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 has a modular design: it consists of a set of readers, which parse text in a given format and produce a native representation of the document (an abstract syntax tree or AST), and a set of writers, which convert this native representation into a target format. Thus, adding an input or output format requires only adding a reader or writer. Users can also run custom pandoc filters to modify the intermediate AST.

Because pandoc’s intermediate representation of a document is less expressive than many of the formats it converts between, one should not expect perfect conversions between every format and every other. Pandoc attempts to preserve the structural elements of a document, but not formatting details such as margin size. And some document elements, such as complex tables, may not fit into pandoc’s simple document model. While conversions from pandoc’s Markdown to all formats aspire to be perfect, conversions from formats more expressive than pandoc’s Markdown can be expected to be lossy.

Using pandoc

If no input-files are specified, input is read from stdin. Output goes to stdout by default. For output to a file, use the -o/--output option:

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:

For more information on how standalone documents are produced, see Templates below.

If multiple input files are given, pandoc will concatenate them all (with blank lines between them) before parsing. (Use --file-scope to parse files individually.)

Specifying formats

The format of the input and output can be specified explicitly using command-line options. The input format can be specified using the -f/--from option, the output format using the -t/--to option. Thus, to convert hello.txt from Markdown to LaTeX, you could type:

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,

will convert hello.txt from Markdown to LaTeX. If no output file is specified (so that output goes to stdout), or if the output file’s extension is unknown, the output format will default to HTML. If no input file is specified (so that input comes from stdin), or if the input files’ extensions are unknown, the input format will be assumed to be Markdown.

Character encoding

Pandoc uses the UTF-8 character encoding for both input and output. If your local character encoding is not UTF-8, you should pipe input and output through iconv:

Note that in some output formats (such as HTML, LaTeX, ConTeXt, RTF, OPML, DocBook, and Texinfo), information about the character encoding is included in the document header, which will only be included if you use the -s/--standalone option.

Creating a PDF

By default, pandoc will use LaTeX to create the PDF, which requires that a LaTeX engine be installed (see --pdf-engine below). Alternatively, pandoc can use ConTeXt, roff ms, or HTML as an intermediate format. To do this, specify an output file with a .pdf extension, as before, but add the --pdf-engine option or -t context, -t html, or -t ms to the command line. The tool used to generate the PDF from the intermediate format may be specified using --pdf-engine.

You can control the PDF style using variables, depending on the intermediate format used: see variables for LaTeX, variables for ConTeXt, [variables for wkhtmltopdf], variables for ms. When HTML is used as an intermediate format, the output can be styled using --css.

To debug the PDF creation, it can be useful to look at the intermediate representation: instead of -o test.pdf, use for example -s -o test.tex to output the generated LaTeX. You can then test it with pdflatex test.tex.

When using LaTeX, the following packages need to be available (they are included with all recent versions of TeX Live): amsfonts, amsmath, lm, unicode-math, iftex, listings (if the --listings option is used), fancyvrb, longtable, booktabs, multirow (if the document contains a table with cells that cross multiple rows), graphicx (if the document contains images), bookmark, xcolor, soul, geometry (with the geometry variable set), setspace (with linestretch), and babel (with lang). If CJKmainfont is set, xeCJK is needed if xelatex is used, else luatexja is needed if lualatex is used. framed is required if code is highlighted in a scheme that use a colored background. The use of xelatex or lualatex as the PDF engine requires fontspec. lualatex uses selnolig and lua-ul. xelatex uses bidi (with the dir variable set). If the mathspec variable is set, xelatex will use mathspec instead of unicode-math. The csquotes package will be used for typography if the csquotes variable or metadata field is set to a true value. The natbib, biblatex, bibtex, and biber packages can optionally be used for citation rendering. If math with \cancel, \bcancel, or \xcancel is used, the cancel package is needed. The following packages will be used to improve output quality if present, but pandoc does not require them to be present: upquote (for straight quotes in verbatim environments), microtype (for better spacing adjustments), parskip (for better inter-paragraph spaces), xurl (for better line breaks in URLs), and footnotehyper or footnote (to allow footnotes in tables).

Reading from the Web

Instead of an input file, an absolute URI may be given. In this case pandoc will fetch the content using HTTP:

It is possible to supply a custom User-Agent string or other header when requesting a document from a URL:

