code
blocks. Tabs in regular text are always treated as spaces.
--tab-stop=NUMBER
Specify the number of spaces per tab (default is 4).
--track-changes=accept|reject|all
Specifies what to do with insertions, deletions, and comments produced by the MS Word "Track
Changes" feature. accept (the default), inserts all insertions, and ignores all deletions. re‐
ject inserts all deletions and ignores insertions. Both accept and reject ignore comments. all
puts in 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 af‐
fects 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. If the source format is a binary container (docx, epub, or odt), the media is
extracted from the container and the original filenames are used. Otherwise the media is read
from the file system or downloaded, and new filenames are constructed based on SHA1 hashes 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=abbrevia‐
tions. The only use pandoc makes of this list is in the Markdown reader. Strings ending in a pe‐
riod that are found in this list will be followed by a nonbreaking space, so that the period will
not produce sentence-ending space in formats like LaTeX.
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 ex‐
tension corresponding to the writer will be added, so that --template=special looks for spe‐
cial.html for HTML output. If the template is not found, pandoc will search for it in the tem‐
plates 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.
-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 com‐
mand line.
Note that some of the default templates use partials, for example styles.html. To print the par‐
tials, use --print-default-data-file: for example, --print-default-data-file=tem‐
plates/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 ap‐
propriate 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 de‐
fault specified by this option.
--wrap=auto|none|preserve
Determine how text is wrapped in the output (the source code, not the rendered version). With au‐
to (the default), pandoc will attempt to wrap lines to the column width specified by --columns
(default 72). With none, pandoc will not wrap lines at all. With preserve, pandoc will attempt
to preserve the wrapping from the source document (that is, where there are nonsemantic newlines
in the source, there will be nonsemantic newlines in the output as well). Automatic wrapping does
not currently work in HTML output. In ipynb output, this option affects wrapping of the contents
of markdown cells.
--columns=NUMBER
Specify length of lines in characters. This affects text wrapping in the generated source code
(see --wrap). It also affects calculation of column widths for plain text tables (see Tables be‐
low).
--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 Mark‐
down, 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 de‐
fault), 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 exten‐
sion, and used with --highlight-style. This option may be used with -o/--output to redirect out‐
put 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 high‐
lighting 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 in‐
clude 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 mul‐
tiple 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 de‐
fault 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.
--resource-path only has an effect if (a) the output format embeds images (for example, docx, pdf,
or html with --self-contained) or (b) it is used together with --extract-media.
--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://....
Options affecting specific writers
--self-contained
Produce a standalone HTML file with no external dependencies, using data: URIs to incorporate the
contents of linked scripts, stylesheets, images, and videos. Implies --standalone. The resulting
file should be "self-contained," in the sense that it needs no external files and no net access to
be displayed properly by a browser. This option works only with HTML output formats, including
html4, html5, html+lhs, html5+lhs, s5, slidy, slideous, dzslides, and revealjs. Scripts, images,
and stylesheets at absolute URLs will be downloaded; those at relative URLs will be sought rela‐
tive to the working directory (if the first source file is local) or relative to the base URL (if
the first source file is remote). Elements with the attribute data-external="1" will be left
alone; the documents they link to will not be incorporated in the document. Limitation: resources
that are loaded dynamically through JavaScript cannot be incorporated; as a result, --self-con‐
tained does not work with --mathjax, and some advanced features (e.g. zoom or speaker notes) may
not work in an offline "self-contained" reveal.js slide show.
--html-q-tags
Use <q> tags for quotes in HTML.
--ascii
Use only ASCII characters in output. Currently supported for XML and HTML formats (which use en‐
tities instead of UTF-8 when this option is selected), CommonMark, gfm, and Markdown (which use
entities), roff ms (which use hexadecimal escapes), and to a limited degree LaTeX (which uses
standard commands for accented characters when possible). roff man output uses ASCII by default.
--reference-links
Use reference-style links, rather than inline links, in writing Markdown or reStructuredText. By
default inline links are used. The placement of link references is affected by the --reference-
location option.
--reference-location = block|section|document
Specify whether footnotes (and references, if reference-links is set) are placed at the end of the
current (top-level) block, the current section, or the document. The default is document. Cur‐
rently only affects the markdown writer.
--atx-headers
Use ATX-style headings in Markdown output. The default is to use setext-style headings for levels
1 to 2, and then ATX headings. (Note: for gfm output, ATX headings are always used.) This option
also affects markdown cells in ipynb 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, 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-sec‐
tions.
--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 sec‐
tions; headings below this level create subheads within a slide. Note that content that is not
contained under slide-level headings will not appear in the slide show. The default is to set the
slide level 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 iden‐
tifiers when generating fragments to be included in other pages.
-T STRING, --title-prefix=STRING
Specify STRING as a prefix at the beginning of the title that appears in the HTML header (but not
in the title as it appears at the beginning of the HTML body). Implies --standalone.
-c URL, --css=URL
Link to a CSS style sheet. This option can be used repeatedly to include multiple files. They
will be included in the order specified.
A stylesheet is required for generating EPUB. If none is provided using this option (or the css
or stylesheet metadata fields), pandoc will look for a file epub.css in the user data directory
(see --data-dir). If it is not found there, sensible defaults will be used.
--reference-doc=FILE
Use the specified file as a style reference in producing a docx or ODT file.
Docx For best results, the reference docx should be a modified version of a docx file produced
using pandoc. The contents of the reference docx are ignored, but its stylesheets and doc‐
ument 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-refer‐
ence.docx in Word, modify the styles as you wish, and save the file. For best results, do
not make changes to this file other than modifying the styles used by pandoc:
Paragraph styles:
• Normal
• Body Text
• First Paragraph
• Compact
• Title
• Subtitle
• Author
• Date
• Abstract
• Bibliography
• Heading 1
• Heading 2
• Heading 3
• Heading 4
• Heading 5
• Heading 6
• Heading 7
• Heading 8
• Heading 9
• Block Text
• Footnote Text
• Definition Term
• Definition
• Caption
• Table Caption
• Image Caption
• Figure
• Captioned Figure
• TOC Heading
Character styles:
• Default Paragraph Font
• Body Text Char
• Verbatim Char
• Footnote Reference
• Hyperlink
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-refer‐
ence.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 begin with the following first four
layouts:
1. Title Slide
2. Title and Content
3. Section Header
4. Two Content
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 Pow‐
erPoint (pandoc will use the first four layout slides, as mentioned above).
