| PANDOC(1) | General Commands Manual | PANDOC(1) |
pandoc - general markup converter
pandoc [options] [input-file]...
Pandoc is a Haskell library for converting from one markup format to another, and a command-line tool that uses this library.
Pandoc can convert between numerous markup and word processing formats, including, but not limited to, various flavors of Markdown, HTML, LaTeX and Word docx. For the full lists of input and output formats, see the --from and --to options below. Pandoc can also produce PDF output: see creating a PDF, below.
Pandoc's enhanced version of Markdown includes syntax for tables, definition lists, metadata blocks, footnotes, citations, math, and much more. See below under Pandoc's Markdown.
Pandoc has a modular design: it consists of a set of readers, which parse text in a given format and produce a native representation of the document (an abstract syntax tree or AST), and a set of writers, which convert this native representation into a target format. Thus, adding an input or output format requires only adding a reader or writer. Users can also run custom pandoc filters to modify the intermediate AST.
Because pandoc's intermediate representation of a document is less expressive than many of the formats it converts between, one should not expect perfect conversions between every format and every other. Pandoc attempts to preserve the structural elements of a document, but not formatting details such as margin size. And some document elements, such as complex tables, may not fit into pandoc's simple document model. While conversions from pandoc's Markdown to all formats aspire to be perfect, conversions from formats more expressive than pandoc's Markdown can be expected to be lossy.
If no input-files are specified, input is read from stdin. Output goes to stdout by default. For output to a file, use the -o option:
pandoc -o output.html input.txt
By default, pandoc produces a document fragment. To produce a standalone document (e.g. a valid HTML file including <head> and <body>), use the -s or --standalone flag:
pandoc -s -o output.html input.txt
For more information on how standalone documents are produced, see Templates below.
If multiple input files are given, pandoc will concatenate them all (with blank lines between them) before parsing. (Use --file-scope to parse files individually.)
The format of the input and output can be specified explicitly using command-line options. The input format can be specified using the -f/--from option, the output format using the -t/--to option. Thus, to convert hello.txt from Markdown to LaTeX, you could type:
pandoc -f markdown -t latex hello.txt
To convert hello.html from HTML to Markdown:
pandoc -f html -t markdown hello.html
Supported input and output formats are listed below under Options (see -f for input formats and -t for output formats). You can also use pandoc --list-input-formats and pandoc --list-output-formats to print lists of supported formats.
If the input or output format is not specified explicitly, pandoc will attempt to guess it from the extensions of the filenames. Thus, for example,
pandoc -o hello.tex hello.txt
will convert hello.txt from Markdown to LaTeX. If no output file is specified (so that output goes to stdout), or if the output file's extension is unknown, the output format will default to HTML. If no input file is specified (so that input comes from stdin), or if the input files' extensions are unknown, the input format will be assumed to be Markdown.
Pandoc uses the UTF-8 character encoding for both input and output. If your local character encoding is not UTF-8, you should pipe input and output through iconv:
iconv -t utf-8 input.txt | pandoc | iconv -f utf-8
Note that in some output formats (such as HTML, LaTeX, ConTeXt, RTF, OPML, DocBook, and Texinfo), information about the character encoding is included in the document header, which will only be included if you use the -s/--standalone option.
To produce a PDF, specify an output file with a .pdf extension:
pandoc test.txt -o test.pdf
By default, pandoc will use LaTeX to create the PDF, which requires that a LaTeX engine be installed (see --pdf-engine below).
Alternatively, pandoc can use ConTeXt, pdfroff, or any of the following HTML/CSS-to-PDF-engines, to create a PDF: wkhtmltopdf, weasyprint or prince. 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 (-t html defaults to --pdf-engine=wkhtmltopdf).
PDF output can be controlled using variables for LaTeX (if LaTeX is used) and variables for ConTeXt (if ConTeXt is used). When using an HTML/CSS-to-PDF-engine, --css affects the output. If wkhtmltopdf is used, then the variables margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom, footer-html, header-html and papersize will affect the output.
To debug the PDF creation, it can be useful to look at the intermediate representation: instead of -o test.pdf, use for example -s -o test.tex to output the generated LaTeX. You can then test it with pdflatex test.tex.
When using LaTeX, the following packages need to be available (they are included with all recent versions of TeX Live): amsfonts, amsmath, lm, unicode-math, ifxetex, ifluatex, listings (if the --listings option is used), fancyvrb, longtable, booktabs, graphicx and grffile (if the document contains images), hyperref, xcolor (with colorlinks), ulem, geometry (with the geometry variable set), setspace (with linestretch), and babel (with lang). The use of xelatex or lualatex as the LaTeX 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 added to the template or included in any header file. The natbib, biblatex, bibtex, and biber packages can optionally be used for citation rendering.
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 http://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" \ http://www.fsf.org
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.
Note that odt, docx, and epub 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.
$HOME/.pandoc
in Windows XP:
C:\Documents And Settings\USERNAME\Application Data\pandoc
and in Windows Vista or later:
C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\pandoc
You can find the default user data directory on your system by looking at the output of pandoc --version. A reference.odt, reference.docx, epub.css, templates, slidy, slideous, or s5 directory placed in this directory will override pandoc's normal defaults.
eval "$(pandoc --bash-completion)"
pandoc --filter ./caps.py -t latex
is equivalent to
pandoc -t json | ./caps.py latex | pandoc -f json -t latex
The latter form may be useful for debugging filters.
Filters may be written in any language. Text.Pandoc.JSON exports toJSONFilter to facilitate writing filters in Haskell. Those who would prefer to write filters in python can use the module pandocfilters, installable from PyPI. There are also pandoc filter libraries in PHP, perl, and JavaScript/node.js.
In order of preference, pandoc will look for filters in
Filters and lua-filters are applied in the order specified on the command line.
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
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.
A stylesheet is required for generating EPUB. If none is provided using this option (or the stylesheet metadata field), 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.
To produce a custom reference.docx, first get a copy of the default reference.docx: pandoc --print-default-data-file reference.docx > custom-reference.docx. Then open custom-reference.docx in Word, modify the styles as you wish, and save the file. For best results, do not make changes to this file other than modifying the styles used by pandoc: [paragraph] 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] Default Paragraph Font, Body Text Char, Verbatim Char, Footnote Reference, Hyperlink; [table] Table.
To produce a custom reference.odt, first get a copy of the default reference.odt: pandoc --print-default-data-file reference.odt > custom-reference.odt. Then open custom-reference.odt in LibreOffice, modify the styles as you wish, and save the file.
The specific requirement is that the template should contain the following four layouts as its first four layouts:
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 --print-default-data-file reference.pptx > custom-reference.pptx, and then modify custom-reference.pptx in MS PowerPoint (pandoc will use the first four layout slides, as mentioned above).
<dc:rights>Creative Commons</dc:rights> <dc:language>es-AR</dc:language>
By default, pandoc will include the following metadata elements: <dc:title> (from the document title), <dc:creator> (from the document authors), <dc:date> (from the document date, which should be in ISO 8601 format), <dc:language> (from the lang variable, or, if is not set, the locale), and <dc:identifier id="BookId"> (a randomly generated UUID). Any of these may be overridden by elements in the metadata file.
