13 ms·

Pandoc

1016 points by otp124 8y ago

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
phalangion 8y ago
I love pandoc. I've been using it intermittently for years to turn my Markdown and org-mode documents into other formats. Just wish it would take Asciidoc as an input format.
- adzm 8y ago
  There is useful discussion on the issue regarding Asciidoc https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/1456 https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/1456
- copperx 8y ago
  Asciidoctor and the other asciidoc tools do the job that I use pandoc for: tables, custom numbering, all the other markdown extensions that one needs to be able to create a highly structured document. With Asciidoc, you don't need md extensions. It's all in there.
  - phalangion 8y ago
    Ya, I've been using Asciidoctor and Asciidoctor-pdf for long time. Those are some awesome tools, too.
- mmsimanga 8y ago
  I mainly use Asciidoc for two reasons. 1) Ability to include external code snippets. This is not possible in pandoc without installing the pandoc-iclude-code filter which doesn't have Windows binaries. I am on Windows. 2) Tables. Asciidoc has powerful support for tables. You can create tables that include rowspan and colspan among other features. You can even specify an external CSV file as a table. I tried creating a workflow from Asciidoc through Pandoc to MS Word but that didn't work so well. Tables being the biggest issue.
jph 8y ago
Pandoc is great software for converting among file formats, such as text, markdown, HTML, PDF, etc. Example: pandoc in.md -o out.html -V pagetitle="My Title" --to=html5 --template="my.html" --css "my.css" The example converts a markdown file to HTML, using a given title, a template file, and a stylesheet file. The pipeline is also well implemented with Haskell, which is good for writing your own fast functional transformations.
err4nt 8y ago
I use Pandoc to convert directories of Markdown files into static HTML websites. Here's the build command for responsive.style[1]: pandoc $file -f markdown -t html5 -H templates/header-prod.html -B templates/nav.html -A templates/footer-prod.html -o (echo "../$file" | sed '$s/\.md$/.html/') -s --data-dir=./ --highlight-style breezedark --variable=file:(echo "$file" | sed '$s/\.md$/.html/') Works beautifully! 1: https://github.com/tomhodgins/responsive.style/blob/master/src/build-prod.sh https://github.com/tomhodgins/responsive.style/blob/master/s...
- ArlenBales 8y ago
  I know Blot.im as one static site generator that uses it: https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot/blob/master/app/models/entry/build/file/markdown/convert.js https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot/blob/master/app/models...
  - privong 8y ago
    Hakyll is another: https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/ https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/
- uvtc 8y ago
  Nice. I wrote up a tool as well, with navigation and prev/next links: http://www.unexpected-vortices.com/sw/rippledoc/index.html http://www.unexpected-vortices.com/sw/rippledoc/index.html
tambourine_man 8y ago
One nice trick that I use all the time is to convert html to md and back again in order to clean it. Anyway, pandoc is great.
- gitgud 8y ago
  Would that be a good way to sanitise user input? Like removing script tags etc...
  - majewsky 8y ago
    Only if you trust Pandoc enough to expose it to unsanitised user input.
  - tambourine_man 8y ago
    It’s usually not a good idea to “get creative” when it comes to security
hatmatrix 8y ago
Even though org-mode has its own exporters, Pandoc is great for the extra bibtex integration.
Numberwang 8y ago
I wish they’d fix the md to adoc table conversion issues. Apart from that I love it.
- kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
  The core problem with Pandoc is that the internal document representation is limited to its particular flavor of Markdown. Any feature PD-MD doesn't support is ignored or loses semantics. You can see this in the poor ReST support (try converting captioned figures). It would be useful to rearchitect it with a Docbook-style semantics internally since they are more comprehensive than Markdown.
bkyan 8y ago
Is there an equivalent of this for spreadsheets?
- scentoni 8y ago
  The closest thing I'm aware of is the spreadsheet functionality in Emacs org-mode: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro... https://orgmode.org/manual/The-spreadsheet.html https://orgmode.org/manual/The-spreadsheet.html
  - bkyan 8y ago
    Sorry, I'm a little confused... How would I use org mode to convert between different spreadsheet formats?
shakna 8y ago
What don't I use it for? + Static websites from any input to html + Markdown & TeX & References to pdf for academia + Generating manpages for new tools + Generating ebooks ... Let's just say I get a bit lost when it isn't available.
- geraldcombs 8y ago
  > + Generating manpages for new tools Do any of your tools use long options (prefixed with a double dash)? If so, make sure you disable the "smart" extension, otherwise you might end up with en dashes.
  - copperx 8y ago
    OP said he doesn't use pandoc for such things. It's a list of things that have better tooling.
    - icegreentea2 8y ago
      Maybe he edited his post, but it now ends with "... Let's just say I get a bit lost when it isn't available. " suggesting that he actually does use pandoc for stated tasks.
    - shakna 8y ago
      I'm sorry if it came across that way. The list is what I use pandoc for. I use it for a lot, so much that I think I use it for every project.
      - kaushalmodi 8y ago
        I found it confusing too. You were supposed to use interrobangs (‽) instead of "?" :)
        shakna 8y ago
        Would that not only be applicative if I were making an exclamation? Whilst instead, I was making a statement.
koolba 8y ago
My favorite pandoc hack is using it to convert word docs into markdown which can then be diffed similar to source code. Works great for legal redlining.
- flatline 8y ago
  Do Word’s native diff features not work for you?
  - copperx 8y ago
    Diff works great in Word.
    - unsignedint 8y ago
      Another option I recommend comparing two Word docs (and just about anything) is Beyond Compare.[0] It's the software you would have to buy, but if you have to compare files a lot I would highly recommend it. (Runs on multiple platforms, too.) [0]: https://www.scootersoftware.com https://www.scootersoftware.com
      - TuringTest 8y ago
        WinMerge does the same, and it's open source. It's only for Windows, though. http://winmerge.org/ http://winmerge.org/
        unsignedint 8y ago
        Yeah, WinMerge a nice tool, too. Aside from multi platform, BC has things like CSV compare and marking unimportant changes are fairly robust. I do personally prefer open source myself, but BC is certainly one of the few that I didn't mind paying for.
  - lucb1e 8y ago
    Can you diff two Word docs with Word? Afaik you can only hit the "track changes" button, which doesn't help if you got a new version of a document from someone else.
adzm 8y ago
Pandoc is also a great educational Haskell project for those looking into how it all works.
GlenTheMachine 8y ago
As a guy attempting to transition from macOS to Linux: Pages to anything else, please.
- jagger27 8y ago
  A quick Google suggests that the most straightforward way is to run an Automator script to convert everything to PDF using Pages itself.
  - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
    Yeah. But then you can't edit it. Converting it to opendoc or something would be more useful.
