Left-align text when converting from md to pdf - pandoc

I'm converting a markdown file to pdf with:
pandoc -o out.pdf in.md
The results are justified alignment, a pet hate. Is there any way to render regular text as left-aligned instead? Nothing appears in help for 'left' or 'align'..

You could use the latex package ragged2e.
For one document
Add this to your yaml front matter:
---
header-includes:
- \usepackage[document]{ragged2e}
---
For all documents
Edit your pandoc latex template; to create it:
pandoc -D latex > ~/.pandoc/templates/default.latex
Then open the file and add somewhere before the \begin{document}:
\usepackage[document]{ragged2e}

Related

Pandoc .docx to .md with math and images

I am trying to export .docx file to a .md file with math and images. However, only the image is present on the new file, but not the math in mathjax. Any idea how to solve this?
The code I use is: pandoc --extract-media=.-s file.docx -t markdown -o file.md

Convert from slidy to powerpoint with pandoc or something else?

I'd like to convert a slidy presentation to powerpoint. I tried using pandoc:
pandoc -f html+tex_math_dollars+tex_math_single_backslash test.html -o test.pptx
Does create a powerpoint file, but the file doesn't have separate slides, all the text is one slide, probably because the above command doesn't tell pandoc to recognize that the html is slidy.
I found commands for pandoc to convert TO slidy but nothing about converting FROM slidy.

How to include a latex document into a markdown using yaml metadata `include-after-body`

I want include a latex document into a markdown .md file using the YAML metadata. I have two files in a directory:
markdown.md
---
title: test fuer pdf eingeschlossen
author: AUF
keywords: test
abstract: Versuch
publish: True
include-after-body: testlatex.tex
---
A simple exampe for a test.
and testlatex.tex
some text without sense
\begin{itemize}
\tightlist
\item
firstly, a fundamental human need is;
\item
secondly, a cost-effective technical mean,
\end{itemize}
I can include the testlatex.tex file into the body of the markdown.md on the commandline with
pandoc --pdf-engine=lualatex --toc -o test.pdf markdown.md --include-after-body=testlatex.tex
but the equivalent value put into the YAML metadata seems not to have any effect (author and title are however used). I thought that the value included on the command line or in the YAML metadata would be equivalent. I checked in the pandoc latex template and see there an include for the include-after but I also wonder where the filename is converted to its content.
If I put
include-after: testlatex.tex
in the YAML metadata the name of the file is printed in the output, but the file content is not used!
Thank you for your help!

Pandoc: use variables in custom latex preamble

I have the file test.md which contains:
---
footertext: some text for the footer
headertext: this is in the header
---
here is the text body.
And the file format.tex which contains:
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhead[L]{$headertext$}
\fancyfoot[L]{$footertext$}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}
\setlength{\headsep}{0.25in}
I run the command:
pandoc -H format.tex test.md -o test.pdf
You can see what I want to do. I am trying to get the text "this is in the header" to show up in the header, but it does not, it only shows the string "headertext" (same problem for footer).
What am I doing wrong?
Edit: OK, I think I understand. Apparently variables are only available in templates, not in included begin or end code blocks (like I am using), or in the md itself. So new question: Why is this? It is unintuitive, inconvenient, and poorly documented.
You can easily modify a pandoc template. Access the default template with
pandoc -D latex > new_template.latex
Paste the content of your format.tex in the preamble. You should use $if$ to check if the variable exists before using it if you want to use this template for more than one document :
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
$if(headertext)$\fancyhead[L]{$headertext$}$endif$
$if(footertext)$\fancyfoot[L]{$footertext$}$endif$
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}
\renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}
\setlength{\headsep}{0.25in}
Then compile with :
pandoc test.md -o test.pdf --template=new_template.latex

Header and footer in YAML metablock for rmarkdown and pandoc

Is it possible to specify in the YAML metablock a pdf header and/or footer?Something you could set to appear on every page. This is in rmarkdown and will then be rendered to a pdf (using pandoc and knitr). I have not been able to find anything (header: and footer: sadly did not work!)
---
title: testpdf | test
footer: "test footer"
theme: "zenburn"
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
output: "pdf_document"
fig_width: 12
fig_height: 6
fig_caption: true
---
There is no native pandoc-markdown support of headers and footers. However, since pandoc generates pdf documents through latex, you can tweak your latex template to accommodate those.
Create a new template from the default one :
pandoc -D latex > footer_template.latex
Add the following lines in the latex preamble (this is a very basic example that should produce a centered footer, see the fancyhdr user manual if you need something more advanced)
$if(footer)$
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyfoot[C]{$footer$}
$endif$
Finally, add this to your document yaml header :
output:
pdf_document:
template: test.latex
Your template should either be in ~/.pandoc/templates or in the same directory as test.rmd for this to work.

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