Note: if the source document is Markdown, a YAML metadata block in the document can be used instead. See below under EPUB Metadata.
@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"; }
The default is to render TeX math as far as possible using Unicode characters. Formulas are put inside a span with class="math", so that they may be styled differently from the surrounding text if needed. However, this gives acceptable results only for basic math, usually you will want to use --mathjax or another of the following options.
pandoc -s --gladtex input.md -o myfile.htex gladtex -d myfile-images myfile.htex # produces myfile.html and images in myfile-images
pandoc --ignore-args -o foo.html -s foo.txt -- -e latin1
is equivalent to
pandoc -o foo.html -s
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:
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 --metadata option.
Some variables are set automatically by pandoc. These vary somewhat depending on the output format, but include the following:
$if(sourcefile)$ $for(sourcefile)$ $sourcefile$ $endfor$ $else$ (stdin) $endif$
Similarly, outputfile can be - if output goes to the terminal.
--- author: - Aristotle - Peter Abelard ...
Native pandoc Spans and Divs with the lang attribute (value in BCP 47) can be used to switch the language in that range. In LaTeX output, babel-otherlangs and polyglossia-otherlangs variables will be generated automatically based on the lang attributes of Spans and Divs in the document.
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 are available for producing slide shows with pandoc, including all reveal.js configuration options.
LaTeX variables are used when creating a PDF.
Variable names are sequences of alphanumerics, -, and _, starting with a letter. A variable name surrounded by $ signs will be replaced by its value. For example, the string $title$ in
<title>$title$</title>
will be replaced by the document title.
To write a literal $ in a template, use $$.
Templates may contain conditionals. The syntax is as follows:
$if(variable)$ X $else$ Y $endif$
This will include X in the template if variable has a truthy value; otherwise it will include Y. Here a truthy value is any of the following:
X and Y are placeholders for any valid template text, and may include interpolated variables or other conditionals. The $else$ section may be omitted.
When variables can have multiple values (for example, author in a multi-author document), you can use the $for$ keyword:
$for(author)$ <meta name="author" content="$author$" /> $endfor$
You can optionally specify a separator to be used between consecutive items:
$for(author)$$author$$sep$, $endfor$
A dot can be used to select a field of a variable that takes an object as its value. So, for example:
$author.name$ ($author.affiliation$)
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.
Templates may contain comments: anything on a line after $-- will be treated as a comment and ignored.
The behavior of some of the readers and writers can be adjusted by enabling or disabling various extensions.
An extension can be enabled by adding +EXTENSION to the format name and disabled by adding -EXTENSION. For example, --from markdown_strict+footnotes is strict Markdown with footnotes enabled, while --from markdown-footnotes-pipe_tables is pandoc's Markdown without footnotes or pipe tables.
The markdown reader and writer make by far the most use of extensions. Extensions only used by them are therefore covered in the section Pandoc's Markdown below (See Markdown variants for commonmark and gfm.) In the following, extensions that also work for other formats are covered.
Interpret straight quotes as curly quotes, --- as em-dashes, -- as en-dashes, and ... as ellipses. Nonbreaking spaces are inserted after certain abbreviations, such as "Mr."
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
Note: If you are writing Markdown, then the smart extension has the reverse effect: what would have been curly quotes comes out straight.
In LaTeX, smart means to use the standard TeX ligatures for quotation marks (`` and '' for double quotes, ` and ' for single quotes) and dashes (-- for en-dash and --- for em-dash). If smart is disabled, then in reading LaTeX pandoc will parse these characters literally. In writing LaTeX, enabling smart tells pandoc to use the ligatures when possible; if smart is disabled pandoc will use unicode quotation mark and dash characters.
A header without an explicitly specified identifier will be automatically assigned a unique identifier based on the header text.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
The algorithm used to derive the identifier from the header text is:
Thus, for example,
| Header | Identifier |
| Header identifiers in HTML | header-identifiers-in-html |
| *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 header text. The exception is when several headers 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.
These identifiers are used to provide link targets in the table of contents generated by the --toc|--table-of-contents option. They also make it easy to provide links from one section of a document to another. A link to this section, for example, might look like this:
See the section on
[header identifiers](#header-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 header itself. This allows entire sections to be manipulated using JavaScript or treated differently in CSS.
Causes the identifiers produced by auto_identifiers to be pure ASCII. Accents are stripped off of accented Latin letters, and non-Latin letters are omitted.
The extensions tex_math_dollars, tex_math_single_backslash, and tex_math_double_backslash are described in the section about Pandoc's Markdown.
However, they can also be used with HTML input. This is handy for reading web pages formatted using MathJax, for example.
The following extensions (especially how they affect Markdown input/output) are also described in more detail in their respective sections of Pandoc's Markdown.
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.
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):
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
Analogous to native_divs above.
Treat the document as literate Haskell source.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
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
Examples:
pandoc -f markdown+lhs -t html
reads literate Haskell source formatted with Markdown conventions and writes ordinary HTML (without bird tracks).
pandoc -f markdown+lhs -t html+lhs
writes HTML with the Haskell code in bird tracks, so it can be copied and pasted as literate Haskell source.
Note that GHC expects the bird tracks in the first column, so indented literate code blocks (e.g. inside an itemized environment) will not be picked up by the Haskell compiler.
Allows empty paragraphs. By default empty paragraphs are omitted.
This extension can be enabled/disabled for the following formats:
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.
In the muse input format, this enables Text::Amuse extensions to Emacs Muse markup.
Some aspects of Pandoc's Markdown citation syntax are also accepted in org input.
In the context output format this enables the use of Natural Tables (TABLE) instead of the default Extreme Tables (xtables). Natural tables allow more fine-grained global customization but come at a performance penalty compared to extreme tables.
Pandoc understands an extended and slightly revised version of John Gruber's Markdown syntax. This document explains the syntax, noting differences from standard Markdown. Except where noted, these differences can be suppressed by using the markdown_strict format instead of markdown. Extensions can be enabled or disabled to specify the behavior more granularly. They are described in the following. See also Extensions above, for extensions that work also on other formats.
Markdown is designed to be easy to write, and, even more importantly, easy to read:
A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it's been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. -- John Gruber
This principle has guided pandoc's decisions in finding syntax for tables, footnotes, and other extensions.
There is, however, one respect in which pandoc's aims are different from the original aims of Markdown. Whereas Markdown was originally designed with HTML generation in mind, pandoc is designed for multiple output formats. Thus, while pandoc allows the embedding of raw HTML, it discourages it, and provides other, non-HTMLish ways of representing important document elements like definition lists, tables, mathematics, and footnotes.
A paragraph is one or more lines of text followed by one or more blank lines. Newlines are treated as spaces, so you can reflow your paragraphs as you like. If you need a hard line break, put two or more spaces at the end of a line.
A backslash followed by a newline is also a hard line break. Note: in multiline and grid table cells, this is the only way to create a hard line break, since trailing spaces in the cells are ignored.
There are two kinds of headers: Setext and ATX.