Options

General options

-f FORMAT, -r FORMAT, --from=FORMAT, --read=FORMAT

Specify input format. FORMAT can be:
- asciidoc ([AsciiDoc] markup)
- bibtex ([BibTeX] bibliography)
- biblatex ([BibLaTeX] bibliography)
- bits ([BITS] XML, alias for jats)
- commonmark ([CommonMark] Markdown)
- commonmark_x ([CommonMark] Markdown with extensions)
- creole ([Creole 1.0])
- csljson ([CSL JSON] bibliography)
- csv ([CSV] table)
- tsv ([TSV] table)
- djot ([Djot markup])
- docbook ([DocBook])
- docx ([Word docx])
- dokuwiki ([DokuWiki markup])
- endnotexml ([EndNote XML bibliography])
- epub ([EPUB])
- fb2 ([FictionBook2] e-book)
- gfm ([GitHub-Flavored Markdown]), or the deprecated and less accurate markdown_github; use markdown_github only if you need extensions not supported in gfm.
- haddock ([Haddock markup])
- html ([HTML])
- ipynb ([Jupyter notebook])
- jats ([JATS] XML)
- jira ([Jira]/Confluence wiki markup)
- json (JSON version of native AST)
- latex ([LaTeX])
- markdown ([Pandoc’s Markdown])
- markdown_mmd ([MultiMarkdown])
- markdown_phpextra ([PHP Markdown Extra])
- markdown_strict (original unextended [Markdown])
- mediawiki ([MediaWiki markup])
- man ([roff man])
- mdoc ([mdoc] manual page markup)
- muse ([Muse])
- native (native Haskell)
- odt ([OpenDocument text document][ODT])
- opml ([OPML])
- org ([Emacs Org mode])
- pod (Perl’s [Plain Old Documentation])
- pptx ([PowerPoint])
- ris ([RIS] bibliography)
- rtf ([Rich Text Format])
- rst ([reStructuredText])
- t2t ([txt2tags])
- textile ([Textile])
- tikiwiki ([TikiWiki markup])
- twiki ([TWiki markup])
- typst ([typst])
- vimwiki ([Vimwiki])
- xlsx ([Excel spreadsheet][XLSX])
- xml (XML version of native AST)
- the path of a custom Lua reader, see [Custom readers and writers] below
Extensions can be individually enabled or disabled by appending +EXTENSION or -EXTENSION to the format name. See [Extensions] below, for a list of extensions and their names. See --list-input-formats and --list-extensions, below.

-t FORMAT, -w FORMAT, --to=FORMAT, --write=FORMAT

Specify output format. FORMAT can be:
- ansi (text with [ANSI escape codes], for terminal viewing)
- asciidoc (modern [AsciiDoc] as interpreted by [AsciiDoctor])
- asciidoc_legacy ([AsciiDoc] as interpreted by [asciidoc-py]).
- asciidoctor (deprecated synonym for asciidoc)
- bbcode [BBCode]
- bbcode_fluxbb [BBCode (FluxBB)]
- bbcode_phpbb [BBCode (phpBB)]
- bbcode_steam [BBCode (Steam)]
- bbcode_hubzilla [BBCode (Hubzilla)]
- bbcode_xenforo [BBCode (xenForo)]
- beamer ([LaTeX beamer][beamer] slide show)
- bibtex ([BibTeX] bibliography)
- biblatex ([BibLaTeX] bibliography)
- chunkedhtml (zip archive of multiple linked HTML files)
- commonmark ([CommonMark] Markdown)
- commonmark_x ([CommonMark] Markdown with extensions)
- context ([ConTeXt])
- csljson ([CSL JSON] bibliography)
- djot ([Djot markup])
- docbook or docbook4 ([DocBook] 4)
- docbook5 (DocBook 5)
- docx ([Word docx])
- dokuwiki ([DokuWiki markup])
- epub or epub3 ([EPUB] v3 book)
- epub2 (EPUB v2)
- fb2 ([FictionBook2] e-book)
- gfm ([GitHub-Flavored Markdown]), or the deprecated and less accurate markdown_github; use markdown_github only if you need extensions not supported in gfm.
- haddock ([Haddock markup])
- html or html5 ([HTML], i.e. [HTML5]/XHTML [polyglot markup])
- html4 ([XHTML] 1.0 Transitional)
- icml ([InDesign ICML])
- ipynb ([Jupyter notebook])
- jats_archiving ([JATS] XML, Archiving and Interchange Tag Set)
- jats_articleauthoring ([JATS] XML, Article Authoring Tag Set)
- jats_publishing ([JATS] XML, Journal Publishing Tag Set)
- jats (alias for jats_archiving)
- jira ([Jira]/Confluence wiki markup)
- json (JSON version of native AST)
- latex ([LaTeX])
- man ([roff man])
- markdown ([Pandoc’s Markdown])
- markdown_mmd ([MultiMarkdown])
- markdown_phpextra ([PHP Markdown Extra])
- markdown_strict (original unextended [Markdown])
- markua ([Markua])
- mediawiki ([MediaWiki markup])
- ms ([roff ms])
- muse ([Muse])
- native (native Haskell)
- odt ([OpenDocument text document][ODT])
- opml ([OPML])
- opendocument ([OpenDocument XML])
- org ([Emacs Org mode])
- pdf ([PDF])
- plain (plain text)
- pptx ([PowerPoint] slide show)
- rst ([reStructuredText])
- rtf ([Rich Text Format])
- texinfo ([GNU Texinfo])
- textile ([Textile])
- slideous ([Slideous] HTML and JavaScript slide show)
- slidy ([Slidy] HTML and JavaScript slide show)
- dzslides ([DZSlides] HTML5 + JavaScript slide show)
- revealjs ([reveal.js] HTML5 + JavaScript slide show)
- s5 ([S5] HTML and JavaScript slide show)
- tei ([TEI Simple])
- typst ([typst])
- vimdoc ([Vimdoc])
- xml (XML version of native AST)
- xwiki ([XWiki markup])
- zimwiki ([ZimWiki markup])
- the path of a custom Lua writer, see [Custom readers and writers] below
Note that odt, docx, epub, and pdf output will not be directed to stdout unless forced with -o -.
Extensions can be individually enabled or disabled by appending +EXTENSION or -EXTENSION to the format name. See [Extensions] below, for a list of extensions and their names. See --list-output-formats and --list-extensions, below.

-o FILE, --output=FILE

Write output to FILE instead of stdout. If FILE is
-, output will go to stdout, even if a non-textual format (docx, odt, epub2, epub3) is specified. If the output format is chunkedhtml and FILE has no extension, then instead of producing a .zip file pandoc will create a directory FILE and unpack the zip archive there (unless FILE already exists, in which case an error will be raised).