- mark_l_watson 8y ago
  Pages will export to Word format, then use pandoc to generate markdown files. (Just one idea)
  - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
    But then I have to keep a Mac around, just to convert documents. Not ideal.
    - fyfy18 8y ago
      You can do this via iCloud too (through the browser).
      - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
        Yeah, I know about that. I'm a government employee. Cloud services are mostly off limits to me.
- _emacsomancer_ 8y ago
  Maybe this ( http://tyorex.com/iWorkConverter/ http://tyorex.com/iWorkConverter/ ) and then a batch doc->odt converter? (Though for the sake of sanity, I recommend avoid word processors where possible.)
Schiphol 8y ago
I do all of my academic writing in pandoc. As compared to LaTeX this means no boilerplate (yet you can still use full LaTeX syntax for equations and the like) and, if the publisher 'needs' a Word file, you are one click away from providing it. All with plain text files that you can put under version control, get meaningful diffs, etc. It's just great.
- dr_coffee 8y ago
  What's your workflow for inserting and managing references
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - tekknolagi 8y ago
    Not OP, but I used `+citations` and `pandoc-citeproc` along with a bibtex file that I managed by hand for https://bernsteinbear.com/dat-paper/ https://bernsteinbear.com/dat-paper/ (a small senior project paper). It worked pretty well for me.
  - ryanmarsh 8y ago
    I use pandoc-crossref.
  - meanmrmustard92 8y ago
    Add bibliography=path/to/library.bib (and optionally specify a csl for bibliography formatting; I like econometrica) in frontmatter yaml. Insert citations with @bibcitekey. compile with --pandoc-citeproc filter.
  - sevensor 8y ago
    It was a couple of years ago that I wrote my dissertation using Pandoc, so things may have changed. At the time, I started out using pandoc-citeproc with my BibTeX database, but eventually I needed more control over formatting and I switched to writing \cite everywhere. Even with hundreds of references, it only took an afternoon, so I'm happy I did it the way I did. My approach with Pandoc is to use it until you have to invest LaTeX-level effort into making it do what you want. At that point, swapping in LaTeX is rarely painful. Often you can get away with editing Pandoc's generated LaTeX and pasting it back in to your source.
jaggederest 8y ago
Also, interesting point of trivia, the maintainer, John MacFarlane is a professor of logical philosophy at UC Berkeley.
basementcat 8y ago
Maybe I used an older version but my attempts to use pandoc usually resulted in the document being butchered because the internal representation was not as expressive as the source or target formats.
- deleted 8y ago
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disqard 8y ago
I like pandoc. I've been using Typora [1] for all of my writing, and it's decent, but a little slow. What editor do HN folks use? I wonder if there's a leaner editor out there with an equally nice distraction-free editing interface. Thanks in advance! [1] https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/
- heliostatic 8y ago
  I've been really enjoying the Caret beta -- https://caret.io/ https://caret.io/ Not free, but a real pleasure to use.
  - applecrazy 8y ago
    I tried Caret and loved it but had to uninstall because of the huge font size on equation renders in a math-heavy document. Is there a way to fix that? I tried to look but they don't have much documentation yet.
- canhascodez 8y ago
  Asking what editor HN uses is a pretty loaded question, but it looks like there's a couple neo/vim plugins for live markdown preview. This one[0] says it can use pandoc as a backend. I'm pretty sure that emacs offers something similar, and org-mode may be worth consideration all on its own. I hear spacemacs and spaceneovim are nice. [0] https://github.com/euclio/vim-markdown-composer
- arminiusreturns 8y ago
  Emacs and emacs ord mode, and then you can export to html5 latex/pdf, etc. My notes, calendar, todo, data science workbooks, etc all live in emacs org mode. Especially love the ability to call programs on the fly in my data science workbooks, so I can call R, Julia, python, and bash all in one place.
scentoni 8y ago
If you don't want to install Haskell and other dependencies, several folks have developed Docker images for using pandoc: https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~ivo/_posts/2015-03-12-repeatable-paper-generation-with-docker-and-pandoc.html https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~ivo/_posts/2015-03-12-repeatable... http://gbraad.nl/blog/document-generation-using-markdown-and-pandoc.html http://gbraad.nl/blog/document-generation-using-markdown-and... https://github.com/jagregory/pandoc-docker https://github.com/jagregory/pandoc-docker
- chipotle_coyote 8y ago
  You could also just download one of the packages from the "Installing" page on the Pandoc web site, which has prebuilt binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Installing a whole Docker image to do this seems like it might be overkill for a lot of uses.
- uvtc 8y ago
  You'd only need to install Haskell if you wanted to build Pandoc. Pandoc the executable is a binary. I install it on Debian via: `apt install pandoc`.
  - mb2100 8y ago
    although the version in the default repo is usually quite old. You can grab a binary from https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/latest https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/latest
    - mkesper 8y ago
      Bonus hint: If you somehow aren't able to upgrade the binary (enterprise...), using an up to date template helps a lot (at least for LaTeX).
flukus 8y ago
Pandoc (or latex) + make + iNotifyWait work really well together for WYSIWYG like editing too: watch: $(ALL) while true; do \ clear; \ make $(WATCH); \ inotifywait -qr -e close_write .; \ done "make watch WATCH=build" will now compile documents on every save. Works well for single documents, collections of documents or entire websites.
- tetov 8y ago
  I've been using a JS script[1] to watch directories, but this seems neater. Would you mind sharing the whole makefile? [1] https://gist.github.com/timpulver/0d01285952b97deb70df6104cc316a4b https://gist.github.com/timpulver/0d01285952b97deb70df6104cc...
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
ryanianian 8y ago
I sometimes use pandoc to clean up my markdown-formatted documents, especially given its abilities to "wrap" text and add indentation-style whitespace that makes plain-text documents look nearly suitable for publishing as-is (almost kinda like RFC docs but without header/footer cruft). There are a few things (in latest version, 2.2.3.2) that don't really survive round-trip from markdown back to markdown: - reference-style links (e.g. `[foo][f]`). They are converted to inline links e.g. `[foo](http://...)` http://...)`. - setext vs hashmark headers. `foo\n=====` will get converted to `# foo`. - markdown allows for forced-linebreak <br>s to be added with two trailing blank spaces at the end of a line. Pandoc escapes these with a trailing `\` at the end of the line. These are only occasional nuisances, but overall the documents (at least in my experience) are not butchered. I also occasionally go from markdown to docx for the purposes of uploading to google-docs and copy/pasting large sections into other docs. This is the only markdown-to-google-docs workflow I've found that works to preserve formatting. It's never really butchered anything, except a few times the syntax-highlighting for code-blocks gets confused and keywords get the wrong colors.