A setext-style header is a line of text "underlined" with a row of = signs (for a level one header) or - signs (for a level two header):
A level-one header
==================
A level-two header
------------------
The header text can contain inline formatting, such as emphasis (see Inline formatting, below).
An ATX-style header 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 header level:
## A level-two header
### A level-three header ###
As with setext-style headers, the header text can contain formatting:
# A level-one header with a [link](/url) and *emphasis*
Standard Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a header. Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at the beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement is that it is all too easy for a # to end up at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line wrapping). Consider, for example:
I like several of their flavors of ice cream:
#22, for example, and #5.
Many Markdown implementations do not require a space between the opening #s of an ATX header and the header text, so that #5 bolt and #hashtag count as headers. With this extension, pandoc does require the space.
See also the auto_identifiers extension above.
Headers can be assigned attributes using this syntax at the end of the line containing the header text:
{#identifier .class .class key=value key=value}
Thus, for example, the following headers will all be assigned the identifier foo:
# My header {#foo}
## My header ## {#foo}
My other header {#foo}
---------------
(This syntax is compatible with PHP Markdown Extra.)
Note that although this syntax allows assignment of classes and key/value attributes, writers generally don't use all of this information. Identifiers, classes, and key/value attributes are used in HTML and HTML-based formats such as EPUB and slidy. Identifiers are used for labels and link anchors in the LaTeX, ConTeXt, Textile, and AsciiDoc writers.
Headers with the class unnumbered will not be numbered, even if --number-sections is specified. A single hyphen (-) in an attribute context is equivalent to .unnumbered, and preferable in non-English documents. So,
# My header {-}
is just the same as
# My header {.unnumbered}
Pandoc behaves as if reference links have been defined for each header. So, to link to a header
# Header identifiers in HTML
you can simply write
[Header identifiers in HTML]
or
[Header identifiers in HTML][]
or
[the section on header identifiers][header identifiers in
HTML]
instead of giving the identifier explicitly:
[Header identifiers in HTML](#header-identifiers-in-html)
If there are multiple headers 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 header references. So, in the following example, the link will point to bar, not to #foo:
# Foo
[foo]: bar
See [foo]
Markdown uses email conventions for quoting blocks of text. A block quotation is one or more paragraphs or other block elements (such as lists or headers), with each line preceded by a > character and an optional space. (The > need not start at the left margin, but it should not be indented more than three spaces.)
> This is a block quote. This
> paragraph has two lines.
>
> 1. This is a list inside a block quote.
> 2. Second item.
A "lazy" form, which requires the > character only on the first line of each block, is also allowed:
> This is a block quote. This
paragraph has two lines.
> 1. This is a list inside a block quote.
2. Second item.
Among the block elements that can be contained in a block quote are other block quotes. That is, block quotes can be nested:
> This is a block quote.
>
> > A block quote within a block quote.
If the > character is followed by an optional space, that space will be considered part of the block quote marker and not part of the indentation of the contents. Thus, to put an indented code block in a block quote, you need five spaces after the >:
> code
Standard Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a block quote. Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at the beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement is that it is all too easy for a > to end up at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line wrapping). So, unless the markdown_strict format is used, the following does not produce a nested block quote in pandoc:
> This is a block quote.
>> Nested.
A block of text indented four spaces (or one tab) is treated as verbatim text: that is, special characters do not trigger special formatting, and all spaces and line breaks are preserved. For example,
if (a > 3) {
moveShip(5 * gravity, DOWN);
}
The initial (four space or one tab) indentation is not considered part of the verbatim text, and is removed in the output.
Note: blank lines in the verbatim text need not begin with four spaces.
In addition to standard indented code blocks, pandoc supports fenced code blocks. These begin with a row of three or more tildes (~) and end with a row of tildes that must be at least as long as the starting row. Everything between these lines is treated as code. No indentation is necessary:
~~~~~~~
if (a > 3) {
moveShip(5 * gravity, DOWN);
}
~~~~~~~
Like regular code blocks, fenced code blocks must be separated from surrounding text by blank lines.
If the code itself contains a row of tildes or backticks, just use a longer row of tildes or backticks at the start and end:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~ code including tildes ~~~~~~~~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Same as fenced_code_blocks, but uses backticks (`) instead of tildes (~).
Optionally, you may attach attributes to fenced or backtick code block using this syntax:
~~~~ {#mycode .haskell .numberLines startFrom="100"}
qsort [] = []
qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter (< x) xs) ++ [x] ++
qsort (filter (>= x) xs)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Here mycode is an identifier, haskell and numberLines are classes, and startFrom is an attribute with value 100. Some output formats can use this information to do syntax highlighting. Currently, the only output formats that uses this information are HTML, LaTeX, Docx, Ms, and PowerPoint. If highlighting is supported for your output format and language, then the code block above will appear highlighted, with numbered lines. (To see which languages are supported, type pandoc --list-highlight-languages.) Otherwise, the code block above will appear as follows:
<pre id="mycode" class="haskell numberLines" startFrom="100"> <code> ... </code> </pre>
The numberLines (or number-lines) class will cause the lines of the code block to be numbered, starting with 1 or the value of the startFrom attribute. The lineAnchors (or line-anchors) class will cause the lines to be clickable anchors in HTML output.
A shortcut form can also be used for specifying the language of the code block:
```haskell qsort [] = [] ```
This is equivalent to:
``` {.haskell}
qsort [] = []
```
If the fenced_code_attributes extension is disabled, but input contains class attribute(s) for the code block, the first class attribute will be printed after the opening fence as a bare word.
To prevent all highlighting, use the --no-highlight flag. To set the highlighting style, use --highlight-style. For more information on highlighting, see Syntax highlighting, below.
A line block is a sequence of lines beginning with a vertical bar (|) followed by a space. The division into lines will be preserved in the output, as will any leading spaces; otherwise, the lines will be formatted as Markdown. This is useful for verse and addresses:
| The limerick packs laughs anatomical | In space that is quite economical. | But the good ones I've seen | So seldom are clean | And the clean ones so seldom are comical | 200 Main St. | Berkeley, CA 94718
The lines can be hard-wrapped if needed, but the continuation line must begin with a space.
| The Right Honorable Most Venerable and Righteous Samuel L. Constable, Jr. | 200 Main St. | Berkeley, CA 94718
This syntax is borrowed from reStructuredText.
A bullet list is a list of bulleted list items. A bulleted list item begins with a bullet (*, +, or -). Here is a simple example:
* one * two * three
This will produce a "compact" list. If you want a "loose" list, in which each item is formatted as a paragraph, put spaces between the items:
* one * two * three
The bullets need not be flush with the left margin; they may be indented one, two, or three spaces. The bullet must be followed by whitespace.
List items look best if subsequent lines are flush with the first line (after the bullet):
* here is my first list item. * and my second.
But Markdown also allows a "lazy" format:
* here is my first list item. * and my second.
A list item may contain multiple paragraphs and other block-level content. However, subsequent paragraphs must be preceded by a blank line and indented to line up with the first non-space content after the list marker.
* First paragraph.
Continued.
* Second paragraph. With a code block, which must be indented
eight spaces:
{ code }
Exception: if the list marker is followed by an indented code block, which must begin 5 spaces after the list marker, then subsequent paragraphs must begin two columns after the last character of the list marker:
* code continuation paragraph
List items may include other lists. In this case the preceding blank line is optional. The nested list must be indented to line up with the first non-space character after the list marker of the containing list item.