--epub-cover-image=FILE
Use the specified image as the EPUB cover. It is recommended that the image be less than 1000px
in width and height. Note that in a Markdown source document you can also specify cover-image in
a YAML metadata block (see EPUB Metadata, below).
--epub-metadata=FILE
Look in the specified XML file for metadata for the EPUB. The file should contain a series of
Dublin Core elements. For example:
<dc:rights>Creative Commons</dc:rights>
<dc:language>es-AR</dc:language>
By default, pandoc will include the following metadata elements: <dc:title> (from the document ti‐
tle), <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 ele‐
ments in the metadata file.
Note: if the source document is Markdown, a YAML metadata block in the document can be used in‐
stead. 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. Wild‐
cards can also be used: for example, DejaVuSans-*.ttf. However, if you use wildcards on the com‐
mand line, be sure to escape them or put the whole filename in single quotes, to prevent them from
being interpreted by the shell. To use the embedded fonts, you will need to add declarations like
the following to your CSS (see --css):
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: normal;
src:url("DejaVuSans-Regular.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: normal;
font-weight: bold;
src:url("DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: normal;
src:url("DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf");
}
@font-face {
font-family: DejaVuSans;
font-style: italic;
font-weight: bold;
src:url("DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf");
}
body { font-family: "DejaVuSans"; }
--epub-chapter-level=NUMBER
Specify the heading level at which to split the EPUB into separate "chapter" files. The default
is to split into chapters at level-1 headings. This option only affects the internal composition
of the EPUB, not the way chapters and sections are displayed to users. Some readers may be slow
if the chapter files are too large, so for large documents with few level-1 headings, one might
want to use a chapter level of 2 or 3.
--epub-subdirectory=DIRNAME
Specify the subdirectory in the OCF container that is to hold the EPUB-specific contents. The de‐
fault 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 out‐
put format. The default is best.
--pdf-engine=PROGRAM
Use the specified engine when producing PDF output. Valid values are pdflatex, lualatex, xelatex,
latexmk, tectonic, wkhtmltopdf, weasyprint, prince, context, and pdfroff. If the engine is not in
your PATH, the full path of the engine may be specified here. If this option is not specified,
pandoc uses the following defaults depending on the output format specified using -t/--to:
• -t latex or none: pdflatex (other options: xelatex, lualatex, tectonic, latexmk)
• -t context: context
• -t html: wkhtmltopdf (other options: prince, weasyprint)
• -t ms: pdfroff
--pdf-engine-opt=STRING
Use the given string as a command-line argument to the pdf-engine. For example, to use a persis‐
tent directory foo for latexmk's auxiliary files, use --pdf-engine-opt=-outdir=foo. Note that no
check for duplicate options is done.
Citation rendering
--bibliography=FILE
Set the bibliography field in the document's metadata to FILE, overriding any value set in the
metadata, and process citations using pandoc-citeproc. (This is equivalent to --metadata bibliog‐
raphy=FILE --filter pandoc-citeproc.) If --natbib or --biblatex is also supplied, pandoc-citeproc
is not used, making this equivalent to --metadata bibliography=FILE. If you supply this argument
multiple times, each FILE will be added to bibliography.
--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.) This option is only relevant with pandoc-citeproc.
--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.) This option is
only relevant with pandoc-citeproc.
--natbib
Use natbib for citations in LaTeX output. This option is not for use with the pandoc-citeproc
filter 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 pandoc-citeproc
filter 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. How‐
ever, this gives acceptable results only for basic math, usually you will want to use --mathjax or anoth‐
er 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 de‐
fault in odt output. Note that currently only Firefox and Safari (and select e-book readers) na‐
tively support MathML.
--webtex[=URL]
Convert TeX formulas to <img> tags that link to an external script that converts formulas to im‐
ages. 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 li‐
brary. 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 images of the typeset formulas and an HTML file with links to these images. So, the
procedure is:
pandoc -s --gladtex input.md -o myfile.htex
gladtex -d myfile-images myfile.htex
# produces myfile.html and images in myfile-images
Options for wrapper scripts
--dump-args
Print information about command-line arguments to stdout, then exit. This option is intended pri‐
marily 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 ig‐
nored. 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
───────────────────────────────────────
3 PandocFailOnWarningError
4 PandocAppError
5 PandocTemplateError
6 PandocOptionError
21 PandocUnknownReaderError
22 PandocUnknownWriterError
23 PandocUnsupportedExtensionError
31 PandocEpubSubdirectoryError
43 PandocPDFError
47 PandocPDFProgramNotFoundError
61 PandocHttpError
62 PandocShouldNeverHappenError
63 PandocSomeError
64 PandocParseError
65 PandocParsecError
66 PandocMakePDFError
67 PandocSyntaxMapError
83 PandocFilterError
91 PandocMacroLoop
92 PandocUTF8DecodingError
93 PandocIpynbDecodingError
97 PandocCouldNotFindDataFileError
99 PandocResourceNotFound
DEFAULT FILES
The --defaults option may be used to specify a package of options. Here is a sample defaults file demon‐
strating all of the fields that may be used:
from: markdown+emoji
# reader: may be used instead of from:
to: html5
# writer: may be used instead of to:
# leave blank for output to stdout:
output-file:
# leave blank for input from stdin, use [] for no input:
input-files:
- preface.md
- content.md
# or you may use input-file: with a single value
template: letter
standalone: true
self-contained: false
# note that structured variables may be specified:
variables:
documentclass: book
classoption:
- twosides
- draft
# metadata values specified here are parsed as literal
# string text, not markdown:
metadata:
author:
- Sam Smith
- Julie Liu
metadata-files:
- boilerplate.yaml
# or you may use metadata-file: with a single value
# Note that these take files, not their contents:
include-before-body: []
include-after-body: []
include-in-header: []
resource-path: ["."]