--data-dir=DIRECTORY

Specify the user data directory to search for pandoc data files.
If this option is not specified, the default user data directory will be used. On *nix and macOS systems this will be the pandoc subdirectory of the XDG data directory (by default, $HOME/.local/share, overridable by setting the XDG_DATA_HOME environment variable). If that directory does not exist and $HOME/.pandoc exists, it will be used (for backwards compatibility). On Windows the default user data directory is %APPDATA%\pandoc. You can find the default user data directory on your system by looking at the output of pandoc --version. Data files placed in this directory (for example, reference.odt, reference.docx, epub.css, templates) will override pandoc’s normal defaults. (Note that the user data directory is not created by pandoc, so you will need to create it yourself if you want to make use of it.)

-d FILE, --defaults=FILE

Specify a set of default option settings. FILE is a YAML or JSON
file whose fields correspond to command-line option settings. All options for document conversion, including input and output files, can be set using a defaults file. The file will be searched for first in the working directory, and then in the defaults subdirectory of the user data directory (see --data-dir). The .yaml extension will be added if FILE lacs an extension. See the section [Defaults files] for more information on the file format. Settings from the defaults file may be overridden or extended by subsequent options on the command line.

--bash-completion

Generate a bash completion script. To enable bash completion
with pandoc, add this to your .bashrc:
```
eval "$(pandoc --bash-completion)"
```

--sandbox[=true|false]

Run pandoc in a sandbox, limiting IO operations in readers
and writers to reading the files specified on the command line. Note that this option does not limit IO operations by filters or in the production of PDF documents. But it does offer security against, for example, disclosure of files through the use of include directives. Anyone using pandoc on untrusted user input should use this option.
Note: some readers and writers (e.g., docx) need access to data files. If these are stored on the file system, then pandoc will not be able to find them when run in --sandbox mode and will raise an error. For these applications, we recommend using a pandoc binary compiled with the embed_data_files option, which causes the data files to be baked into the binary instead of being stored on the file system.

--verbose

Give verbose debugging output.

--quiet

Suppress warning messages.

--fail-if-warnings[=true|false]

Exit with error status if there are any warnings.

--log=FILE

Write log messages in machine-readable JSON format to
FILE. All messages above DEBUG level will be written, regardless of verbosity settings (--verbose, --quiet).

--list-input-formats

List supported input formats, one per line.

--list-output-formats

List supported output formats, one per line.

--list-extensions[=FORMAT]

List supported extensions for FORMAT, one per line, preceded
by a + or - indicating whether it is enabled by default in FORMAT. If FORMAT is not specified, defaults for pandoc’s Markdown are given.

--list-highlight-languages

List supported languages for syntax highlighting, one per
line.

--list-highlight-styles

List supported styles for syntax highlighting, one per line.
See --syntax-highlighting.

-v, --version

Print version.

-h, --help

Show usage message.

Reader options

--shift-heading-level-by=NUMBER

Shift heading levels by a positive or negative integer.
For example, with --shift-heading-level-by=-1, level 2 headings become level 1 headings, and level 3 headings become level 2 headings. Headings cannot have a level less than 1, so a heading that would be shifted below level 1 becomes a regular paragraph. Exception: with a shift of -N, a level-N heading at the beginning of the document replaces the metadata title. --shift-heading-level-by=-1 is a good choice when converting HTML or Markdown documents that use an initial level-1 heading for the document title and level-2+ headings for sections. --shift-heading-level-by=1 may be a good choice for converting Markdown documents that use level-1 headings for sections to HTML, since pandoc uses a level-1 heading to render the document title.

--base-header-level=NUMBER

*Deprecated. Use --shift-heading-level-by=X instead,
where X = NUMBER - 1.* Specify the base level for headings (defaults to 1).

--indented-code-classes=CLASSES

Specify classes to use for indented code blocks—for example,
perl,numberLines or haskell. Multiple classes may be separated by spaces or commas.

--default-image-extension=EXTENSION

Specify a default extension to use when image paths/URLs have no
extension. This allows you to use the same source for formats that require different kinds of images. Currently this option only affects the Markdown and LaTeX readers.

--file-scope[=true|false]

Parse each file individually before combining for multifile
documents. This will allow footnotes in different files with the same identifiers to work as expected. If this option is set, footnotes and links will not work across files. Reading binary files (docx, odt, epub) implies --file-scope.
If two or more files are processed using --file-scope, prefixes based on the filenames will be added to identifiers in order to disambiguate them, and internal links will be adjusted accordingly. For example, a header with identifier foo in subdir/file1.txt will have its identifier changed to subdir__file1.txt__foo.

-F PROGRAM, --filter=PROGRAM

Specify an executable to be used as a filter transforming the
pandoc AST after the input is parsed and before the output is written. The executable should read JSON from stdin and write JSON to stdout. The JSON must be formatted like pandoc’s own JSON input and output. The name of the output format will be passed to the filter as the first argument. Hence,
```
pandoc --filter ./caps.py -t latex
```
is equivalent to
```
pandoc -t json | ./caps.py latex | pandoc -f json -t latex
```
The latter form may be useful for debugging filters.
Filters may be written in any language. Text.Pandoc.JSON exports toJSONFilter to facilitate writing filters in Haskell. Those who would prefer to write filters in python can use the module [pandocfilters], installable from PyPI. There are also pandoc filter libraries in [PHP], [perl], and [JavaScript/node.js].
In order of preference, pandoc will look for filters in
1. a specified full or relative path (executable or non-executable),
2. $DATADIR/filters (executable or non-executable) where $DATADIR is the user data directory (see --data-dir, above),
3. $PATH (executable only).
Filters, Lua-filters, and citeproc processing are applied in the order specified on the command line.