- confounded 8y ago
  IIRC, there are CLI flags for your first two points. I think the latter is something like —atx-headers. You can choose whether reference links go at the end of the paragraph or the document.
nambit 8y ago
I have used pandoc with uikit to autoconvert my markdown pages to html. Works like a charm.
caconym_ 8y ago
I write fiction as a hobby, I do it in markdown and use Pandoc to turn it into epub files with a custom CSS. It works great. Thanks Pandoc!
- clebio 8y ago
  Is the CSS derived from the markdown, or you supplement MD to HTML with custom CSS? Definitely curious to know!
  - caconym_ 8y ago
    Custom CSS. Nothing fancy, I haven't really explored what's possible with epub.
  - flocial 8y ago
    I used a similar workflow. The CSS is for the EPUB and maps to the html elements supported. But if you get too fancy cross device support could get hairy. See: https://github.com/FriendsOfEpub/Blitz https://github.com/FriendsOfEpub/Blitz
fastier 8y ago
Where is .djvu?
- vortico 8y ago
  I believe the best you could do is extract the raw OCR'd text from the document (with some other tool). No formatting or text hierarchy is preserved in the OCR process, only the physical locations and size of the text on the page. From text, you can convert to Markdown or whatever and then manually edit to give the OCR text some structure.
- gwern 8y ago
  Do you need an option for that? You can convert to PDF and then `pdf2djvu` it.
eevilspock 8y ago
Pandoc's creator, John MacFarlane, is also the lead guy on CommonMark[1]. There are a small number of corner cases that need to be spec'd out before CommonMark can declare a v1.0 release[2]. If you have the skills for this kind of thing, please weigh in! [1] https://commonmark.org https://commonmark.org [2] https://talk.commonmark.org/t/issues-we-must-resolve-before-1-0-release-8-remaining/1287?u=vas https://talk.commonmark.org/t/issues-we-must-resolve-before-...
- pmlnr 8y ago
  Please, please involve definition lists. They are useful. They were present on the first webpage[1]. [1]: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html
rllin 8y ago
frustratingly slow for word docs. antiword is better for those of you who wish to convert word docs en masse
euske 8y ago
I know it's well intended and somewhat successful, but I can't help but thinking of xkcd.com/927 Sorry, I couldn't resist.
- Lio 8y ago
  Although it does offer some useful extensions for Markdown, Pandoc doesn't attempt to establish new standards. It's a conversion tool for existing formats.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
myself248 8y ago
The one thing it can't do is give HN posts descriptive titles.
- wadkar 8y ago
  Thanks, this made me chuckle. Its comments like these which make HN a bit more colorful :-)
kccqzy 8y ago
Pandoc is great! I use pandoc for all kinds of formal writing (conversion to PDF via LaTeX). We also run pandoc in production to produce customer-facing PDFs.
mwcampbell 8y ago
It appears that Pandoc generates PDF documents via LaTeX. One problem with this is that, as far as I can tell, LaTeX can't generate tagged PDFs. This is an accessibility problem. Granted, for documents that are heavy on math and/or graphics, the point is probably moot. But many technical documents that are distributed as PDFs would benefit from being tagged. Luckily, LibreOffice can produce tagged PDFs. And unoconv is a convenient utility for doing this from the command line. So you can use pandoc to convert to a format that LibreOffice can consume, then issue a command like this: unoconv -f pdf -e UseTaggedPDF=true mydoc.odt I've tried it, and it works.
- mkesper 8y ago
  Pandoc can convert into ConTeXt which can produce PDF/A (tagging included) easily. Why this can't be done in one command like with xelatex, wkhtml2pdf and what else is supported, I don't know. Many programs can be used to create PDFs but the quality of output isn't always the same.
  - mb2100 8y ago
    > Why this can't be done in one command ConTeXt is supported as well: `pandoc input.md -t context -o output.pdf`
ashton314 8y ago
I wrote a little utility that uses Pandoc to read Markdown files like `man` pages in the terminal: https://github.com/ashton314/marked-man https://github.com/ashton314/marked-man It's just a one-liner: `pandoc -s -t man "$1" | groff -T utf8 -man | $PAGER` (That was basically stolen from an answer to one of my questions on Stack Overflow—thanks to those who answered! :)
- mixedmath 8y ago
  In a similar vein, I use pandoc to convert markdown pages to man pages, and write new/add notes to manpages. I think it's definitely easier than actually writing groff files.
  - beefhash 8y ago
    I find it easier to write man pages directly. Admittedly, I write mdoc (not the ancient "man" macros), which has been around only since the 80s. It's easier for me to remember the semantics ("Is this a flag/command/function?") than the correct traditional markup ("Should this be bold/italic/nothing?").
epynonymous 8y ago
i have been using catdoc and pdftotext to convert doc and pdf files, respectively. nice to see that there's an alternative that also includes a library, will be checking this out. a couple questions i have, seems firstly that old school .doc files are not supported, docx yes. unfortunately i still get a lot of docs in .doc format which seems to be microsoft's proprietary format (docx seems to be more open). my second question is whether or not there's a filter for golang, most of my development is in golang, so i either need to call your cli as a forked process or best to have a native library. i have never worked with haskell so not sure if i can import a haskell library from golang directly. i imagine there'd need to be a golang wrapper around the cli.
- mb2100 8y ago
  1. yes, only docx is supported. 2. for Go pandoc filters, this seems to work: https://github.com/oltolm/go-pandocfilters https://github.com/oltolm/go-pandocfilters
  - epynonymous 8y ago
    thanks, will check this out
- duckerude 8y ago
  You could use Libreoffice's command line interface to convert from .doc to a more manageable format. lowriter --convert-to odt some-document.doc odt is not the only supported target, but doc --libreoffice--> odt --pandoc--> plain seems to give better results than e.g. doc --libreoffice--> txt or doc --libreoffice--> docx --pandoc--> plain.
  - epynonymous 8y ago
    if that's the case, i'll stick with catdoc. my use case is to create a full text search index of the content, trading libre office cli for catdoc, i'd rather just stick with catdoc, but thanks.
rydel 8y ago
Really one of the best tool! Simple to use and makes things done.
voltagex_ 8y ago
The only problem I have with pandoc is I have to lug the entire GHC around with it.
- nh2 8y ago
  That is not the case. https://pandoc.org/installing.html https://pandoc.org/installing.html > We provide a binary package for amd64 architecture on the download page. This provides both pandoc and pandoc-citeproc. The executables are statically linked and have no dynamic dependencies or dependencies on external data files.
  - voltagex_ 8y ago
    Thanks! I wonder how it was built.
  - loudmax 8y ago
    There's an unofficial Arch package for it: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pandoc-bin/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pandoc-bin/ I wish I'd known about this sooner. I don't spend much time with text documents outside the web, but when I do, pandoc handles the disparate formats admirably. The only inconvenience is when I update my system, there's guaranteed to be a huge pile of Haskell libraries to download.