# 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:
- pandoc-citeproc
- wordcount.lua
- type: json
path: foo.lua
file-scope: false
data-dir:
# ERROR, WARNING, or INFO
verbosity: INFO
log-file: log.json
# citeproc, natbib, or biblatex
cite-method: citeproc
# part, chapter, section, or default:
top-level-division: chapter
abbreviations:
pdf-engine: pdflatex
pdf-engine-opts:
- "-shell-escape"
# you may also use pdf-engine-opt: with a single option
# pdf-engine-opt: "-shell-escape"
# auto, preserve, or none
wrap: auto
columns: 78
dpi: 72
extract-media: mediadir
table-of-contents: true
toc-depth: 2
number-sections: false
# a list of offsets at each heading level
number-offset: [0,0,0,0,0,0]
# toc: may also be used instead of table-of-contents:
shift-heading-level-by: 1
section-divs: true
identifier-prefix: foo
title-prefix: ""
strip-empty-paragraphs: true
# lf, crlf, or native
eol: lf
strip-comments: false
indented-code-classes: []
ascii: true
default-image-extension: ".jpg"
# either a style name of a style definition file:
highlight-style: pygments
syntax-definitions:
- c.xml
# or you may use syntax-definition: with a single value
listings: false
reference-doc: myref.docx
# method is plain, webtex, gladtex, mathml, mathjax, katex
# you may specify a url with webtex, mathjax, katex
html-math-method:
method: mathjax
url: "https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/mathjax@3/es5/tex-mml-chtml.js"
# none, references, or javascript
email-obfuscation: javascript
tab-stop: 8
preserve-tabs: true
incremental: false
slide-level: 2
epub-subdirectory: EPUB
epub-metadata: meta.xml
epub-fonts:
- foobar.otf
epub-chapter-level: 1
epub-cover-image: cover.jpg
reference-links: true
# block, section, or document
reference-location: block
atx-headers: false
# accept, reject, or all
track-changes: accept
html-q-tags: false
css:
- site.css
# none, all, or best
ipynb-output: best
# A list of two-element lists
request-headers:
- ["User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0"]
fail-if-warnings: false
dump-args: false
ignore-args: false
trace: false
Fields that are omitted will just have their regular default values. So a defaults file can be as simple
as one line:
verbosity: INFO
Default files can be placed in the defaults subdirectory of the user data directory and used from any di‐
rectory. For example, one could create a file specifying defaults for writing letters, save it as let‐
ter.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 re‐
placing them.
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 delim‐
iters. The styles may also be mixed in the same template, but the opening and closing delimiter must
match in each case. The opening delimiter may be followed by one or more spaces or tabs, which will be
ignored. The closing delimiter may be followed by one or more spaces or tabs, which will be ignored.
To include a literal $ in the document, use $$.
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, en‐
dif, 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, employ‐
ee.salary will return the value of the salary field of the object that is the value of the employee
field.
• If the value of the variable is simple value, it will be rendered verbatim. (Note that no escaping is
done; the assumption is that the calling program will escape the strings appropriately for the output
format.)
• If the value is a list, the values will be concatenated.
• If the value is a map, the string 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$$sep$, $endfor$
$for(foo)$
- $foo.last$, $foo.first$
$endfor$
${ for(foo.bar) }
- ${ foo.bar.last }, ${ foo.bar.first }
${ endfor }
$for(mymap)$
$it.name$: $it.office$
$endfor$
You may optionally specify a separator between consecutive values using sep (enclosed in matched delim‐
iters). The material between sep and the endfor is the separator.
${ for(foo) }${ foo }${ sep }, ${ endfor }
Instead of using variable inside the loop, the special anaphoric keyword it may be used.
${ for(foo.bar) }
- ${ it.last }, ${ it.first }
${ endfor }
Partials
Partials (subtemplates stored in different files) may be included using the syntax
${ boilerplate() }
Partials will be sought in the directory containing the main template, and will be assumed to have the
same extension as the main template if they lack an explicit extension. (If the partials are not found
here, they will also be sought in the templates subdirectory of the user data directory.)
Partials may optionally be applied to variables using a colon:
${ date:fancy() }
${ articles:bibentry() }
If articles is an array, this will iterate over its values, applying the partial bibentry() to each one.
So the second example above is equivalent to
${ for(articles) }
${ it:bibentry() }
${ endfor }
Note that the anaphoric keyword it must be used when iterating over partials. In the above examples, the
bibentry partial should contain it.title (and so on) instead of articles.title.
Final newlines are omitted from included partials.
Partials may include other partials.
A separator between values of an array may be specified in square brackets, immediately after the vari‐
able name or partial:
${months[, ]}$
${articles:bibentry()[; ]$
The separator in this case is literal and (unlike with sep in an explicit for loop) cannot contain inter‐
polated variables or other template directives.
Nesting
To ensure that content is "nested," that is, subsequent lines indented, use the ^ directive:
$item.number$ $^$$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:
$item.number$ $^$$item.description$ ($item.price$)
(Available til $item.sellby$.)
will produce
00123 A fine bottle of 18-year old
Oban whiskey. ($148)
(Available til March 30, 2020.)
If a variable occurs by itself on a line, preceded by whitespace and not followed by further text or di‐
rectives on the same line, and the variable's value contains multiple lines, it will be nested automati‐
cally.
Breakable spaces
Normally, spaces in the template itself (as opposed to values of the interpolated variables) are not
breakable, but they can be made breakable in part of the template by using the ~ keyword (ended with an‐
other ~).
$~$This long line may break if the document is rendered
with a short line length.$~$
Pipes
A pipe transforms the value of a variable or partial. Pipes are specified using a slash (/) between the
variable name (or partial) and the pipe name. Example:
$for(name)$
$name/uppercase$
$endfor$
$for(metadata/pairs)$
- $it.key$: $it.value$
$endfor$
$employee:name()/uppercase$
Pipes may be chained:
$for(employees/pairs)$
$it.key/alpha/uppercase$. $it.name$
$endfor$
Some pipes take parameters:
|----------------------|------------|
$for(employee)$
$it.name.first/uppercase/left 20 "| "$$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.