-L SCRIPT, --lua-filter=SCRIPT

Transform the document in a similar fashion as JSON filters (see
--filter), but use pandoc’s built-in Lua filtering system. The given Lua script is expected to return a list of Lua filters which will be applied in order. Each Lua filter must contain element-transforming functions indexed by the name of the AST element on which the filter function should be applied.
The pandoc Lua module provides helper functions for element creation. It is always loaded into the script’s Lua environment.
See the [Lua filters documentation] for further details.
In order of preference, pandoc will look for Lua filters in
1. a specified full or relative path,
2. $DATADIR/filters where $DATADIR is the user data directory (see --data-dir, above).
Filters, Lua filters, and citeproc processing are applied in the order specified on the command line.

-M KEY[=VAL], --metadata=KEY[:VAL]

Set the metadata field KEY to the value VAL. A value specified
on the command line overrides a value specified in the document using [YAML metadata blocks][Extension: yaml_metadata_block]. Values will be parsed as YAML boolean or string values. If no value is specified, the value will be treated as Boolean true. Like --variable, --metadata causes template variables to be set. But unlike --variable, --metadata affects the metadata of the underlying document (which is accessible from filters and may be printed in some output formats) and metadata values will be escaped when inserted into the template.

--metadata-file=FILE

Read metadata from the supplied YAML (or JSON) file. This
option can be used with every input format, but string scalars in the metadata file will always be parsed as Markdown. (If the input format is Markdown or a Markdown variant, then the same variant will be used to parse the metadata file; if it is a non-Markdown format, pandoc’s default Markdown extensions will be used.) This option can be used repeatedly to include multiple metadata files; values in files specified later on the command line will be preferred over those specified in earlier files. Metadata values specified inside the document, or by using -M, overwrite values specified with this option. The file will be searched for first in the working directory, and then in the metadata subdirectory of the user data directory (see --data-dir).

-p, --preserve-tabs[=true|false]

Preserve tabs instead of converting them to spaces. (By default, pandoc
converts tabs to spaces before parsing its input.) Note that this will only affect tabs in literal code spans and code blocks. Tabs in regular text are always treated as spaces.

--tab-stop=NUMBER

Specify the number of spaces per tab (default is 4).

--track-changes=accept|reject|all

Specifies what to do with insertions, deletions, and comments
produced by the MS Word “Track Changes” feature. accept (the default) processes all the insertions and deletions. reject ignores them. Both accept and reject ignore comments. all includes all insertions, deletions, and comments, wrapped in spans with insertion, deletion, comment-start, and comment-end classes, respectively. The author and time of change is included. all is useful for scripting: only accepting changes from a certain reviewer, say, or before a certain date. If a paragraph is inserted or deleted, track-changes=all produces a span with the class paragraph-insertion/paragraph-deletion before the affected paragraph break. This option only affects the docx reader.

--extract-media=DIR|FILE.zip

Extract images and other media contained in or linked from
the source document to the path DIR, creating it if necessary, and adjust the images references in the document so they point to the extracted files. Media are downloaded, read from the file system, or extracted from a binary container (e.g. docx), as needed. The original file paths are used if they are relative paths not containing ... Otherwise filenames are constructed from the SHA1 hash of the contents.
If the path given ends in .zip, then instead of creating a directory, pandoc will create a zip archive containing the media files.

--abbreviations=FILE

Specifies a custom abbreviations file, with abbreviations
one to a line. If this option is not specified, pandoc will read the data file abbreviations from the user data directory or fall back on a system default. To see the system default, use pandoc --print-default-data-file=abbreviations. The only use pandoc makes of this list is in the Markdown reader. Strings found in this list will be followed by a nonbreaking space, and the period will not produce sentence-ending space in formats like LaTeX. The strings may not contain spaces.

--typst-input=KEY[=VAL]

Set a parameter value that will be made available to the typst
parser in sys.inputs, like --input in the typst CLI. Either : or = may be used to separate KEY from VAL. Values containing spaces must be quoted.

--trace[=true|false]

Print diagnostic output tracing parser progress to stderr.
This option is intended for use by developers in diagnosing performance issues.

General writer options

-s, --standalone

Produce output with an appropriate header and footer (e.g. a
standalone HTML, LaTeX, TEI, or RTF file, not a fragment). This option is set automatically for pdf, epub, epub3, fb2, docx, and odt output. For native output, this option causes metadata to be included; otherwise, metadata is suppressed.

--template=FILE|URL

Use the specified file as a custom template for the generated document.
Implies --standalone. See [Templates], below, for a description of template syntax. If the template is not found, pandoc will search for it in the templates subdirectory of the user data directory (see --data-dir). If no extension is specified and an extensionless template is not found, pandoc will look for a template with an extension corresponding to the writer, so that --template=special looks for special.html for HTML output. If this option is not used, a default template appropriate for the output format will be used (see -D/--print-default-template).

-V KEY[=VAL], --variable=KEY[=VAL]

Set the template variable KEY to the string value VAL when rendering
the document in standalone mode. Either : or = may be used to separate KEY from VAL. If no VAL is specified, the key will be given the value true. Structured values (lists, maps) cannot be assigned using this option, but they can be assigned in the variables section of a [defaults file][Defaults files] or using the --variable-json option. If the variable already has a list value, the value will be added to the list. If it already has another kind of value, it will be made into a list containing the previous and the new value. For example, -V author=Joe -V author=Sue makes author contain a list of strings: Joe and Sue.