davnn 8y ago
You can use the Haskell-based static site generator Hakyll with Pandoc to create the best best blogging experience imho. An example of how easy this is and the styles I use for my personal blog: https://curious.observer https://curious.observer https://github.com/davnn/curiousobserver https://github.com/davnn/curiousobserver
ggambetta 8y ago
Another happy Pandoc user here :) I built a pipeline to convert a Markdown file to publishing-ready files for ebooks, Kindle and paperback for my novel; the whole thing is described here: http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html My website itself is static, generated from a bunch of Markdown files, some HTML templates, and a bit of postprocessing. But most of the work is done by Pandoc.
- odiroot 8y ago
  Hey. Can you give us some more context of your novel writing in Markdown? I'd be interested in your process.
  - ggambetta 8y ago
    Sure. The technical side of things is explained here: http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html (same link as above). If you're more interested in the creative aspect, I wrote a bit here: http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_swiss_trains.html http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_swiss_trains.html. If you're interested in anything not covered there, feel free to ask, I'll be happy to share :)
    - bravura 8y ago
      "Soon the structure underlying The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol was laying bare before my eyes. I could see why the stories worked. I had reverse-engineered Dan Brown." Could you talk a little more in depth about what Dan Brown's pattern/structure is?
      - ggambetta 8y ago
        I get that request a lot, so I'll have to write something about it :) All I can offer right now is my raw notes, which are in Spanish. This is a structural analysis of Angels and Demons, The da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol: https://imgur.com/bX6ByJA https://imgur.com/bX6ByJA This is an one-page treatment of the three books, with the "blanks" filled appropriately for each: https://imgur.com/LlDVUKn https://imgur.com/LlDVUKn I doubt any of this is groundbreaking. Story structure is a widely studied topic (and one that I find fascinating). But it seems like Dan Brown uses a very well defined, customised version of this, that makes for engaging, fast-paced books. I sort of proved (for myself, at least) that this works, by writing a novel whose structure was originally based on this pattern (although it later diverged a bit), and which causes the expected effect - a couple of readers have read it in a single sitting :)
another-cuppa 8y ago
I write any document that doesn't need extensive custom typesetting (which is 90% of stuff) in org-mode and then use pandoc to convert it to "normal people" formats at the end. I have made a basic template for MS Word that looks pretty good.
rotorblade 8y ago
I tried to use pandoc a while ago to convert the latex-sources of arxiv.org documents to epub, since those are often much more comfortable to read on small devices than pdfs. The problem I had was that latex was turned into images, but changing the font-size of the reader did not change the size of the images, making the text readable, but the maths barely readable. This is something I would love to see happen though.
- patkai 8y ago
  I've seen this problem on Kindle books with equations, is that a related problem?
- tjoff 8y ago
  Seems like an issue with the epub reader though?
- mb2100 8y ago
  > latex was turned into images You can add some CSS to the generated EPUB to change that. But if your EPub reader supports MathML, you can do that with pandoc. See http://pandoc.org/epub.html#math http://pandoc.org/epub.html#math
- fntlnz 8y ago
  Take a look at arxiv vanity https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/ https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/
patricklouys 8y ago
I used pandoc to format my book [0]. Not everything worked perfectly, I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out (especially the print version). It was a little work to set up the workflow with scripts etc, but being able to write the book in markdown and still having full control over the design was definitely worth it. [0] sample here: https://patricklouys.com/professional-php-sample.pdf https://patricklouys.com/professional-php-sample.pdf
subinsebastien 8y ago
Yet another pandoc user here. I built a blog engine using Pandoc as the core. Code available here : https://github.com/subinsebastien/kyll https://github.com/subinsebastien/kyll And the website built using the blog engine is available here : http://xtel.in/ http://xtel.in/
mb2100 8y ago
Occasional pandoc contributor here, AMA :-) Just a few links: - Where everything is documented: http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html - If you have questions or suggestions: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pandoc-discuss https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pandoc-discuss - Contributing to pandoc is also a great way to get your feet wet with Haskell. In my experience, very supportive community. See http://pandoc.org/CONTRIBUTING.html http://pandoc.org/CONTRIBUTING.html and for good first issues: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22 https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+... Finally, a great feature, that hasn't been mentioned here, is pandoc filters. Basically, pandoc provides a way for scripts (in any programming language) to hook into the transformation pipeline and modify the document AST (similar to the HTML DOM) in-between the reading and writing steps. See http://pandoc.org/filters.html http://pandoc.org/filters.html
- paule89 8y ago
  everytime I see a project using google groups, i think it is already dead. Gladly yours seems to be used quite often. At least you can search it even years later, compared to an irc or slack channel.
  - benhoyt 8y ago
    Heh, not quite. Go (the programming language) uses Google Groups (golang-nuts and golang-dev), and it's very alive.
  - mb2100 8y ago
    Aren't mailing lists even older than IRC? Anyway, whatever works, right?
  - neves 8y ago
    IRC channels and mailing list are excellent for informal questioning about a project. You can search for guidance, see if a feature would be well received, and receive a green light before starting to implement something. Other day I thought about contributing to Yarn, the Javascript package manager, but the only way that I found to communicate with the developers were issues in GitHub. Since I didn't know if the feature I wanted would be well received, I just quit.
boonasty69 8y ago
updated and secure.
bovermyer 8y ago
I love pandoc, but I'm very surprised that such an established tool has (at time of writing) 865 points and is #1 on HN. I guess it's not as well-known as I thought.
CodexArcanum 8y ago
I "love" how many comments are one person praising pandoc for helping them in some workflow, and then commenters ripping into them for not using some other tool. I wonder if there's a corollary to some internet rule that the more generally useful a tool is, the more detractors will push for other tools to be used? It would help explain why programming language discussions get so contentious. Pandoc is seriously a great tool! I love the way it's designed and have found it useful off and on over the years. Truly marvelous for making information available in any needed format.