• 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 numerials. 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 ma‐
terial 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 cen‐
ter, 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.)
subtitle
document subtitle, included in HTML, EPUB, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and docx documents
abstract
document summary, included in LaTeX, ConTeXt, AsciiDoc, and docx documents
keywords
list of keywords to be included in HTML, PDF, ODT, pptx, docx and AsciiDoc metadata; repeat as for
author, above
subject
document subject, included in ODT, PDF, docx 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 prop‐
erty 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 stan‐
dard), 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 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.
All reveal.js configuration options are available as variables. To turn off boolean flags that default
to true in reveal.js, use 0.
revealjs-url
base URL for reveal.js documents (defaults to reveal.js)
s5-url base URL for S5 documents (defaults to s5/default)
slidy-url
base URL for Slidy documents (defaults to https://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy2)
slideous-url
base URL for Slideous documents (defaults to slideous)
title-slide-attributes
additional attributes for the title slide of reveal.js slide shows. See background in reveal.js
and beamer for an example.
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)
beamerarticle
produce an article from Beamer slides
beameroption
add extra beamer option with \setbeameroption{}
institute
author affiliations: can be a list when there are multiple authors
logo logo image for slides
navigation
controls navigation symbols (default is empty for no navigation symbols; other valid values are
frame, vertical, and horizontal)
section-titles
enables "title pages" for new sections (default is true)
theme, colortheme, fonttheme, innertheme, outertheme
beamer themes
themeoptions
options for LaTeX beamer themes (a list).
titlegraphic
image for title slide
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 uses document class settings for indentation (the default LaTeX template otherwise removes inden‐
tation 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)
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 Lib‐
ertine font with proportional lowercase (old-style) figures through the libertinus package:
---
fontfamily: libertinus
fontfamilyoptions:
- osf
- p
...
fontsize
font size for body text. The standard classes allow 10pt, 11pt, and 12pt. To use another size,
set documentclass to one of the KOMA-Script classes, such as scrartcl or scrbook.
mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont, CJKmainfont
font families for use with xelatex or lualatex: take the name of any system font, using the
fontspec package. CJKmainfont uses the xecjk package.
mainfontoptions, sansfontoptions, monofontoptions, mathfontoptions, CJKoptions
options to use with mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont, CJKmainfont in xelatex and lualatex.
Allow for any choices available through fontspec; repeat for multiple options. For example, to
use the TeX Gyre version of Palatino with lowercase figures:
---
mainfont: TeX Gyre Pagella
mainfontoptions:
- Numbers=Lowercase
- Numbers=Proportional
...
microtypeoptions
options to pass to the microtype package
Links
colorlinks
add color to link text; automatically enabled if any of linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor,
or toccolor are set
linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor, toccolor
color for internal links, external links, citation links, linked URLs, and links in table of con‐
tents, respectively: uses options allowed by xcolor, including the dvipsnames, svgnames, and
x11names lists
links-as-notes
causes links to be printed as footnotes
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 compati‐
bility. 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 speci‐
fied 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. de‐
fault.cmyk. If left unspecified, sRGB.icc is used as default. May be repeated to include multi‐
ple profiles. Note that the profiles have to be available on the system. They can be obtained
from ConTeXt ICC Profiles.
pdfaintent
when used in conjunction with pdfa, specifies the output intent for the colors, e.g. ISO coated
v2 300\letterpercent\space (ECI) If left unspecified, sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is used as default.
toc include table of contents (can also be set using --toc/--table-of-contents)
whitespace
spacing between paragraphs, e.g. none, small (using setupwhitespace)
includesource
include all source documents as file attachments in the PDF file
Variables for wkhtmltopdf
Pandoc uses these variables when creating a PDF with wkhtmltopdf. The --css option also affects the out‐
put.
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 ms
fontfamily
font family (e.g. T or P)
indent paragraph indent (e.g. 2m)
lineheight
line height (e.g. 12p)
pointsize
point size (e.g. 10p)
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 se‐
lected 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 snip‐
pet in your template to distinguish them:
$if(sourcefile)$
$for(sourcefile)$
$sourcefile$
$endfor$
$else$
(stdin)
$endif$
Similarly, outputfile can be - if output goes to the terminal.
If you need absolute paths, use e.g. $curdir$/$sourcefile$.
curdir working directory from which pandoc is run.
toc non-null value if --toc/--table-of-contents was specified
toc-title
title of table of contents (works only with EPUB, HTML, opendocument, odt, docx, pptx, beamer, La‐
TeX)
EXTENSIONS
The behavior of some of the readers and writers can be adjusted by enabling or disabling various exten‐
sions.
An extension can be enabled by adding +EXTENSION to the format name and disabled by adding -EXTENSION.
For example, --from markdown_strict+footnotes is strict Markdown with footnotes enabled, while --from
markdown-footnotes-pipe_tables is pandoc's Markdown without footnotes or pipe tables.
The markdown reader and writer make by far the most use of extensions. Extensions only used by them are
therefore covered in the section Pandoc's Markdown below (See Markdown variants for commonmark and gfm.)
In the following, extensions that also work for other formats are covered.
Note that markdown extensions added to the ipynb format affect Markdown cells in Jupyter notebooks (as do
command-line options like --atx-headers).
Typography
Extension: smart
Interpret straight quotes as curly quotes, --- as em-dashes, -- as en-dashes, and ... as ellipses. Non‐
breaking spaces are inserted after certain abbreviations, such as "Mr."
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
input formats
markdown, commonmark, latex, mediawiki, org, rst, twiki
output formats
markdown, latex, context, rst
enabled by default in
markdown, latex, context (both input and output)
Note: If you are writing Markdown, then the smart extension has the reverse effect: what would have been
curly quotes comes out straight.