--variable-json=KEY[=JSON]

Set the template variable KEY to the value specified by a JSON
string (this may be a boolean, a string, a list, or a mapping; a number will be treated as a string). For example, --variable-json foo=false will give foo the boolean false value, while --variable-json foo='"false"' will give it the string value "false". Either : or = may be used to separate KEY from VAL. If the variable already has a value, this value will be replaced.

-D FORMAT, --print-default-template=FORMAT

Print the system default template for an output FORMAT. (See -t
for a list of possible FORMATs.) Templates in the user data directory are ignored. This option may be used with -o/--output to redirect output to a file, but -o/--output must come before --print-default-template on the command line.
Note that some of the default templates use partials, for example styles.html. To print the partials, use --print-default-data-file: for example, --print-default-data-file=templates/styles.html.

--print-default-data-file=FILE

Print a system default data file. Files in the user data directory
are ignored. This option may be used with -o/--output to redirect output to a file, but -o/--output must come before --print-default-data-file on the command line.

--eol=crlf|lf|native

Manually specify line endings: crlf (Windows), lf
(macOS/Linux/UNIX), or native (line endings appropriate to the OS on which pandoc is being run). The default is native.

--dpi=NUMBER

Specify the default dpi (dots per inch) value for conversion
from pixels to inch/centimeters and vice versa. (Technically, the correct term would be ppi: pixels per inch.) The default is 96dpi. When images contain information about dpi internally, the encoded value is used instead of the default specified by this option.

--wrap=auto|none|preserve

Determine how text is wrapped in the output (the source
code, not the rendered version). With auto (the default), pandoc will attempt to wrap lines to the column width specified by --columns (default 72). With none, pandoc will not wrap lines at all. With preserve, pandoc will attempt to preserve the wrapping from the source document (that is, where there are nonsemantic newlines in the source, there will be nonsemantic newlines in the output as well). In ipynb output, this option affects wrapping of the contents of Markdown cells.

--columns=NUMBER

Specify length of lines in characters. This affects text wrapping
in the generated source code (see --wrap). It also affects calculation of column widths for plain text tables (see [Tables] below).

--toc[=true|false], --table-of-contents[=true|false]

Include an automatically generated table of contents (or, in
the case of latex, context, docx, odt, opendocument, rst, or ms, an instruction to create one) in the output document. This option has no effect unless -s/--standalone is used, and it has no effect on man, docbook4, docbook5, or jats output.
Note that if you are producing a PDF via ms and using (the default) groff as a --pdf-engine, the table of contents will appear at the end of the document. If you would prefer it to be at the beginning of the document, before the title, you can use --pdf-engine=pdfroff.

--toc-depth=NUMBER

Specify the number of section levels to include in the table
of contents. The default is 3 (which means that level-1, 2, and 3 headings will be listed in the contents).

--lof[=true|false], --list-of-figures[=true|false]

Include an automatically generated list of figures (or, in
some formats, an instruction to create one) in the output document. This option has no effect unless -s/--standalone is used, and it only has an effect on latex, context, and docx output.

--lot[=true|false], --list-of-tables[=true|false]

Include an automatically generated list of tables (or, in
some formats, an instruction to create one) in the output document. This option has no effect unless -s/--standalone is used, and it only has an effect on latex, context, and docx output.

--strip-comments[=true|false]

Strip out HTML comments in the Markdown or Textile source,
rather than passing them on to Markdown, Textile or HTML output as raw HTML. This does not apply to HTML comments inside raw HTML blocks when the markdown_in_html_blocks extension is not set.

--syntax-highlighting=default|none|idiomatic|STYLE|FILE

The method to use for code syntax highlighting. Setting a
specific STYLE causes highlighting to be performed with the internal highlighting engine, using KDE syntax definitions and styles. The idiomatic method uses a format-specific highlighter if one is available, or the default style if the target format has no idiomatic highlighting method. Setting this option to none disables all syntax highlighting. The default method uses a format-specific default.
The default for HTML, EPUB, Docx, Ms, Man, and LaTeX output is to use the internal highlighter with the default style; for Typst it is to use Typst’s own syntax highlighting system.
Style options are pygments (the default), kate, monochrome, breezeDark, espresso, zenburn, haddock, and tango. For more information on syntax highlighting in pandoc, see [Syntax highlighting], below. See also --list-highlight-styles.
Instead of a STYLE name, a JSON file with extension .theme may be supplied. This will be parsed as a KDE syntax highlighting theme and (if valid) used as the highlighting style.
To generate the JSON version of an existing style, use --print-highlight-style.

--no-highlight

Deprecated, use --syntax-highlighting=none instead.
Disables syntax highlighting for code blocks and inlines, even when a language attribute is given.

--highlight-style=STYLE|FILE

Deprecated, use --syntax-highlighting=STYLE|FILE instead.
Specifies the coloring style to be used in highlighted source code.

--print-highlight-style=STYLE|FILE

Prints a JSON version of a highlighting style, which can
be modified, saved with a .theme extension, and used with --syntax-highlighting. This option may be used with -o/--output to redirect output to a file, but -o/--output must come before --print-highlight-style on the command line.

--syntax-definition=FILE

Instructs pandoc to load a KDE XML syntax definition file,
which will be used for syntax highlighting of appropriately marked code blocks. This can be used to add support for new languages or to use altered syntax definitions for existing languages. This option may be repeated to add multiple syntax definitions.