1016 points by otp124 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

I love pandoc. I've been using it intermittently for years to turn my Markdown and org-mode documents into other formats. Just wish it would take Asciidoc as an input format.

adzm 8y ago
There is useful discussion on the issue regarding Asciidoc https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/1456 https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/1456
copperx 8y ago
Asciidoctor and the other asciidoc tools do the job that I use pandoc for: tables, custom numbering, all the other markdown extensions that one needs to be able to create a highly structured document. With Asciidoc, you don't need md extensions. It's all in there.
- phalangion 8y ago
  Ya, I've been using Asciidoctor and Asciidoctor-pdf for long time. Those are some awesome tools, too.
mmsimanga 8y ago
I mainly use Asciidoc for two reasons. 1) Ability to include external code snippets. This is not possible in pandoc without installing the pandoc-iclude-code filter which doesn't have Windows binaries. I am on Windows. 2) Tables. Asciidoc has powerful support for tables. You can create tables that include rowspan and colspan among other features. You can even specify an external CSV file as a table. I tried creating a workflow from Asciidoc through Pandoc to MS Word but that didn't work so well. Tables being the biggest issue.

jph 8y ago

Pandoc is great software for converting among file formats, such as text, markdown, HTML, PDF, etc. Example: pandoc in.md -o out.html -V pagetitle="My Title" --to=html5 --template="my.html" --css "my.css" The example converts a markdown file to HTML, using a given title, a template file, and a stylesheet file. The pipeline is also well implemented with Haskell, which is good for writing your own fast functional transformations.

err4nt 8y ago

I use Pandoc to convert directories of Markdown files into static HTML websites. Here's the build command for responsive.style[1]: pandoc $file -f markdown -t html5 -H templates/header-prod.html -B templates/nav.html -A templates/footer-prod.html -o (echo "../$file" | sed '$s/\.md$/.html/') -s --data-dir=./ --highlight-style breezedark --variable=file:(echo "$file" | sed '$s/\.md$/.html/') Works beautifully! 1: https://github.com/tomhodgins/responsive.style/blob/master/src/build-prod.sh https://github.com/tomhodgins/responsive.style/blob/master/s...

ArlenBales 8y ago
I know Blot.im as one static site generator that uses it: https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot/blob/master/app/models/entry/build/file/markdown/convert.js https://github.com/davidmerfield/Blot/blob/master/app/models...
- privong 8y ago
  Hakyll is another: https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/ https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/
uvtc 8y ago
Nice. I wrote up a tool as well, with navigation and prev/next links: http://www.unexpected-vortices.com/sw/rippledoc/index.html http://www.unexpected-vortices.com/sw/rippledoc/index.html

tambourine_man 8y ago

One nice trick that I use all the time is to convert html to md and back again in order to clean it. Anyway, pandoc is great.

gitgud 8y ago
Would that be a good way to sanitise user input? Like removing script tags etc...
- majewsky 8y ago
  Only if you trust Pandoc enough to expose it to unsanitised user input.
- tambourine_man 8y ago
  It’s usually not a good idea to “get creative” when it comes to security

hatmatrix 8y ago

Even though org-mode has its own exporters, Pandoc is great for the extra bibtex integration.

Numberwang 8y ago

I wish they’d fix the md to adoc table conversion issues. Apart from that I love it.

kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
The core problem with Pandoc is that the internal document representation is limited to its particular flavor of Markdown. Any feature PD-MD doesn't support is ignored or loses semantics. You can see this in the poor ReST support (try converting captioned figures). It would be useful to rearchitect it with a Docbook-style semantics internally since they are more comprehensive than Markdown.

bkyan 8y ago

Is there an equivalent of this for spreadsheets?

scentoni 8y ago
The closest thing I'm aware of is the spreadsheet functionality in Emacs org-mode: https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro.html https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro... https://orgmode.org/manual/The-spreadsheet.html https://orgmode.org/manual/The-spreadsheet.html
- bkyan 8y ago
  Sorry, I'm a little confused... How would I use org mode to convert between different spreadsheet formats?

shakna 8y ago

What don't I use it for? + Static websites from any input to html + Markdown & TeX & References to pdf for academia + Generating manpages for new tools + Generating ebooks ... Let's just say I get a bit lost when it isn't available.

geraldcombs 8y ago
> + Generating manpages for new tools Do any of your tools use long options (prefixed with a double dash)? If so, make sure you disable the "smart" extension, otherwise you might end up with en dashes.
- copperx 8y ago
  OP said he doesn't use pandoc for such things. It's a list of things that have better tooling.
  - icegreentea2 8y ago
    Maybe he edited his post, but it now ends with "... Let's just say I get a bit lost when it isn't available. " suggesting that he actually does use pandoc for stated tasks.
  - shakna 8y ago
    I'm sorry if it came across that way. The list is what I use pandoc for. I use it for a lot, so much that I think I use it for every project.
    - kaushalmodi 8y ago
      I found it confusing too. You were supposed to use interrobangs (‽) instead of "?" :)
      - shakna 8y ago
        Would that not only be applicative if I were making an exclamation? Whilst instead, I was making a statement.

koolba 8y ago

My favorite pandoc hack is using it to convert word docs into markdown which can then be diffed similar to source code. Works great for legal redlining.

flatline 8y ago
Do Word’s native diff features not work for you?
- copperx 8y ago
  Diff works great in Word.
  - unsignedint 8y ago
    Another option I recommend comparing two Word docs (and just about anything) is Beyond Compare.[0] It's the software you would have to buy, but if you have to compare files a lot I would highly recommend it. (Runs on multiple platforms, too.) [0]: https://www.scootersoftware.com https://www.scootersoftware.com
    - TuringTest 8y ago
      WinMerge does the same, and it's open source. It's only for Windows, though. http://winmerge.org/ http://winmerge.org/
      - unsignedint 8y ago
        Yeah, WinMerge a nice tool, too. Aside from multi platform, BC has things like CSV compare and marking unimportant changes are fairly robust. I do personally prefer open source myself, but BC is certainly one of the few that I didn't mind paying for.
- lucb1e 8y ago
  Can you diff two Word docs with Word? Afaik you can only hit the "track changes" button, which doesn't help if you got a new version of a document from someone else.

adzm 8y ago

Pandoc is also a great educational Haskell project for those looking into how it all works.