In LaTeX, smart means to use the standard TeX ligatures for quotation marks (`` and '' for double quotes,
` and ' for single quotes) and dashes (-- for en-dash and --- for em-dash). If smart is disabled, then
in reading LaTeX pandoc will parse these characters literally. In writing LaTeX, enabling smart tells
pandoc to use the ligatures when possible; if smart is disabled pandoc will use unicode quotation mark
and dash characters.
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 ex‐
ception 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|--ta‐
ble-of-contents option. They also make it easy to provide links from one section of a document to anoth‐
er. 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 treat‐
ed differently in CSS.
Extension: ascii_identifiers
Causes the identifiers produced by auto_identifiers to be pure ASCII. Accents are stripped off of ac‐
cented 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 (especially how they affect Markdown input/output) are also described in more
detail in their respective sections of Pandoc's Markdown.
Extension: raw_html
When converting from HTML, parse elements to raw HTML which are not representable in pandoc's AST. By
default, this is disabled for HTML input.
Extension: 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, org, 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.
Extension: native_divs
This extension is enabled by default for HTML input. This means that divs are parsed to pandoc native
elements. (Alternatively, you can parse them to raw HTML using -f html-native_divs+raw_html.)
When converting HTML to Markdown, for example, you may want to drop all divs and spans:
pandoc -f html-native_divs-native_spans -t markdown
Extension: native_spans
Analogous to native_divs above.
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 addi‐
tion, headings will be rendered setext-style (with underlines) rather than ATX-style (with '#' charac‐
ters). (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
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: citations
Some aspects of Pandoc's Markdown citation syntax are also accepted in org input.
Extension: ntb
In the context output format this enables the use of Natural Tables (TABLE) instead of the default Ex‐
treme Tables (xtables). Natural tables allow more fine-grained global customization but come at a per‐
formance penalty compared to extreme tables.
PANDOC'S MARKDOWN
Pandoc understands an extended and slightly revised version of John Gruber's Markdown syntax. This docu‐
ment explains the syntax, noting differences from standard Markdown. Except where noted, these differ‐
ences can be suppressed by using the markdown_strict format instead of markdown. Extensions can be en‐
abled or disabled to specify the behavior more granularly. They are described in the following. See al‐
so 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 exten‐
sions.
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, mathe‐
matics, 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
Standard Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a heading. Pandoc does require this (ex‐
cept, 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 La‐
TeX, ConTeXt, Textile, Jira markup, and AsciiDoc writers.
Headings with the class unnumbered will not be numbered, even if --number-sections is specified. A sin‐
gle hyphen (-) in an attribute context is equivalent to .unnumbered, and preferable in non-English docu‐
ments. 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 op‐
tional 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
Standard Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a block quote. Pandoc does require this
(except, of course, at the beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement is that it is all
too easy for a > to end up at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line wrapping). So,
unless the markdown_strict format is used, the following does not produce a nested block quote in pandoc:
> This is a block quote.
>> Nested.
Verbatim (code) blocks
Indented code blocks
A block of text indented four spaces (or one tab) is treated as verbatim text: that is, special charac‐
ters 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 re‐
moved 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 uses this information are HTML, LaTeX, Docx, Ms, and PowerPoint. If highlighting is
supported for your output format and language, then the code block above will appear highlighted, with
numbered lines. (To see which languages are supported, type pandoc --list-highlight-languages.) Other‐
wise, the code block above will appear as follows:
<pre id="mycode" class="haskell numberLines" startFrom="100">
<code>
...
</code>
</pre>
The numberLines (or number-lines) class will cause the lines of the code block to be numbered, starting
with 1 or the value of the startFrom attribute. The lineAnchors (or line-anchors) class will cause the
lines to be clickable anchors in HTML output.
A shortcut form can also be used for specifying the language of the code block:
```haskell
qsort [] = []
```
This is equivalent to:
``` {.haskell}
qsort [] = []
```
If the fenced_code_attributes extension is disabled, but input contains class attribute(s) for the code
block, the first class attribute will be printed after the opening fence as a bare word.
To prevent all highlighting, use the --no-highlight flag. To set the highlighting style, use --high‐
light-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 for‐
matted 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
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 para‐
graphs 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 mark‐
er:
* 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 standard Markdown, enumerators are decimal numbers followed by a period and a space. The numbers
themselves are ignored, so there is no difference between this list:
1. one
2. two
3. three
and this one:
5. one
7. two
1. three
Extension: fancy_lists
Unlike standard Markdown, pandoc allows ordered list items to be marked with uppercase and lowercase let‐
ters and roman numerals, in addition to Arabic numerals. List markers may be enclosed in parentheses or
followed by a single right-parentheses or period. They must be separated from the text that follows by
at least one space, and, if the list marker is a capital letter with a period, by at least two spaces.
The fancy_lists extension also allows '#' to be used as an ordered list marker in place of a numeral:
#. one
#. two
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 fol‐
lowed 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 defini‐
tion (including the first line, aside from the colon or tilde) 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 require‐
ment, but disallows "lazy" hard wrapping, can be activated with compact_definition_lists: see Non-pandoc
extensions, below.)
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 ex‐
ample:
(@) 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 char‐
acter after the label would be awkward.
Compact and loose lists
Pandoc behaves differently from Markdown.pl on some "edge cases" involving lists. Consider this source:
+ First
+ Second:
- Fee
- Fie
- Foe
+ Third
Pandoc transforms this into a "compact list" (with no <p> tags around "First", "Second", or "Third"),
while Markdown puts <p> tags around "Second" and "Third" (but not "First"), because of the blank space
around "Third". Pandoc follows a simple rule: if the text is followed by a blank line, it is treated as
a paragraph. Since "Second" is followed by a list, and not a blank line, it isn't treated as a para‐
graph. The fact that the list is followed by a blank line is irrelevant. (Note: Pandoc works this way
even when the markdown_strict format is specified. This behavior is consistent with the official Mark‐
down syntax description, even though it is different from that of Markdown.pl.)
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:
* * * *
---------------
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 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, re‐
spectively.
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 that span multiple columns or rows are not supported. Grid tables can be created easily
using Emacs' table-mode (M-x table-insert).