-H FILE, --include-in-header=FILE|URL

Include contents of FILE, verbatim, at the end of the header.
This can be used, for example, to include special CSS or JavaScript in HTML documents. This option can be used repeatedly to include multiple files in the header. They will be included in the order specified. Implies --standalone.

-B FILE, --include-before-body=FILE|URL

Include contents of FILE, verbatim, at the beginning of the
document body (e.g. after the <body> tag in HTML, or the \begin{document} command in LaTeX). This can be used to include navigation bars or banners in HTML documents. This option can be used repeatedly to include multiple files. They will be included in the order specified. Implies --standalone. Note that if the output format is odt, this file must be in OpenDocument XML format suitable for insertion into the body of the document, and if the output is docx, this file must be in appropriate OpenXML format.

-A FILE, --include-after-body=FILE|URL

Include contents of FILE, verbatim, at the end of the document
body (before the </body> tag in HTML, or the \end{document} command in LaTeX). This option can be used repeatedly to include multiple files. They will be included in the order specified. Implies --standalone. Note that if the output format is odt, this file must be in OpenDocument XML format suitable for insertion into the body of the document, and if the output is docx, this file must be in appropriate OpenXML format.

--resource-path=SEARCHPATH

List of paths to search for images and other resources.
The paths should be separated by : on Linux, UNIX, and macOS systems, and by ; on Windows. If --resource-path is not specified, the default resource path is the working directory. Note that, if --resource-path is specified, the working directory must be explicitly listed or it will not be searched. For example: --resource-path=.:test will search the working directory and the test subdirectory, in that order. This option can be used repeatedly. Search path components that come later on the command line will be searched before those that come earlier, so --resource-path foo:bar --resource-path baz:bim is equivalent to --resource-path baz:bim:foo:bar. Note that this option only has an effect when pandoc itself needs to find an image (e.g., in producing a PDF or docx, or when --embed-resources is used.) It will not cause image paths to be rewritten in other cases (e.g., when pandoc is generating LaTeX or HTML).

--request-header=NAME:VAL

Set the request header NAME to the value VAL when making
HTTP requests (for example, when a URL is given on the command line, or when resources used in a document must be downloaded). If you’re behind a proxy, you also need to set the environment variable http_proxy to http://....

--no-check-certificate[=true|false]

Disable the certificate verification to allow access to
unsecure HTTP resources (for example when the certificate is no longer valid or self signed).

Options affecting specific writers

--self-contained[=true|false]

Deprecated synonym for --embed-resources --standalone.

--embed-resources[=true|false]

Produce a standalone HTML file with no external dependencies, using
data: URIs to incorporate the contents of linked scripts, stylesheets, images, and videos. The resulting file should be “self-contained,” in the sense that it needs no external files and no net access to be displayed properly by a browser. This option works only with HTML output formats, including html4, html5, html+lhs, html5+lhs, s5, slidy, slideous, dzslides, and revealjs. Scripts, images, and stylesheets at absolute URLs will be downloaded; those at relative URLs will be sought relative to the working directory (if the first source file is local) or relative to the base URL (if the first source file is remote). Elements with the attribute data-external="1" will be left alone; the documents they link to will not be incorporated in the document. Limitation: resources that are loaded dynamically through JavaScript cannot be incorporated; as a result, fonts may be missing when --mathjax is used, and some advanced features (e.g. zoom or speaker notes) may not work in an offline “self-contained” reveal.js slide show.
For SVG images, img tags with data: URIs are used, unless the image has the class inline-svg, in which case an inline SVG element is inserted. This approach is recommended when there are many occurrences of the same SVG in a document, as <use> elements will be used to reduce duplication.

--link-images[=true|false]

Include links to images instead of embedding the images in ODT.
(This option currently only affects ODT output.)

--html-q-tags[=true|false]

Use <q> tags for quotes in HTML. (This option only has an
effect if the smart extension is enabled for the input format used.)

--ascii[=true|false]

Use only ASCII characters in output. Currently supported for XML
and HTML formats (which use entities instead of UTF-8 when this option is selected), CommonMark, gfm, and Markdown (which use entities), roff man and ms (which use hexadecimal escapes), and to a limited degree LaTeX (which uses standard commands for accented characters when possible).

--reference-links[=true|false]

Use reference-style links, rather than inline links, in writing Markdown
or reStructuredText. By default inline links are used. The placement of link references is affected by the --reference-location option.

--reference-location=block|section|document

Specify whether footnotes (and references, if reference-links is
set) are placed at the end of the current (top-level) block, the current section, or the document. The default is document. Currently this option only affects the markdown, muse, html, epub, slidy, s5, slideous, dzslides, and revealjs writers. In slide formats, specifying --reference-location=section will cause notes to be rendered at the bottom of a slide.

--figure-caption-position=above|below

Specify whether figure captions go above or below figures
(default is below). This option only affects HTML, LaTeX, Docx, ODT, and Typst output.

--table-caption-position=above|below

Specify whether table captions go above or below tables
(default is above). This option only affects HTML, LaTeX, Docx, ODT, and Typst output.

--markdown-headings=setext|atx

Specify whether to use ATX-style (#-prefixed) or
Setext-style (underlined) headings for level 1 and 2 headings in Markdown output. (The default is atx.) ATX-style headings are always used for levels 3+. This option also affects Markdown cells in ipynb output.

--list-tables[=true|false]

Render tables as list tables in RST output.