* fruits + apples - macintosh - red delicious + pears + peaches * vegetables + broccoli + chard
As noted above, Markdown allows you to write list items "lazily," instead of indenting continuation lines. However, if there are multiple paragraphs or other blocks in a list item, the first line of each must be indented.
+ A lazy, lazy, list item. + Another one; this looks bad but is legal. Second paragraph of second list item.
Ordered lists work just like bulleted lists, except that the items begin with enumerators rather than bullets.
In standard Markdown, enumerators are decimal numbers followed by a period and a space. The numbers themselves are ignored, so there is no difference between this list:
1. one 2. two 3. three
and this one:
5. one 7. two 1. three
Unlike standard Markdown, pandoc allows ordered list items to be marked with uppercase and lowercase letters and roman numerals, in addition to Arabic numerals. List markers may be enclosed in parentheses or followed by a single right-parentheses or period. They must be separated from the text that follows by at least one space, and, if the list marker is a capital letter with a period, by at least two spaces.
The fancy_lists extension also allows '#' to be used as an ordered list marker in place of a numeral:
#. one #. two
Pandoc also pays attention to the type of list marker used, and to the starting number, and both of these are preserved where possible in the output format. Thus, the following yields a list with numbers followed by a single parenthesis, starting with 9, and a sublist with lowercase roman numerals:
9) Ninth 10) Tenth 11) Eleventh i. subone ii. subtwo iii. subthree
Pandoc will start a new list each time a different type of list marker is used. So, the following will create three lists:
(2) Two (5) Three 1. Four * Five
If default list markers are desired, use #.:
#. one #. two #. three
Pandoc supports definition lists, using the syntax of PHP Markdown Extra with some extensions.
Term 1
: Definition 1
Term 2 with *inline markup*
: Definition 2
{ some code, part of Definition 2 }
Third paragraph of definition 2.
Each term must fit on one line, which may optionally be followed by a blank line, and must be followed by one or more definitions. A definition begins with a colon or tilde, which may be indented one or two spaces.
A term may have multiple definitions, and each definition may consist of one or more block elements (paragraph, code block, list, etc.), each indented four spaces or one tab stop. The body of the definition (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 requirement, but disallows "lazy" hard wrapping, can be activated with compact_definition_lists: see Non-pandoc extensions, below.)
The special list marker @ can be used for sequentially numbered examples. The first list item with a @ marker will be numbered '1', the next '2', and so on, throughout the document. The numbered examples need not occur in a single list; each new list using @ will take up where the last stopped. So, for example:
(@) My first example will be numbered (1). (@) My second example will be numbered (2). Explanation of examples. (@) My third example will be numbered (3).
Numbered examples can be labeled and referred to elsewhere in the document:
(@good) This is a good example. As (@good) illustrates, ...
The label can be any string of alphanumeric characters, underscores, or hyphens.
Note: continuation paragraphs in example lists must always be indented four spaces, regardless of the length of the list marker. That is, example lists always behave as if the four_space_rule extension is set. This is because example labels tend to be long, and indenting content to the first non-space character after the label would be awkward.
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 paragraph. 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 Markdown syntax description, even though it is different from that of Markdown.pl.)
What if you want to put an indented code block after a list?
- item one
- item two
{ my code block }
Trouble! Here pandoc (like other Markdown implementations) will treat { my code block } as the second paragraph of item two, and not as a code block.
To "cut off" the list after item two, you can insert some non-indented content, like an HTML comment, which won't produce visible output in any format:
- item one
- item two
<!-- end of list -->
{ my code block }
You can use the same trick if you want two consecutive lists instead of one big list:
1. one 2. two 3. three <!-- --> 1. uno 2. dos 3. tres
A line containing a row of three or more *, -, or _ characters (optionally separated by spaces) produces a horizontal rule:
* * * * ---------------
Four kinds of tables may be used. The first three kinds presuppose the use of a fixed-width font, such as Courier. The fourth kind can be used with proportionally spaced fonts, as it does not require lining up columns.
A caption may optionally be provided with all 4 kinds of tables (as illustrated in the examples below). A caption is a paragraph beginning with the string Table: (or just :), which will be stripped off. It may appear either before or after the table.
Simple tables look like this:
Right Left Center Default ------- ------ ---------- ------- 12 12 12 12 123 123 123 123 1 1 1 1 Table: Demonstration of simple table syntax.
The headers 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:
The table must end with a blank line, or a line of dashes followed by a blank line.
The column headers 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 headers are omitted, column alignments are determined on the basis of the first line of the table body. So, in the tables above, the columns would be right, left, center, and right aligned, respectively.
Multiline tables allow headers 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:
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.
Headers 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 headers.
It is possible for a multiline table to have just one row, but the row should be followed by a blank line (and then the row of dashes that ends the table), or the table may be interpreted as a simple table.
Grid tables look like this:
: Sample grid table. +---------------+---------------+--------------------+ | Fruit | Price | Advantages | +===============+===============+====================+ | Bananas | $1.34 | - built-in wrapper | | | | - bright color | +---------------+---------------+--------------------+ | Oranges | $2.10 | - cures scurvy | | | | - tasty | +---------------+---------------+--------------------+
The row of =s separates the header from the table body, and can be omitted for a headerless table. The cells of grid tables may contain arbitrary block elements (multiple paragraphs, code blocks, lists, etc.). Cells that span multiple columns or rows are not supported. Grid tables can be created easily using Emacs table mode.
Alignments can be specified as with pipe tables, by putting colons at the boundaries of the separator line after the header:
+---------------+---------------+--------------------+ | Right | Left | Centered | +==============:+:==============+:==================:+ | Bananas | $1.34 | built-in wrapper | +---------------+---------------+--------------------+
For headerless tables, the colons go on the top line instead:
+--------------:+:--------------+:------------------:+ | Right | Left | Centered | +---------------+---------------+--------------------+
Pandoc does not support grid tables with row spans or column spans. This means that neither variable numbers of columns across rows nor variable numbers of rows across columns are supported by Pandoc. All grid tables must have the same number of columns in each row, and the same number of rows in each column. For example, the Docutils sample grid tables will not render as expected with Pandoc.
Pipe tables look like this:
| Right | Left | Default | Center | |------:|:-----|---------|:------:| | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | | 123 | 123 | 123 | 123 | | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | : Demonstration of pipe table syntax.
The syntax is identical to PHP Markdown Extra tables. The beginning and ending pipe characters are optional, but pipes are required between all columns. The colons indicate column alignment as shown. The header cannot be omitted. To simulate a headerless table, include a header with blank cells.
Since the pipes indicate column boundaries, columns need not be vertically aligned, as they are in the above example. So, this is a perfectly legal (though ugly) pipe table:
fruit| price -----|-----: apple|2.05 pear|1.37 orange|3.09
The cells of pipe tables cannot contain block elements like paragraphs and lists, and cannot span multiple lines. If a pipe table contains a row whose 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.