GlenTheMachine 8y ago

As a guy attempting to transition from macOS to Linux: Pages to anything else, please.

jagger27 8y ago
A quick Google suggests that the most straightforward way is to run an Automator script to convert everything to PDF using Pages itself.
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  Yeah. But then you can't edit it. Converting it to opendoc or something would be more useful.
mark_l_watson 8y ago
Pages will export to Word format, then use pandoc to generate markdown files. (Just one idea)
- GlenTheMachine 8y ago
  But then I have to keep a Mac around, just to convert documents. Not ideal.
  - fyfy18 8y ago
    You can do this via iCloud too (through the browser).
    - GlenTheMachine 8y ago
      Yeah, I know about that. I'm a government employee. Cloud services are mostly off limits to me.
_emacsomancer_ 8y ago
Maybe this ( http://tyorex.com/iWorkConverter/ http://tyorex.com/iWorkConverter/ ) and then a batch doc->odt converter? (Though for the sake of sanity, I recommend avoid word processors where possible.)

Schiphol 8y ago

I do all of my academic writing in pandoc. As compared to LaTeX this means no boilerplate (yet you can still use full LaTeX syntax for equations and the like) and, if the publisher 'needs' a Word file, you are one click away from providing it. All with plain text files that you can put under version control, get meaningful diffs, etc. It's just great.

dr_coffee 8y ago
What's your workflow for inserting and managing references
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- tekknolagi 8y ago
  Not OP, but I used `+citations` and `pandoc-citeproc` along with a bibtex file that I managed by hand for https://bernsteinbear.com/dat-paper/ https://bernsteinbear.com/dat-paper/ (a small senior project paper). It worked pretty well for me.
- ryanmarsh 8y ago
  I use pandoc-crossref.
- meanmrmustard92 8y ago
  Add bibliography=path/to/library.bib (and optionally specify a csl for bibliography formatting; I like econometrica) in frontmatter yaml. Insert citations with @bibcitekey. compile with --pandoc-citeproc filter.
- sevensor 8y ago
  It was a couple of years ago that I wrote my dissertation using Pandoc, so things may have changed. At the time, I started out using pandoc-citeproc with my BibTeX database, but eventually I needed more control over formatting and I switched to writing \cite everywhere. Even with hundreds of references, it only took an afternoon, so I'm happy I did it the way I did. My approach with Pandoc is to use it until you have to invest LaTeX-level effort into making it do what you want. At that point, swapping in LaTeX is rarely painful. Often you can get away with editing Pandoc's generated LaTeX and pasting it back in to your source.

jaggederest 8y ago

Also, interesting point of trivia, the maintainer, John MacFarlane is a professor of logical philosophy at UC Berkeley.

basementcat 8y ago

Maybe I used an older version but my attempts to use pandoc usually resulted in the document being butchered because the internal representation was not as expressive as the source or target formats.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

disqard 8y ago

I like pandoc. I've been using Typora [1] for all of my writing, and it's decent, but a little slow. What editor do HN folks use? I wonder if there's a leaner editor out there with an equally nice distraction-free editing interface. Thanks in advance! [1] https://typora.io/ https://typora.io/

heliostatic 8y ago
I've been really enjoying the Caret beta -- https://caret.io/ https://caret.io/ Not free, but a real pleasure to use.
- applecrazy 8y ago
  I tried Caret and loved it but had to uninstall because of the huge font size on equation renders in a math-heavy document. Is there a way to fix that? I tried to look but they don't have much documentation yet.
canhascodez 8y ago
Asking what editor HN uses is a pretty loaded question, but it looks like there's a couple neo/vim plugins for live markdown preview. This one[0] says it can use pandoc as a backend. I'm pretty sure that emacs offers something similar, and org-mode may be worth consideration all on its own. I hear spacemacs and spaceneovim are nice. [0] https://github.com/euclio/vim-markdown-composer
arminiusreturns 8y ago
Emacs and emacs ord mode, and then you can export to html5 latex/pdf, etc. My notes, calendar, todo, data science workbooks, etc all live in emacs org mode. Especially love the ability to call programs on the fly in my data science workbooks, so I can call R, Julia, python, and bash all in one place.

scentoni 8y ago

If you don't want to install Haskell and other dependencies, several folks have developed Docker images for using pandoc: https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~ivo/_posts/2015-03-12-repeatable-paper-generation-with-docker-and-pandoc.html https://users.soe.ucsc.edu/~ivo/_posts/2015-03-12-repeatable... http://gbraad.nl/blog/document-generation-using-markdown-and-pandoc.html http://gbraad.nl/blog/document-generation-using-markdown-and... https://github.com/jagregory/pandoc-docker https://github.com/jagregory/pandoc-docker

chipotle_coyote 8y ago
You could also just download one of the packages from the "Installing" page on the Pandoc web site, which has prebuilt binaries for Windows, macOS, and Linux. Installing a whole Docker image to do this seems like it might be overkill for a lot of uses.
uvtc 8y ago
You'd only need to install Haskell if you wanted to build Pandoc. Pandoc the executable is a binary. I install it on Debian via: `apt install pandoc`.
- mb2100 8y ago
  although the version in the default repo is usually quite old. You can grab a binary from https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/latest https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/latest
  - mkesper 8y ago
    Bonus hint: If you somehow aren't able to upgrade the binary (enterprise...), using an up to date template helps a lot (at least for LaTeX).

flukus 8y ago

Pandoc (or latex) + make + iNotifyWait work really well together for WYSIWYG like editing too: watch: $(ALL) while true; do \ clear; \ make $(WATCH); \ inotifywait -qr -e close_write .; \ done "make watch WATCH=build" will now compile documents on every save. Works well for single documents, collections of documents or entire websites.

tetov 8y ago
I've been using a JS script[1] to watch directories, but this seems neater. Would you mind sharing the whole makefile? [1] https://gist.github.com/timpulver/0d01285952b97deb70df6104cc316a4b https://gist.github.com/timpulver/0d01285952b97deb70df6104cc...
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

ryanianian 8y ago

I sometimes use pandoc to clean up my markdown-formatted documents, especially given its abilities to "wrap" text and add indentation-style whitespace that makes plain-text documents look nearly suitable for publishing as-is (almost kinda like RFC docs but without header/footer cruft). There are a few things (in latest version, 2.2.3.2) that don't really survive round-trip from markdown back to markdown: - reference-style links (e.g. `[foo][f]`). They are converted to inline links e.g. `[foo](http://...)` http://...)`. - setext vs hashmark headers. `foo\n=====` will get converted to `# foo`. - markdown allows for forced-linebreak <br>s to be added with two trailing blank spaces at the end of a line. Pandoc escapes these with a trailing `\` at the end of the line. These are only occasional nuisances, but overall the documents (at least in my experience) are not butchered. I also occasionally go from markdown to docx for the purposes of uploading to google-docs and copy/pasting large sections into other docs. This is the only markdown-to-google-docs workflow I've found that works to preserve formatting. It's never really butchered anything, except a few times the syntax-highlighting for code-blocks gets confused and keywords get the wrong colors.