--top-level-division=default|section|chapter|part

Treat top-level headings as the given division type in
LaTeX, ConTeXt, DocBook, and TEI output. The hierarchy order is part, chapter, then section; all headings are shifted such that the top-level heading becomes the specified type. The default behavior is to determine the best division type via heuristics: unless other conditions apply, section is chosen. When the documentclass variable is set to report, book, or memoir (unless the article option is specified), chapter is implied as the setting for this option. If beamer is the output format, specifying either chapter or part will cause top-level headings to become \part{..}, while second-level headings remain as their default type.
In Docx output, this option adds section breaks before first-level headings if chapter is selected, and before first- and second-level headings if part is selected. Footnote numbers will restart with each section break unless the reference doc modifies this.

-N, --number-sections=[true|false]

Number section headings in LaTeX, ConTeXt, HTML, Docx, ms, or EPUB
output. By default, sections are not numbered. Sections with class unnumbered will never be numbered, even if --number-sections is specified.

--number-offset=NUMBER[,NUMBER,…]

Offsets for section heading numbers. The first number is added
to the section number for level-1 headings, the second for level-2 headings, and so on. So, for example, if you want the first level-1 heading in your document to be numbered “6” instead of “1”, specify --number-offset=5. If your document starts with a level-2 heading which you want to be numbered “1.5”, specify --number-offset=1,4. --number-offset only directly affects the number of the first section heading in a document; subsequent numbers increment in the normal way. Implies --number-sections. Currently this feature only affects HTML and Docx output.

--listings[=true|false]

*Deprecated, use --syntax-highlighting=idiomatic or
--syntax-highlighting=default instead.
Use the [listings] package for LaTeX code blocks. The package does not support multi-byte encoding for source code. To handle UTF-8 you would need to use a custom template. This issue is fully documented here: [Encoding issue with the listings package].

-i, --incremental[=true|false]

Make list items in slide shows display incrementally (one by one).
The default is for lists to be displayed all at once.

--slide-level=NUMBER

Specifies that headings with the specified level create
slides (for beamer, revealjs, pptx, s5, slidy, slideous, dzslides). Headings above this level in the hierarchy are used to divide the slide show into sections; headings below this level create subheads within a slide. Valid values are 0-6. If a slide level of 0 is specified, slides will not be split automatically on headings, and horizontal rules must be used to indicate slide boundaries. If a slide level is not specified explicitly, the slide level will be set automatically based on the contents of the document; see [Structuring the slide show].

--section-divs[=true|false]

Wrap sections in <section> tags (or <div> tags for html4),
and attach identifiers to the enclosing <section> (or <div>) rather than the heading itself (see [Heading identifiers], below). This option only affects HTML output (and does not affect HTML slide formats).

--email-obfuscation=none|javascript|references

Specify a method for obfuscating mailto: links in HTML documents.
none leaves mailto: links as they are. javascript obfuscates them using JavaScript. references obfuscates them by printing their letters as decimal or hexadecimal character references. The default is none.

--id-prefix=STRING

Specify a prefix to be added to all identifiers and internal links
in HTML and DocBook output, and to footnote numbers in Markdown and Haddock output. This is useful for preventing duplicate identifiers when generating fragments to be included in other pages.

-T STRING, --title-prefix=STRING

Specify STRING as a prefix at the beginning of the title
that appears in the HTML header (but not in the title as it appears at the beginning of the HTML body). Implies --standalone.

-c URL, --css=URL

Link to a CSS style sheet. This option can be used repeatedly to
include multiple files. They will be included in the order specified. This option only affects HTML (including HTML slide shows) and EPUB output. It should be used together with -s/--standalone, because the link to the stylesheet goes in the document header.
A stylesheet is required for generating EPUB. If none is provided using this option (or the css or stylesheet metadata fields), pandoc will look for a file epub.css in the user data directory (see --data-dir). If it is not found there, sensible defaults will be used.

--reference-doc=FILE|URL

Use the specified file as a style reference in producing a
docx or ODT file.
Docx
For best results, the reference docx should be a modified
version of a docx file produced using pandoc. The contents of the reference docx are ignored, but its stylesheets and document properties (including margins, page size, header, and footer) are used in the new docx. If no reference docx is specified on the command line, pandoc will look for a file reference.docx in the user data directory (see --data-dir). If this is not found either, sensible defaults will be used.
To produce a custom reference.docx, first get a copy of the default reference.docx: pandoc -o custom-reference.docx --print-default-data-file reference.docx. Then open custom-reference.docx in Word or LibreOffice, modify the styles as you wish, and save the file. For best results, do not make changes to this file other than modifying the styles used by pandoc:
Paragraph styles:
- Normal
- Body Text
- First Paragraph
- Compact
- Title
- Subtitle
- Author
- Date
- Abstract
- AbstractTitle
- Bibliography
- Heading 1
- Heading 2
- Heading 3
- Heading 4
- Heading 5
- Heading 6
- Heading 7
- Heading 8
- Heading 9
- Block Text [for block quotes]
- Footnote Block Text [for block quotes in footnotes]
- Source Code
- Footnote Text
- Definition Term
- Definition
- Caption
- Table Caption
- Image Caption
- Figure
- Captioned Figure
- TOC Heading
Character styles:
- Default Paragraph Font
- Verbatim Char
- Footnote Reference
- Hyperlink
- Section Number
Table style:
- Table
ODT
For best results, the reference ODT should be a modified
version of an ODT produced using pandoc. The contents of the reference ODT are ignored, but its stylesheets are used in the new ODT. If no reference ODT is specified on the command line, pandoc will look for a file reference.odt in the user data directory (see --data-dir). If this is not found either, sensible defaults will be used.
To produce a custom reference.odt, first get a copy of the default reference.odt: pandoc -o custom-reference.odt --print-default-data-file reference.odt. Then open custom-reference.odt in LibreOffice, modify the styles as you wish, and save the file.
PowerPoint
Templates included with Microsoft PowerPoint 2013 (either with
.pptx or .potx extension) are known to work, as are most templates derived from these.
The specific requirement is that the template should contain layouts with the following names (as seen within PowerPoint):
- Title Slide
- Title and Content
- Section Header
- Two Content
- Comparison
- Content with Caption
- Blank
For each name, the first layout found with that name will be used. If no layout is found with one of the names, pandoc will output a warning and use the layout with that name from the default reference doc instead. (How these layouts are used is described in PowerPoint layout choice.)
All templates included with a recent version of MS PowerPoint will fit these criteria. (You can click on Layout under the Home menu to check.)
You can also modify the default reference.pptx: first run pandoc -o custom-reference.pptx --print-default-data-file reference.pptx, and then modify custom-reference.pptx in MS PowerPoint (pandoc will use the layouts with the names listed above).