If the file begins with a title block
% title % author(s) (separated by semicolons) % date
it will be parsed as bibliographic information, not regular text. (It will be used, for example, in the title of standalone LaTeX or HTML output.) The block may contain just a title, a title and an author, or all three elements. If you want to include an author but no title, or a title and a date but no author, you need a blank line:
% % Author % My title % % June 15, 2006
The title may occupy multiple lines, but continuation lines must begin with leading space, thus:
% My title on multiple lines
If a document has multiple authors, the authors may be put on separate lines with leading space, or separated by semicolons, or both. So, all of the following are equivalent:
% Author One Author Two % Author One; Author Two % Author One; Author Two
The date must fit on one line.
All three metadata fields may contain standard inline formatting (italics, links, footnotes, etc.).
Title blocks will always be parsed, but they will affect the output only when the --standalone (-s) option is chosen. In HTML output, titles will appear twice: once in the document head -- this is the title that will appear at the top of the window in a browser -- and once at the beginning of the document body. The title in the document head can have an optional prefix attached (--title-prefix or -T option). The title in the body appears as an H1 element with class "title", so it can be suppressed or reformatted with CSS. If a title prefix is specified with -T and no title block appears in the document, the title prefix will be used by itself as the HTML title.
The man page writer extracts a title, man page section number, and other header and footer information from the title line. The title is assumed to be the first word on the title line, which may optionally end with a (single-digit) section number in parentheses. (There should be no space between the title and the parentheses.) Anything after this is assumed to be additional footer and header text. A single pipe character (|) should be used to separate the footer text from the header text. Thus,
will yield a man page with the title PANDOC and section 1.
% PANDOC(1) Pandoc User Manuals
will also have "Pandoc User Manuals" in the footer.
% PANDOC(1) Pandoc User Manuals | Version 4.0
will also have "Version 4.0" in the header.
A YAML metadata block is a valid YAML object, delimited by a line of three hyphens (---) at the top and a line of three hyphens (---) or three dots (...) at the bottom. A YAML metadata block may occur anywhere in the document, but if it is not at the beginning, it must be preceded by a blank line. (Note that, because of the way pandoc concatenates input files when several are provided, you may also keep the metadata in a separate YAML file and pass it to pandoc as an argument, along with your Markdown files:
pandoc chap1.md chap2.md chap3.md metadata.yaml -s -o book.html
Just be sure that the YAML file begins with --- and ends with --- or ....)
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.)
A document may contain multiple metadata blocks. The metadata fields will be combined through a left-biased union: if two metadata blocks attempt to set the same field, the value from the first block will be taken.
When pandoc is used with -t markdown to create a Markdown document, a YAML metadata block will be produced only if the -s/--standalone option is used. All of the metadata will appear in a single block at the beginning of the document.
Note that YAML escaping rules must be followed. Thus, for example, if a title contains a colon, it must be quoted. The pipe character (|) can be used to begin an indented block that will be interpreted literally, without need for escaping. This form is necessary when the field contains blank lines or block-level formatting:
--- title: 'This is the title: it contains a colon' author: - Author One - Author Two tags: [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 extension), or it will be interpreted as markdown. For example:
header-includes:
- |
```{=latex}
\let\oldsection\section
\renewcommand{\section}[1]{\clearpage\oldsection{#1}}
```
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. It will appear in TeX output as ~ and in HTML and XML as \  or \ .
A backslash-escaped newline (i.e. a backslash occurring at the end of a line) is parsed as a hard line break. It will appear in TeX output as \\ and in HTML as <br />. This is a nice alternative to Markdown's "invisible" way of indicating hard line breaks using two trailing spaces on a line.
Backslash escapes do not work in verbatim contexts.
To emphasize some text, surround it with *s or _, like this:
This text is _emphasized with underscores_, and this is *emphasized with asterisks*.
Double * or _ produces strong emphasis:
This is **strong emphasis** and __with underscores__.
A * or _ character surrounded by spaces, or backslash-escaped, will not trigger emphasis:
This is * not emphasized *, and \*neither is this\*.
Because _ is sometimes used inside words and identifiers, pandoc does not interpret a _ surrounded by alphanumeric characters as an emphasis marker. If you want to emphasize just part of a word, use *:
feas*ible*, not feas*able*.
To strikeout a section of text with a horizontal line, begin and end it with ~~. Thus, for example,
This ~~is deleted text.~~
Superscripts may be written by surrounding the superscripted text by ^ characters; subscripts may be written by surrounding the subscripted text by ~ characters. Thus, for example,
H~2~O is a liquid. 2^10^ is 1024.
If the superscripted or subscripted text contains spaces, these spaces must be escaped with backslashes. (This is to prevent accidental superscripting and subscripting through the ordinary use of ~ and ^.) Thus, if you want the letter P with 'a cat' in subscripts, use P~a\ cat~, not P~a cat~.
To make a short span of text verbatim, put it inside backticks:
What is the difference between `>>=` and `>>`?
If the verbatim text includes a backtick, use double backticks:
Here is a literal backtick `` ` ``.
(The spaces after the opening backticks and before the closing backticks will be ignored.)
The general rule is that a verbatim span starts with a string of consecutive backticks (optionally followed by a space) and ends with a string of the same number of backticks (optionally preceded by a space).
Note that backslash-escapes (and other Markdown constructs) do not work in verbatim contexts:
This is a backslash followed by an asterisk: `\*`.
Attributes can be attached to verbatim text, just as with fenced code blocks:
`<$>`{.haskell}
To write small caps, use the smallcaps class:
[Small caps]{.smallcaps}
Or, without the bracketed_spans extension:
<span class="smallcaps">Small caps</span>
For compatibility with other Markdown flavors, CSS is also supported:
<span style="font-variant:small-caps;">Small caps</span>
This will work in all output formats that support small caps.
Anything between two $ characters will be treated as TeX math. The opening $ must have a non-space character immediately to its right, while the closing $ must have a non-space character immediately to its left, and must not be followed immediately by a digit. Thus, $20,000 and $30,000 won't parse as math. If for some reason you need to enclose text in literal $ characters, backslash-escape them and they won't be treated as math delimiters.
TeX math will be printed in all output formats. How it is rendered depends on the output format:
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, Emacs Org mode, and Textile output, and suppressed in other formats.
Standard Markdown allows you to include HTML "blocks": blocks of HTML between balanced tags that are separated from the surrounding text with blank lines, and start and end at the left margin. Within these blocks, everything is interpreted as HTML, not Markdown; so (for example), * does not signify emphasis.
Pandoc behaves this way when the markdown_strict format is used; but by default, pandoc interprets material between HTML block tags as Markdown. Thus, for example, pandoc will turn
<table> <tr> <td>*one*</td> <td>[a link](http://google.com)</td> </tr> </table>
into
<table> <tr> <td><em>one</em></td> <td><a href="http://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 Markdown.
This departure from standard Markdown should make it easier to mix Markdown with HTML block elements. For example, one can surround a block of Markdown text with <div> tags without preventing it from being interpreted as Markdown.
Use native pandoc Div blocks for content inside <div> tags. For the most part this should give the same output as markdown_in_html_blocks, but it makes it easier to write pandoc filters to manipulate groups of blocks.