Alignments can be specified as with pipe tables, by putting colons at the boundaries of the separator
line after the header:
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
| Right | Left | Centered |
+==============:+:==============+:==================:+
| Bananas | $1.34 | built-in wrapper |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
For headerless tables, the colons go on the top line instead:
+--------------:+:--------------+:------------------:+
| Right | Left | Centered |
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+
Grid Table Limitations
Pandoc does not support grid tables with row spans or column spans. This means that neither variable
numbers of columns across rows nor variable numbers of rows across columns are supported by Pandoc. All
grid tables must have the same number of columns in each row, and the same number of rows in each column.
For example, the Docutils sample grid tables will not render as expected with Pandoc.
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 op‐
tional, 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 multi‐
ple lines. If a pipe table contains a row whose printable content is wider than the column width (see
--columns), then the table will take up the full text width and the cell contents will wrap, with the
relative cell widths determined by the number of dashes in the line separating the table header from the
table body. (For example ---|- would make the first column 3/4 and the second column 1/4 of the full
text width.) On the other hand, if no lines are wider than column width, then cell contents will not be
wrapped, and the cells will be sized to their contents.
Note: pandoc also recognizes pipe tables of the following form, as can be produced by Emacs' orgtbl-mode:
| One | Two |
|-----+-------|
| my | table |
| is | nice |
The difference is that + is used instead of |. Other orgtbl features are not supported. In particular,
to get non-default column alignment, you'll need to add colons as above.
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 sepa‐
rated 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) op‐
tion 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. 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, be‐
cause of the way pandoc concatenates input files when several are provided, you may also keep the metada‐
ta 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.
When pandoc is used with -t markdown to create a Markdown document, a YAML metadata block will be pro‐
duced 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. The pipe character (|) can be used to begin an indented block that will be interpreted liter‐
ally, 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.
...
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 ex‐
tension), or it will be interpreted as markdown. For example:
header-includes:
- |
```{=latex}
\let\oldsection\section
\renewcommand{\section}[1]{\clearpage\oldsection{#1}}
```
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 standard Markdown's rule, which allows only the following characters
to be backslash-escaped:
\`*_{}[]()>#+-.!
(However, if the markdown_strict format is used, the standard Markdown rule will be used.)
A backslash-escaped space is parsed as a nonbreaking space. In TeX output, it will appear as ~. In HTML
and XML output, it will appear as a literal unicode nonbreaking space character (note that it will thus
actually look "invisible" in the generated HTML source; you can still use the --ascii command-line option
to make it appear as an explicit entity).
A backslash-escaped newline (i.e. a backslash occurring at the end of a line) is parsed as a hard line
break. It will appear in TeX output as \\ and in HTML as <br />. This is a nice alternative to Mark‐
down'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 al‐
phanumeric 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 strikeout 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 su‐
perscripting and subscripting through the ordinary use of ~ and ^, and also bad interactions with foot‐
notes.) 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 fol‐
lowed 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}
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.
Math
Extension: tex_math_dollars
Anything between two $ characters will be treated as TeX math. The opening $ must have a non-space char‐
acter 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.)
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 informale‐
quation tag. Otherwise it will be rendered, if possible, using Unicode characters.
Docx It will be rendered using OMML math markup.
FictionBook2
If the --webtex option is used, formulas are rendered as images using CodeCogs or other compatible
web service, downloaded and embedded in the e-book. Otherwise, they will appear verbatim.
HTML, Slidy, DZSlides, S5, EPUB
The way math is rendered in HTML will depend on the command-line options selected. Therefore see
Math rendering in HTML above.
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, Common‐
Mark, 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
Standard Markdown allows you to include HTML "blocks": blocks of HTML between balanced tags that are sep‐
arated 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 mater‐
ial 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> and <style> tags is not interpreted as Mark‐
down.
This departure from standard Markdown should make it easier to mix Markdown with HTML block elements.
For example, one can surround a block of Markdown text with <div> tags without preventing it from being
interpreted as Markdown.
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 out‐
put, 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 regard‐
less 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. (Op‐
tionally, 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 else‐
where 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 restric‐
tion. 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 im‐
age'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 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 for‐
mat.
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 are converted to inches for output in page-based formats like LaTeX. Dimensions are con‐
verted to pixels for output in HTML-like formats. Use the --dpi option to specify the number of pixels
per inch. The default is 96dpi.
• 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 mark‐
down 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. 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 pre‐
ceding 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 attrib‐
utes 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 num‐
bered 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 para‐
graphs). The syntax is as follows:
Here is an inline note.^[Inlines notes are easier to write, since
you don't have to pick an identifier and move down to type the
note.]
Inline and regular footnotes may be mixed freely.
Citations
Extension: citations
Using an external filter, pandoc-citeproc, pandoc can automatically generate citations and a bibliography
in a number of styles. Basic usage is
pandoc --filter pandoc-citeproc myinput.txt
In order to use this feature, you will need to specify a bibliography file using the bibliography metada‐
ta field in a YAML metadata section, or --bibliography command line argument. You can supply multiple
--bibliography arguments or set bibliography metadata field to YAML array, if you want to use multiple
bibliography files. The bibliography may have any of these formats:
Format File extension
─────────────────────────────
BibLaTeX .bib
BibTeX .bibtex
Copac .copac
CSL JSON .json
CSL YAML .yaml
EndNote .enl
EndNote XML .xml
ISI .wos
MEDLINE .medline
MODS .mods
RIS .ris
Note that .bib can be used with both BibTeX and BibLaTeX files; use .bibtex to force BibTeX.
Note that pandoc-citeproc --bib2json and pandoc-citeproc --bib2yaml can produce .json and .yaml files
from any of the supported formats.
In-field markup: In BibTeX and BibLaTeX databases, pandoc-citeproc parses a subset of LaTeX markup; 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
pandoc-citeproc -j and -y interconvert the CSL JSON and CSL YAML formats as far as possible.
As an alternative to specifying a bibliography file using --bibliography or the YAML metadata field bib‐
liography, 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
...
(pandoc-citeproc --bib2yaml can produce these from a bibliography file in one of the supported formats.)