confounded 8y ago
IIRC, there are CLI flags for your first two points. I think the latter is something like —atx-headers. You can choose whether reference links go at the end of the paragraph or the document.

nambit 8y ago

I have used pandoc with uikit to autoconvert my markdown pages to html. Works like a charm.

caconym_ 8y ago

I write fiction as a hobby, I do it in markdown and use Pandoc to turn it into epub files with a custom CSS. It works great. Thanks Pandoc!

clebio 8y ago
Is the CSS derived from the markdown, or you supplement MD to HTML with custom CSS? Definitely curious to know!
- caconym_ 8y ago
  Custom CSS. Nothing fancy, I haven't really explored what's possible with epub.
- flocial 8y ago
  I used a similar workflow. The CSS is for the EPUB and maps to the html elements supported. But if you get too fancy cross device support could get hairy. See: https://github.com/FriendsOfEpub/Blitz https://github.com/FriendsOfEpub/Blitz

fastier 8y ago

Where is .djvu?

vortico 8y ago
I believe the best you could do is extract the raw OCR'd text from the document (with some other tool). No formatting or text hierarchy is preserved in the OCR process, only the physical locations and size of the text on the page. From text, you can convert to Markdown or whatever and then manually edit to give the OCR text some structure.
gwern 8y ago
Do you need an option for that? You can convert to PDF and then `pdf2djvu` it.

eevilspock 8y ago

Pandoc's creator, John MacFarlane, is also the lead guy on CommonMark[1]. There are a small number of corner cases that need to be spec'd out before CommonMark can declare a v1.0 release[2]. If you have the skills for this kind of thing, please weigh in! [1] https://commonmark.org https://commonmark.org [2] https://talk.commonmark.org/t/issues-we-must-resolve-before-1-0-release-8-remaining/1287?u=vas https://talk.commonmark.org/t/issues-we-must-resolve-before-...

pmlnr 8y ago
Please, please involve definition lists. They are useful. They were present on the first webpage[1]. [1]: http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html

rllin 8y ago

frustratingly slow for word docs. antiword is better for those of you who wish to convert word docs en masse

euske 8y ago

I know it's well intended and somewhat successful, but I can't help but thinking of xkcd.com/927 Sorry, I couldn't resist.

Lio 8y ago
Although it does offer some useful extensions for Markdown, Pandoc doesn't attempt to establish new standards. It's a conversion tool for existing formats.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

myself248 8y ago

The one thing it can't do is give HN posts descriptive titles.

wadkar 8y ago
Thanks, this made me chuckle. Its comments like these which make HN a bit more colorful :-)

kccqzy 8y ago

Pandoc is great! I use pandoc for all kinds of formal writing (conversion to PDF via LaTeX). We also run pandoc in production to produce customer-facing PDFs.

mwcampbell 8y ago

It appears that Pandoc generates PDF documents via LaTeX. One problem with this is that, as far as I can tell, LaTeX can't generate tagged PDFs. This is an accessibility problem. Granted, for documents that are heavy on math and/or graphics, the point is probably moot. But many technical documents that are distributed as PDFs would benefit from being tagged. Luckily, LibreOffice can produce tagged PDFs. And unoconv is a convenient utility for doing this from the command line. So you can use pandoc to convert to a format that LibreOffice can consume, then issue a command like this: unoconv -f pdf -e UseTaggedPDF=true mydoc.odt I've tried it, and it works.

mkesper 8y ago
Pandoc can convert into ConTeXt which can produce PDF/A (tagging included) easily. Why this can't be done in one command like with xelatex, wkhtml2pdf and what else is supported, I don't know. Many programs can be used to create PDFs but the quality of output isn't always the same.
- mb2100 8y ago
  > Why this can't be done in one command ConTeXt is supported as well: `pandoc input.md -t context -o output.pdf`

ashton314 8y ago

I wrote a little utility that uses Pandoc to read Markdown files like `man` pages in the terminal: https://github.com/ashton314/marked-man https://github.com/ashton314/marked-man It's just a one-liner: `pandoc -s -t man "$1" | groff -T utf8 -man | $PAGER` (That was basically stolen from an answer to one of my questions on Stack Overflow—thanks to those who answered! :)

mixedmath 8y ago
In a similar vein, I use pandoc to convert markdown pages to man pages, and write new/add notes to manpages. I think it's definitely easier than actually writing groff files.
- beefhash 8y ago
  I find it easier to write man pages directly. Admittedly, I write mdoc (not the ancient "man" macros), which has been around only since the 80s. It's easier for me to remember the semantics ("Is this a flag/command/function?") than the correct traditional markup ("Should this be bold/italic/nothing?").

epynonymous 8y ago

i have been using catdoc and pdftotext to convert doc and pdf files, respectively. nice to see that there's an alternative that also includes a library, will be checking this out. a couple questions i have, seems firstly that old school .doc files are not supported, docx yes. unfortunately i still get a lot of docs in .doc format which seems to be microsoft's proprietary format (docx seems to be more open). my second question is whether or not there's a filter for golang, most of my development is in golang, so i either need to call your cli as a forked process or best to have a native library. i have never worked with haskell so not sure if i can import a haskell library from golang directly. i imagine there'd need to be a golang wrapper around the cli.

mb2100 8y ago
1. yes, only docx is supported. 2. for Go pandoc filters, this seems to work: https://github.com/oltolm/go-pandocfilters https://github.com/oltolm/go-pandocfilters
- epynonymous 8y ago
  thanks, will check this out
duckerude 8y ago
You could use Libreoffice's command line interface to convert from .doc to a more manageable format. lowriter --convert-to odt some-document.doc odt is not the only supported target, but doc --libreoffice--> odt --pandoc--> plain seems to give better results than e.g. doc --libreoffice--> txt or doc --libreoffice--> docx --pandoc--> plain.
- epynonymous 8y ago
  if that's the case, i'll stick with catdoc. my use case is to create a full text search index of the content, trading libre office cli for catdoc, i'd rather just stick with catdoc, but thanks.

rydel 8y ago

Really one of the best tool! Simple to use and makes things done.

voltagex_ 8y ago

The only problem I have with pandoc is I have to lug the entire GHC around with it.