Use native pandoc Span blocks for content inside <span> tags. For the most part this should give the same output as raw_html, but it makes it easier to write pandoc filters to manipulate groups of inlines.
In addition to raw HTML, pandoc allows raw LaTeX, TeX, and ConTeXt to be included in a document. Inline TeX commands will be preserved and passed unchanged to the LaTeX and ConTeXt writers. Thus, for example, you can use LaTeX to include BibTeX citations:
This result was proved in \cite{jones.1967}.
Note that in LaTeX environments, like
\begin{tabular}{|l|l|}\hline
Age & Frequency \\ \hline
18--25 & 15 \\
26--35 & 33 \\
36--45 & 22 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}
the material between the begin and end tags will be interpreted as raw LaTeX, not as Markdown.
Inline LaTeX is ignored in output formats other than Markdown, LaTeX, Emacs Org mode, and ConTeXt.
Inline spans and fenced code blocks with a special kind of attribute will be parsed as raw content with the designated format. For example, the following produces a raw groff ms block:
```{=ms}
.MYMACRO
blah blah
```
And the following produces a raw html inline element:
This is `<a>html</a>`{=html}
This can be useful to insert raw xml into docx documents, e.g. a pagebreak:
```{=openxml}
<w:p>
<w:r>
<w:br w:type="page"/>
</w:r>
</w:p>
```
The format name should match the target format name (see -t/--to, above, for a list, or use pandoc --list-output-formats). Use openxml for docx output, opendocument for odt output, html5 for epub3 output, html4 for epub2 output, and latex, beamer, ms, or html5 for pdf output (depending on what you use for --pdf-engine).
This extension presupposes that the relevant kind of inline code or fenced code block is enabled. Thus, for example, to use a raw attribute with a backtick code block, backtick_code_blocks must be enabled.
The raw attribute cannot be combined with regular attributes.
For output formats other than LaTeX, 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 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.
Whether or not latex_macros is enabled, the macro definitions will still be passed through as raw LaTeX.
Markdown allows links to be specified in several ways.
If you enclose a URL or email address in pointy brackets, it will become a link:
<http://google.com> <sam@green.eggs.ham>
An inline link consists of the link text in square brackets, followed by the URL in parentheses. (Optionally, the URL can be followed by a link title, in quotes.)
This is an [inline link](/url), and here's [one with a title](http://fsf.org "click here for a good time!").
There can be no space between the bracketed part and the parenthesized part. The link text can contain formatting (such as emphasis), but the title cannot.
Email addresses in inline links are not autodetected, so they have to be prefixed with mailto:
[Write me!](mailto:sam@green.eggs.ham)
An explicit reference link has two parts, the link itself and the link definition, which may occur elsewhere in the document (either before or after the link).
The link consists of link text in square brackets, followed by a label in square brackets. (There cannot be space between the two unless the spaced_reference_links extension is enabled.) The link definition consists of the bracketed label, followed by a colon and a space, followed by the URL, and optionally (after a space) a link title either in quotes or in parentheses. The label must not be parseable as a citation (assuming the citations extension is enabled): citations take precedence over link labels.
Here are some examples:
[my label 1]: /foo/bar.html "My title, optional" [my label 2]: /foo [my label 3]: http://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]: http://fsf.org "The free software foundation"
Note that link labels are not case sensitive. So, this will work:
Here is [my link][FOO] [Foo]: /bar/baz
In an implicit reference link, the second pair of brackets is empty:
See [my website][]. [my website]: http://foo.bar.baz
Note: In Markdown.pl and most other Markdown implementations, reference link definitions cannot occur in nested constructions such as list items or block quotes. Pandoc lifts this arbitrary seeming restriction. So the following is fine in pandoc, though not in most other implementations:
> My block [quote]. > > [quote]: /foo
In a shortcut reference link, the second pair of brackets may be omitted entirely:
See [my website]. [my website]: http://foo.bar.baz
To link to another section of the same document, use the automatically generated identifier (see Header identifiers). For example:
See the [Introduction](#introduction).
or
See the [Introduction]. [Introduction]: #introduction
Internal links are currently supported for HTML formats (including HTML slide shows and EPUB), LaTeX, and ConTeXt.
A link immediately preceded by a ! will be treated as an image. The link text will be used as the image's alt text:
 ![movie reel] [movie reel]: movie.gif
An image with nonempty alt text, occurring by itself in a paragraph, will be rendered as a figure with a caption. The image's alt text will be used as the caption.
How this is rendered depends on the output format. Some output formats (e.g. RTF) do not yet support figures. In those formats, you'll just get an image in a paragraph by itself, with no caption.
If you just want a regular inline image, just make sure it is not the only thing in the paragraph. One way to do this is to insert a nonbreaking space after the image:
\
Note that in reveal.js slide shows, an image in a paragraph by itself that has the stretch class will fill the screen, and the caption and figure tags will be omitted.
Attributes can be set on links and images:
An inline {#id .class width=30 height=20px}
and a reference ![image][ref] with attributes.
[ref]: foo.jpg "optional title" {#id .class key=val key2="val 2"}
(This syntax is compatible with PHP Markdown Extra when only #id and .class are used.)
For HTML and EPUB, all attributes except width and height (but including srcset and sizes) are passed through as is. The other writers ignore attributes that are not supported by their output format.
The width and height attributes on images are treated specially. When used without a unit, the unit is assumed to be pixels. However, any of the following unit identifiers can be used: px, cm, mm, in, inch and %. There must not be any spaces between the number and the unit. For example:
{ width=50% }
Using the native_divs and native_spans extensions (see above), HTML syntax can be used as part of markdown to create native Div and Span elements in the pandoc AST (as opposed to raw HTML). However, there is also nicer syntax available:
Allow special fenced syntax for native Div blocks. A Div starts with a fence containing at least three consecutive colons plus some attributes. The attributes may optionally be followed by another string of consecutive colons. The attribute syntax is exactly as in fenced code blocks (see Extension: fenced_code_attributes). As with fenced code blocks, one can use either attributes in curly braces or a single unbraced word, which will be treated as a class name. The Div ends with another line containing a string of at least three consecutive colons. The fenced Div should be separated by blank lines from preceding and following blocks.
Example:
::::: {#special .sidebar}
Here is a paragraph.
And another.
:::::
Fenced divs can be nested. Opening fences are distinguished because they must have attributes:
::: Warning :::::: This is a warning. ::: Danger This is a warning within a warning. ::: ::::::::::::::::::
Fences without attributes are always closing fences. Unlike with fenced code blocks, the number of colons in the closing fence need not match the number in the opening fence. However, it can be helpful for visual clarity to use fences of different lengths to distinguish nested divs from their parents.
A bracketed sequence of inlines, as one would use to begin a link, will be treated as a Span with attributes if it is followed immediately by attributes:
[This is *some text*]{.class key="val"}
Pandoc's Markdown allows footnotes, using the following syntax:
Here is a footnote reference,[^1] and another.[^longnote]
[^1]: Here is the footnote.
[^longnote]: Here's one with multiple blocks.
Subsequent paragraphs are indented to show that they
belong to the previous footnote.