Citations and references can be formatted using any style supported by the Citation Style Language, list‐
ed in the Zotero Style Repository. These files are specified using the --csl option or the csl metadata
field. By default, pandoc-citeproc will use the Chicago Manual of Style author-date format. The CSL
project provides further information on finding and editing styles.
To make your citations hyperlinks to the corresponding bibliography entries, add link-citations: true to
your YAML metadata.
Citations go inside square brackets and are separated by semicolons. Each citation must have a key, com‐
posed of '@' + the citation identifier from the database, and may optionally have a prefix, a locator,
and a suffix. The citation key must begin with a letter, digit, or _, and may contain alphanumerics, _,
and internal punctuation characters (:.#$%&-+?<>~/). Here are some examples:
Blah blah [see @doe99, pp. 33-35; also @smith04, chap. 1].
Blah blah [@doe99, pp. 33-35, 38-39 and *passim*].
Blah blah [@smith04; @doe99].
pandoc-citeproc detects locator terms 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.
pandoc-citeproc will use heuristics to distinguish the locator from the suffix. In complex cases, the
locator can be enclosed in curly braces (using pandoc-citeproc 0.15 and higher only):
[@smith{ii, A, D-Z}, with a suffix]
[@smith, {pp. iv, vi-xi, (xv)-(xvii)} with suffix here]
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 in-text citation, as follows:
@smith04 says blah.
@smith04 [p. 33] says blah.
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 sup‐
pressed 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 meta‐
data, or put the heading at the beginning of the div with id refs (if you are using it) or at the end of
your document:
last paragraph...
# References
The bibliography will be inserted after this heading. Note that the unnumbered class will be added to
this heading, so that the section will not be numbered.
If you want to include items in the bibliography without actually citing them in the body text, you can
define a dummy nocite metadata field and put the citations there:
---
nocite: |
@item1, @item2
...
@item3
In this example, the document will contain a citation for item3 only, but the bibliography will contain
entries for item1, item2, and item3.
It is possible to create a bibliography with all the citations, whether or not they appear in the docu‐
ment, 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 invoca‐
tion. Bear in mind that bibliography files have to be in respective format (either BibTeX or BibLaTeX).
For more information, see the pandoc-citeproc man page.
Non-pandoc 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: 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 Mark‐
down. 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 ig‐
nore_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 mark‐
down=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 en‐
abled, 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, ab‐
breviation 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 de‐
scribed 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.
Markdown variants
In addition to pandoc's extended Markdown, the following Markdown variants are supported:
markdown_phpextra (PHP Markdown Extra)
footnotes, pipe_tables, raw_html, markdown_attribute, fenced_code_blocks, definition_lists, intra‐
word_underscores, header_attributes, link_attributes, abbreviations, shortcut_reference_links,
spaced_reference_links.
markdown_github (deprecated GitHub-Flavored Markdown)
pipe_tables, raw_html, fenced_code_blocks, auto_identifiers, gfm_auto_identifiers, back‐
tick_code_blocks, autolink_bare_uris, space_in_atx_header, intraword_underscores, strikeout,
task_lists, emoji, shortcut_reference_links, angle_brackets_escapable, lists_without_preced‐
ing_blankline.
markdown_mmd (MultiMarkdown)
pipe_tables, raw_html, markdown_attribute, mmd_link_attributes, tex_math_double_backslash, intra‐
word_underscores, mmd_title_block, footnotes, definition_lists, all_symbols_escapable, implic‐
it_header_references, auto_identifiers, mmd_header_identifiers, shortcut_reference_links, implic‐
it_figures, superscript, subscript, backtick_code_blocks, spaced_reference_links, raw_attribute.
markdown_strict (Markdown.pl)
raw_html, shortcut_reference_links, spaced_reference_links.
We also support commonmark and gfm (GitHub-Flavored Markdown, which is implemented as a set of extensions
on commonmark).
Note, however, that commonmark and gfm have limited support for extensions. Only those listed below (and
smart, raw_tex, and hard_line_breaks) will work. The extensions can, however, all be individually dis‐
abled. Also, raw_tex only affects gfm output, not input.
gfm (GitHub-Flavored Markdown)
pipe_tables, raw_html, fenced_code_blocks, auto_identifiers, gfm_auto_identifiers, back‐
tick_code_blocks, autolink_bare_uris, space_in_atx_header, intraword_underscores, strikeout,
task_lists, emoji, shortcut_reference_links, angle_brackets_escapable, lists_without_preced‐
ing_blankline.
PRODUCING SLIDE SHOWS WITH PANDOC
You can use pandoc to produce an HTML + JavaScript slide presentation that can be viewed via a web brows‐
er. There are five ways to do this, using S5, DZSlides, Slidy, Slideous, or reveal.js. You can also
produce a PDF slide show using LaTeX beamer, or slides shows in Microsoft PowerPoint format.
Here's the Markdown source for a simple slide show, habits.txt:
% Habits
% John Doe
% March 22, 2005
# In the morning
## Getting up
- Turn off alarm
- Get out of bed
## Breakfast
- Eat eggs
- Drink coffee
# In the evening
## Dinner
- Eat spaghetti
- Drink wine
------------------
## Going to sleep
- Get in bed
- Count sheep
To produce an HTML/JavaScript slide show, simply type
pandoc -t FORMAT -s habits.txt -o habits.html
where FORMAT is either s5, slidy, slideous, dzslides, or revealjs.
For Slidy, Slideous, reveal.js, and S5, the file produced by pandoc with the -s/--standalone option em‐
beds a link to JavaScript and CSS files, which are assumed to be available at the relative path s5/de‐
fault (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 con‐
tains 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 brows‐
er.
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 de‐
fault 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.
• 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 struc‐
turing your slides into sections and subsections, you can just use level-1 headings for all each slide.
(In that case, level-1 will be the slide level.) But you can also structure the slide show into sections,
as in the example above.
Note: in reveal.js slide shows, if slide level is 2, a two-dimensional layout will be produced, with lev‐
el-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.