nh2 8y ago
That is not the case. https://pandoc.org/installing.html https://pandoc.org/installing.html > We provide a binary package for amd64 architecture on the download page. This provides both pandoc and pandoc-citeproc. The executables are statically linked and have no dynamic dependencies or dependencies on external data files.
- voltagex_ 8y ago
  Thanks! I wonder how it was built.
- loudmax 8y ago
  There's an unofficial Arch package for it: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pandoc-bin/ https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/pandoc-bin/ I wish I'd known about this sooner. I don't spend much time with text documents outside the web, but when I do, pandoc handles the disparate formats admirably. The only inconvenience is when I update my system, there's guaranteed to be a huge pile of Haskell libraries to download.

davnn 8y ago

You can use the Haskell-based static site generator Hakyll with Pandoc to create the best best blogging experience imho. An example of how easy this is and the styles I use for my personal blog: https://curious.observer https://curious.observer https://github.com/davnn/curiousobserver https://github.com/davnn/curiousobserver

ggambetta 8y ago

Another happy Pandoc user here :) I built a pipeline to convert a Markdown file to publishing-ready files for ebooks, Kindle and paperback for my novel; the whole thing is described here: http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html My website itself is static, generated from a bunch of Markdown files, some HTML templates, and a bit of postprocessing. But most of the work is done by Pandoc.

odiroot 8y ago
Hey. Can you give us some more context of your novel writing in Markdown? I'd be interested in your process.
- ggambetta 8y ago
  Sure. The technical side of things is explained here: http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_open_source.html (same link as above). If you're more interested in the creative aspect, I wrote a bit here: http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_swiss_trains.html http://www.gabrielgambetta.com/tgl_swiss_trains.html. If you're interested in anything not covered there, feel free to ask, I'll be happy to share :)
  - bravura 8y ago
    "Soon the structure underlying The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons and The Lost Symbol was laying bare before my eyes. I could see why the stories worked. I had reverse-engineered Dan Brown." Could you talk a little more in depth about what Dan Brown's pattern/structure is?
    - ggambetta 8y ago
      I get that request a lot, so I'll have to write something about it :) All I can offer right now is my raw notes, which are in Spanish. This is a structural analysis of Angels and Demons, The da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol: https://imgur.com/bX6ByJA https://imgur.com/bX6ByJA This is an one-page treatment of the three books, with the "blanks" filled appropriately for each: https://imgur.com/LlDVUKn https://imgur.com/LlDVUKn I doubt any of this is groundbreaking. Story structure is a widely studied topic (and one that I find fascinating). But it seems like Dan Brown uses a very well defined, customised version of this, that makes for engaging, fast-paced books. I sort of proved (for myself, at least) that this works, by writing a novel whose structure was originally based on this pattern (although it later diverged a bit), and which causes the expected effect - a couple of readers have read it in a single sitting :)

another-cuppa 8y ago

I write any document that doesn't need extensive custom typesetting (which is 90% of stuff) in org-mode and then use pandoc to convert it to "normal people" formats at the end. I have made a basic template for MS Word that looks pretty good.

rotorblade 8y ago

I tried to use pandoc a while ago to convert the latex-sources of arxiv.org documents to epub, since those are often much more comfortable to read on small devices than pdfs. The problem I had was that latex was turned into images, but changing the font-size of the reader did not change the size of the images, making the text readable, but the maths barely readable. This is something I would love to see happen though.

patkai 8y ago
I've seen this problem on Kindle books with equations, is that a related problem?
tjoff 8y ago
Seems like an issue with the epub reader though?
mb2100 8y ago
> latex was turned into images You can add some CSS to the generated EPUB to change that. But if your EPub reader supports MathML, you can do that with pandoc. See http://pandoc.org/epub.html#math http://pandoc.org/epub.html#math
fntlnz 8y ago
Take a look at arxiv vanity https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/ https://www.arxiv-vanity.com/

patricklouys 8y ago

I used pandoc to format my book [0]. Not everything worked perfectly, I'm pretty happy with how everything turned out (especially the print version). It was a little work to set up the workflow with scripts etc, but being able to write the book in markdown and still having full control over the design was definitely worth it. [0] sample here: https://patricklouys.com/professional-php-sample.pdf https://patricklouys.com/professional-php-sample.pdf

subinsebastien 8y ago

Yet another pandoc user here. I built a blog engine using Pandoc as the core. Code available here : https://github.com/subinsebastien/kyll https://github.com/subinsebastien/kyll And the website built using the blog engine is available here : http://xtel.in/ http://xtel.in/

mb2100 8y ago

Occasional pandoc contributor here, AMA :-) Just a few links: - Where everything is documented: http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html http://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html - If you have questions or suggestions: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pandoc-discuss https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/pandoc-discuss - Contributing to pandoc is also a great way to get your feet wet with Haskell. In my experience, very supportive community. See http://pandoc.org/CONTRIBUTING.html http://pandoc.org/CONTRIBUTING.html and for good first issues: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22good+first+issue%22 https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+... Finally, a great feature, that hasn't been mentioned here, is pandoc filters. Basically, pandoc provides a way for scripts (in any programming language) to hook into the transformation pipeline and modify the document AST (similar to the HTML DOM) in-between the reading and writing steps. See http://pandoc.org/filters.html http://pandoc.org/filters.html

paule89 8y ago
everytime I see a project using google groups, i think it is already dead. Gladly yours seems to be used quite often. At least you can search it even years later, compared to an irc or slack channel.
- benhoyt 8y ago
  Heh, not quite. Go (the programming language) uses Google Groups (golang-nuts and golang-dev), and it's very alive.
- mb2100 8y ago
  Aren't mailing lists even older than IRC? Anyway, whatever works, right?
- neves 8y ago
  IRC channels and mailing list are excellent for informal questioning about a project. You can search for guidance, see if a feature would be well received, and receive a green light before starting to implement something. Other day I thought about contributing to Yarn, the Javascript package manager, but the only way that I found to communicate with the developers were issues in GitHub. Since I didn't know if the feature I wanted would be well received, I just quit.

boonasty69 8y ago

updated and secure.

bovermyer 8y ago

I love pandoc, but I'm very surprised that such an established tool has (at time of writing) 865 points and is #1 on HN. I guess it's not as well-known as I thought.

CodexArcanum 8y ago

I "love" how many comments are one person praising pandoc for helping them in some workflow, and then commenters ripping into them for not using some other tool. I wonder if there's a corollary to some internet rule that the more generally useful a tool is, the more detractors will push for other tools to be used? It would help explain why programming language discussions get so contentious. Pandoc is seriously a great tool! I love the way it's designed and have found it useful off and on over the years. Truly marvelous for making information available in any needed format.