{ some.code }
The whole paragraph can be indented, or just the first
line. In this way, multi-paragraph footnotes work like
multi-paragraph list items.
This paragraph won't be part of the note, because it
isn't indented.
The identifiers in footnote references may not contain spaces, tabs, or newlines. These identifiers are used only to correlate the footnote reference with the note itself; in the output, footnotes will be numbered sequentially.
The footnotes themselves need not be placed at the end of the document. They may appear anywhere except inside other block elements (lists, block quotes, tables, etc.). Each footnote should be separated from surrounding content (including other footnotes) by blank lines.
Inline footnotes are also allowed (though, unlike regular notes, they cannot contain multiple paragraphs). The syntax is as follows:
Here is an inline note.^[Inlines notes are easier to write, since you don't have to pick an identifier and move down to type the note.]
Inline and regular footnotes may be mixed freely.
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 metadata 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:
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 bibliography, you can include the citation data directly in the references field of the document's YAML metadata. The field should contain an array of YAML-encoded references, for example:
---
references:
- type: article-journal
id: WatsonCrick1953
author:
- family: Watson
given: J. D.
- family: Crick
given: F. H. C.
issued:
date-parts:
- - 1953
- 4
- 25
title: 'Molecular structure of nucleic acids: a structure for deoxyribose
nucleic acid'
title-short: Molecular structure of nucleic acids
container-title: Nature
volume: 171
issue: 4356
page: 737-738
DOI: 10.1038/171737a0
URL: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v171/n4356/abs/171737a0.html
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, listed 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, composed 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.
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 at the end of the document. Normally, you will want to end your document with an appropriate header:
last paragraph...
# References
The bibliography will be inserted after this header. Note that the unnumbered class will be added to this header, so that the section will not be numbered.
If you want to include items in the bibliography without actually citing them in the body text, you can define a dummy nocite metadata field and put the citations there:
---
nocite: |
@item1, @item2
...
@item3
In this example, the document will contain a citation for item3 only, but the bibliography will contain entries for item1, item2, and item3.
It is possible to create a bibliography with all the citations, whether or not they appear in the document, by using a wildcard:
---
nocite: |
@*
...
For LaTeX or PDF output, you can also use natbib or biblatex to render bibliography. In order to do so, specify bibliography files as outlined above, and add --natbib or --biblatex argument to pandoc invocation. Bear in mind that bibliography files have to be in respective format (either BibTeX or BibLaTeX).
For more information, see the pandoc-citeproc man page.
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.
Selects the pandoc <= 1.8.2.1 behavior for parsing smart dashes: - before a numeral is an en-dash, and -- is an em-dash. This option only has an effect if smart is enabled. It is selected automatically for textile input.
Allow < and > to be backslash-escaped, as they can be in GitHub flavored Markdown but not original Markdown. This is implied by pandoc's default all_symbols_escapable.
Allow a list to occur right after a paragraph, with no intervening blank space.
Selects the pandoc <= 2.0 behavior for parsing lists, so that four spaces indent are needed for list item continuation paragraphs.
Allow whitespace between the two components of a reference link, for example,
[foo] [bar].
Causes all newlines within a paragraph to be interpreted as hard line breaks instead of spaces.
Causes newlines within a paragraph to be ignored, rather than being treated as spaces or as hard line breaks. This option is intended for use with East Asian languages where spaces are not used between words, but text is divided into lines for readability.
Causes newlines within a paragraph to be ignored, rather than being treated as spaces or as hard line breaks, when they occur between two East Asian wide characters. This is a better choice than ignore_line_breaks for texts that include a mix of East Asian wide characters and other characters.
Parses textual emojis like :smile: as Unicode emoticons.
Causes anything between \( and \) to be interpreted as inline TeX math, and anything between \[ and \] to be interpreted as display TeX math. Note: a drawback of this extension is that it precludes escaping ( and [.
Causes anything between \\( and \\) to be interpreted as inline TeX math, and anything between \\[ and \\] to be interpreted as display TeX math.
By default, pandoc interprets material inside block-level tags as Markdown. This extension changes the behavior so that Markdown is only parsed inside block-level tags if the tags have the attribute markdown=1.
Enables a MultiMarkdown style title block at the top of the document, for example:
Title: My title
Author: John Doe
Date: September 1, 2008
Comment: This is a sample mmd title block, with
a field spanning multiple lines.
See the MultiMarkdown documentation for details. If pandoc_title_block or yaml_metadata_block is enabled, it will take precedence over mmd_title_block.
Parses PHP Markdown Extra abbreviation keys, like
*[HTML]: Hypertext Markup Language
Note that the pandoc document model does not support abbreviations, so if this extension is enabled, abbreviation keys are simply skipped (as opposed to being parsed as paragraphs).
Makes all absolute URIs into links, even when not surrounded by pointy braces <...>.
Parses multimarkdown style key-value attributes on link and image references. This extension should not be confused with the link_attributes extension.
This is a reference ![image][ref] with multimarkdown attributes.
[ref]: http://path.to/image "Image title" width=20px height=30px
id=myId class="myClass1 myClass2"
Parses multimarkdown style header identifiers (in square brackets, after the header but before any trailing #s in an ATX header).
Activates the definition list syntax of pandoc 1.12.x and earlier. This syntax differs from the one described above under Definition lists in several respects:
In addition to pandoc's extended Markdown, the following Markdown variants are supported:
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 and raw_tex) will work. The extensions can, however, all be individually disabled. Also, raw_tex only affects gfm output, not input.
You can use pandoc to produce an HTML + JavaScript slide presentation that can be viewed via a web browser. There are five ways to do this, using S5, DZSlides, Slidy, Slideous, or reveal.js. You can also produce a PDF slide show using LaTeX beamer, or slides shows in Microsoft PowerPoint format.
Here's the Markdown source for a simple slide show, habits.txt:
% Habits
% John Doe
% March 22, 2005
# In the morning
## Getting up
- Turn off alarm
- Get out of bed
## Breakfast
- Eat eggs
- Drink coffee
# In the evening
## Dinner
- Eat spaghetti
- Drink wine
------------------
## Going to sleep
- Get in bed
- Count sheep
To produce an HTML/JavaScript slide show, simply type
pandoc -t FORMAT -s habits.txt -o habits.html
where FORMAT is either s5, slidy, slideous, dzslides, or revealjs.
For Slidy, Slideous, reveal.js, and S5, the file produced by pandoc with the -s/--standalone option embeds a link to JavaScript and CSS files, which are assumed to be available at the relative path s5/default (for S5), slideous (for Slideous), reveal.js (for reveal.js), or at the Slidy website at w3.org (for Slidy). (These paths can be changed by setting the slidy-url, slideous-url, revealjs-url, or s5-url variables; see Variables for slides, above.) For DZSlides, the (relatively short) JavaScript and CSS are included in the file by default.
With all HTML slide formats, the --self-contained option can be used to produce a single file that contains all of the data necessary to display the slide show, including linked scripts, stylesheets, images, and videos.
To produce a PDF slide show using beamer, type
pandoc -t beamer habits.txt -o habits.pdf
Note that a reveal.js slide show can also be converted to a PDF by printing it to a file from the browser.