Incremental lists
By default, these writers produce lists that display "all at once." If you want your lists to display in‐
crementally (one item at a time), use the -i option. If you want a particular list to depart from the
default, put it in a div block with class incremental or nonincremental. So, for example, using the
fenced div syntax, the following would be incremental regardless of the document default:
::: incremental
- Eat spaghetti
- Drink wine
:::
or
::: nonincremental
- Eat spaghetti
- Drink wine
:::
While using incremental and nonincremental divs are the recommended method of setting incremental lists
on a per-case basis, an older method is also supported: putting lists inside a blockquote will depart
from the document default (that is, it will display incrementally without the -i option and all at once
with the -i option):
> - Eat spaghetti
> - Drink wine
Both methods allow incremental and nonincremental lists to be mixed in a single document.
Note: Neither the -i/--incremental option nor any of the methods described here currently works for Pow‐
erPoint output.
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 directo‐
ry (see --data-dir, above). The originals may be found in pandoc's system data directory (generally $CA‐
BALDIR/pandoc-VERSION/s5/default). Pandoc will look there for any files it does not find in the user da‐
ta 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 for‐
mats, allowing you to style individual slides. In beamer, the only heading attribute that affects slides
is the allowframebreaks class, which sets the allowframebreaks option, causing multiple slides to be cre‐
ated if the content overfills the frame. This is recommended especially for bibliographies:
# References {.allowframebreaks}
Speaker notes
Speaker notes are supported in reveal.js and PowerPoint (pptx) output. You can add notes to your Mark‐
down 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 Power‐
Point 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 them‐
selves.
Columns
To put material in side by side columns, you can use a native div container with class columns, contain‐
ing two or more div containers with class column and a width attribute:
:::::::::::::: {.columns}
::: {.column width="40%"}
contents...
:::
::: {.column width="60%"}
contents...
:::
::::::::::::::
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, t, environment, label, plain, shrink, standout, noframenum‐
bering.
Background in reveal.js and beamer
Background images can be added to self-contained reveal.js slideshows and to beamer slideshows.
For the same image on every slide, use the configuration option background-image either in the YAML meta‐
data block or as a command-line variable. (There are no other options in beamer and the rest of this
section concerns reveal.js slideshows.)
For reveal.js, you can instead use the reveal.js-native option parallaxBackgroundImage. You can also set
parallaxBackgroundHorizontal and parallaxBackgroundVertical the same way and must also set parallaxBack‐
groundSize to have your values take effect.
To set an image for a particular reveal.js slide, add {data-background-image="/path/to/image"} to the
first slide-level heading on the slide (which may even be empty).
In reveal.js's overview mode, the parallaxBackgroundImage will show up only on the first slide.
Other reveal.js background settings also work on individual slides, including data-background-size, data-
background-repeat, data-background-color, data-transition, and data-transition-speed.
To add a background image to the automatically generated title slide, use the title-slide-attributes
variable in the YAML metadata block. It must contain a map of attribute names and values.
See the reveal.js documentation for more details.
For example in reveal.js:
---
title: My Slideshow
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.
## {data-background-image="/path/to/special_image.jpg"}
Slide 2 has a special image for its background, even though the heading has no content.
CREATING EPUBS WITH PANDOC
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 IS‐
BN-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 ob‐
jects. 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 speci‐
fied.
subject
A string value or a list of such values.
description
A string value.
type A string value.
format A string value.
relation
A string value.
coverage
A string value.
rights A string value.
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 at‐
tribute. 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
seriespage frontmatter
titlepage 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>
CREATING JUPYTER NOTEBOOKS WITH PANDOC
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. Attach‐
ments 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][Extension: fenced_attribute],
as shown in the last cell of the example above. Although pandoc can process "bare" raw HTML and TeX, the
result is often interspersed raw elements and normal textual elements, and in an output cell pandoc ex‐
pects a single, connected raw block. To avoid using raw HTML or TeX except when marked explicitly using
raw attributes, we recommend specifying the extensions -raw_html-raw_tex+raw_attribute when translating
between Markdown and ipynb notebooks.
Note that options and extensions that affect reading and writing of Markdown will also affect Markdown
cells in ipynb notebooks. For example, --wrap=preserve will preserve soft line breaks in Markdown cells;
--atx-headers will cause ATX-style headings to be used; and --preserve-tabs will prevent tabs from being
turned to spaces.
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 pyg‐
ments, 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-high‐
light-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 ver‐
sion of the pygments style, for example:
pandoc --print-highlight-style pygments > my.theme
Then edit my.theme and use it like this:
pandoc --highlight-style my.theme
If you are not satisfied with the built-in highlighting, or you want highlight a language that isn't sup‐
ported, you can use the --syntax-definition option to load a KDE-style XML syntax definition file. Be‐
fore 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 para‐
graphs 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 para‐
graphs 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 main‐
tains 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 dif‐
ferent 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 WRITERS
Pandoc can be extended with custom writers written in Lua. (Pandoc includes a Lua interpreter, so Lua
need not be installed separately.)
To use a custom writer, simply specify the path to the Lua script in place of the output format. For ex‐
ample:
pandoc -t data/sample.lua
Creating a custom writer requires writing a Lua function for each possible element in a pandoc document.
To get a documented example which you can modify according to your needs, do
pandoc --print-default-data-file sample.lua
Note that custom writers have no default template. If you want to use --standalone with a custom writer,
you will need to specify a template manually using --template or add a new default template with the name
default.NAME_OF_CUSTOM_WRITER.lua to the templates subdirectory of your user data directory (see Tem‐
plates).
A NOTE ON SECURITY
If you use pandoc to convert user-contributed content in a web application, here are some things to keep
in mind:
1. Although pandoc itself will not create or modify any files other than those you explicitly ask it cre‐
ate (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 be‐
fore using them.
2. 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 pan‐
doc operations in the PandocPure monad. See the document Using the pandoc API for more details.
3. 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.
4. 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 attributes for headings, spans, and code blocks. To be safe, you should run all the gener‐
ated HTML through an HTML sanitizer.
AUTHORS
Copyright 2006--2020 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 and all documentation may be downloaded from <http://pandoc.org>.
pandoc 2.9.2.1 March 23, 2020 Pandoc User's Guide()