To produce a Powerpoint slide show, type
pandoc habits.txt -o habits.pptx
By default, the slide level is the highest header level in the hierarchy that is followed immediately by content, and not another header, somewhere in the document. In the example above, level 1 headers are always followed by level 2 headers, which are followed by content, so 2 is the slide level. This default can be overridden using the --slide-level option.
The document is carved up into slides according to the following rules:
These rules are designed to support many different styles of slide show. If you don't care about structuring your slides into sections and subsections, you can just use level 1 headers 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 level 1 headers building horizontally and level 2 headers building vertically. It is not recommended that you use deeper nesting of section levels with reveal.js.
By default, these writers produce lists that display "all at once." If you want your lists to display incrementally (one item at a time), use the -i option. If you want a particular list to depart from the default, put it in a div block with class incremental or nonincremental. So, for example, using the fenced div syntax, the following would be incremental regardless of the document default:
::: incremental - Eat spaghetti - Drink wine :::
or
::: nonincremental - Eat spaghetti - Drink wine :::
While using incremental and nonincremental divs are the recommended method of setting incremental lists on a per-case basis, an older method is also supported: putting lists inside a blockquote will depart from the document default (that is, it will display incrementally without the -i option and all at once with the -i option):
> - Eat spaghetti > - Drink wine
Both methods allow incremental and nonincremental lists to be mixed in a single document.
You can add "pauses" within a slide by including a paragraph containing three dots, separated by spaces:
# Slide with a pause content before the pause . . . content after the pause
You can change the style of HTML slides by putting customized CSS files in $DATADIR/s5/default (for S5), $DATADIR/slidy (for Slidy), or $DATADIR/slideous (for Slideous), where $DATADIR is the user data directory (see --data-dir, above). The originals may be found in pandoc's system data directory (generally $CABALDIR/pandoc-VERSION/s5/default). Pandoc will look there for any files it does not find in the user data directory.
For dzslides, the CSS is included in the HTML file itself, and may be modified there.
All reveal.js configuration options can be set through variables. For example, themes can be used by setting the theme variable:
-V theme=moon
Or you can specify a custom stylesheet using the --css option.
To style beamer slides, you can specify a theme, colortheme, fonttheme, innertheme, and outertheme, using the -V option:
pandoc -t beamer habits.txt -V theme:Warsaw -o habits.pdf
Note that header attributes will turn into slide attributes (on a <div> or <section>) in HTML slide formats, allowing you to style individual slides. In beamer, the only header attribute that affects slides is the allowframebreaks class, which sets the allowframebreaks option, causing multiple slides to be created if the content overfills the frame. This is recommended especially for bibliographies:
# References {.allowframebreaks}
Speaker notes are supported in reveal.js and PowerPoint (pptx) output. You can add notes to your Markdown document thus:
::: notes This is my note. - It can contain Markdown - like this list :::
To show the notes window in reveal.js, press s while viewing the presentation. Speaker notes in PowerPoint will be available, as usual, in handouts and presenter view.
Notes are not yet supported for other slide formats, but the notes will not appear on the slides themselves.
To put material in side by side columns, you can use a native div container with class columns, containing two or more div containers with class column and a width attribute:
:::::::::::::: {.columns}
::: {.column width="40%"}
contents...
:::
::: {.column width="60%"}
contents...
:::
::::::::::::::
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 header 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.
Background images can be added to self-contained reveal.js slideshows.
For the same image on every slide, use the reveal.js configuration option parallaxBackgroundImage either in the YAML metadata block or as a command-line variable. You can also set parallaxBackgroundHorizontal and parallaxBackgroundVertical the same way and must also set parallaxBackgroundSize to have your values take effect.
To set an image for a particular slide, add {data-background-image="/path/to/image"} to the first slide-level header 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 background settings also work on individual slides, including data-background-size, data-background-repeat, data-background-color, data-transition, and data-transition-speed.
See the reveal.js documentation for more details.
For example:
---
title: My Slideshow
parallaxBackgroundImage: /path/to/my/background_image.png
---
## 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 header has no content.
EPUB metadata may be specified using the --epub-metadata option, but if the source document is Markdown, it is better to use a YAML metadata block. 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:
By default, pandoc will download linked media (including audio and video) 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="http://example.com/music/toccata.mp3" data-external="1" type="audio/mpeg"> </source> </audio>
Pandoc will automatically highlight syntax in fenced code blocks that are marked with a language name. The Haskell library skylighting is used for highlighting, which works in HTML, Docx, Ms, and LaTeX/PDF output. To see a list of language names that pandoc will recognize, type pandoc --list-highlight-languages.
The color scheme can be selected using the --highlight-style option. The default color scheme is pygments, which imitates the default color scheme used by the Python library pygments (though pygments is not actually used to do the highlighting). To see a list of highlight styles, type pandoc --list-highlight-styles.
To disable highlighting, use the --no-highlight option.
The docx reader, by default, only reads those styles that it can convert into pandoc elements, either by direct conversion or interpreting the derivation of the input document's styles.
By enabling the styles extension in the docx reader (-f docx+styles), you can produce output that maintains the styles of the input document, using the custom-style class. Paragraph styles are interpreted as divs, while character styles are interpreted as spans.
For example, using the custom-style-reference.docx file in the test directory, we have the following different outputs:
Without the +styles extension:
$ pandoc test/docx/custom-style-reference.docx -f docx -t markdown This is some text. This is text with an *emphasized* text style. And this is text with a **strengthened** text style. > Here is a styled paragraph that inherits from Block Text.
And with the extension:
$ pandoc test/docx/custom-style-reference.docx -f docx+styles -t markdown
::: {custom-style="FirstParagraph"}
This is some text.
:::
::: {custom-style="BodyText"}
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="MyBlockStyle"}
> 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.
By default, pandoc's docx output applies a predefined set of styles for blocks such as paragraphs and block quotes, and uses largely default formatting (italics, bold) for inlines. This will work for most purposes, especially alongside a reference.docx file. However, if you need to apply your own styles to blocks, or match a preexisting set of styles, pandoc allows you to define custom styles for blocks and text using divs and spans, respectively.
If you define a div or span with the attribute custom-style, pandoc will apply your specified style to the contained elements. 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.
If the styles are not yet in your reference.docx, they will be defined in the output file as inheriting from normal text. If they are already defined, pandoc will not alter the definition.
This feature allows for greatest customization in conjunction with pandoc filters. If you want all paragraphs after block quotes to be indented, you can write a filter to apply the styles necessary. If you want all italics to be transformed to the Emphasis character style (perhaps to change their color), you can write a filter which will transform all italicized inlines to inlines within an Emphasis custom-style span.
Pandoc can be extended with custom writers written in lua. (Pandoc includes a lua interpreter, so lua need not be installed separately.)
To use a custom writer, simply specify the path to the lua script in place of the output format. For example:
pandoc -t data/sample.lua
Creating a custom writer requires writing a lua function for each possible element in a pandoc document. To get a documented example which you can modify according to your needs, do
pandoc --print-default-data-file sample.lua
Copyright 2006-2017 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>.
| May 10, 2018 | pandoc 2.2.1 |