--split-level=NUMBER

Specify the heading level at which to split an EPUB or
chunked HTML document into separate files. The default is to split into chapters at level-1 headings. In the case of EPUB, this option only affects the internal composition of the EPUB, not the way chapters and sections are displayed to users. Some readers may be slow if the chapter files are too large, so for large documents with few level-1 headings, one might want to use a chapter level of 2 or 3. For chunked HTML, this option determines how much content goes in each “chunk.”

--chunk-template=PATHTEMPLATE

Specify a template for the filenames in a chunkedhtml document.
In the template, %n will be replaced by the chunk number (padded with leading 0s to 3 digits), %s with the section number of the chunk, %h with the heading text (with formatting removed), %i with the section identifier. For example, section-%s-%i.html might be resolved to section-1.1-introduction.html. The characters / and \ are not allowed in chunk templates and will be ignored. The default is %s-%i.html.

--epub-chapter-level=NUMBER

Deprecated synonym for --split-level.

--epub-cover-image=FILE

Use the specified image as the EPUB cover. It is recommended
that the image be less than 1000px in width and height. Note that in a Markdown source document you can also specify cover-image in a YAML metadata block (see [EPUB Metadata], below).

--epub-title-page=true|false

Determines whether a the title page is included in the EPUB
(default is true).

--epub-metadata=FILE

Look in the specified XML file for metadata for the EPUB.
The file should contain a series of [Dublin Core elements]. For example:
```
 <dc:rights>Creative Commons</dc:rights>
 <dc:language>es-AR</dc:language>
```
By default, pandoc will include the following metadata elements: <dc:title> (from the document title), <dc:creator> (from the document authors), <dc:date> (from the document date, which should be in [ISO 8601 format]), <dc:language> (from the lang variable, or, if is not set, the locale), and <dc:identifier id="BookId"> (a randomly generated UUID). Any of these may be overridden by elements in the metadata file.
Note: if the source document is Markdown, a YAML metadata block in the document can be used instead. See below under [EPUB Metadata].

--epub-embed-font=FILE

Embed the specified font in the EPUB. This option can be repeated

to embed multiple fonts. Wildcards can also be used: for example, DejaVuSans-*.ttf. However, if you use wildcards on the command line, be sure to escape them or put the whole filename in single quotes, to prevent them from being interpreted by the shell. To use the embedded fonts, you will need to add declarations like the following to your CSS (see --css):

@font-face {
   font-family: DejaVuSans;
   font-style: normal;
   font-weight: normal;
   src:url("../fonts/DejaVuSans-Regular.ttf");
}
@font-face {
   font-family: DejaVuSans;
   font-style: normal;
   font-weight: bold;
   src:url("../fonts/DejaVuSans-Bold.ttf");
}
@font-face {
   font-family: DejaVuSans;
   font-style: italic;
   font-weight: normal;
   src:url("../fonts/DejaVuSans-Oblique.ttf");
}
@font-face {
   font-family: DejaVuSans;
   font-style: italic;
   font-weight: bold;
   src:url("../fonts/DejaVuSans-BoldOblique.ttf");
}
body { font-family: "DejaVuSans"; }

--epub-subdirectory=DIRNAME

Specify the subdirectory in the OCF container that is to hold
the EPUB-specific contents. The default is EPUB. To put the EPUB contents in the top level, use an empty string.

--ipynb-output=all|none|best

Determines how ipynb output cells are treated. all means
that all of the data formats included in the original are preserved. none means that the contents of data cells are omitted. best causes pandoc to try to pick the richest data block in each output cell that is compatible with the output format. The default is best.

--pdf-engine=PROGRAM

Use the specified engine when producing PDF output.
Valid values are pdflatex, lualatex, xelatex, latexmk, tectonic, wkhtmltopdf, weasyprint, pagedjs-cli, prince, context, groff, pdfroff, and typst. If the engine is not in your PATH, the full path of the engine may be specified here. If this option is not specified, pandoc uses the following defaults depending on the output format specified using -t/--to:
- -t latex or none: pdflatex (other options: xelatex, lualatex, tectonic, latexmk)
- -t context: context
- -t html: weasyprint (other options: prince, wkhtmltopdf, pagedjs-cli; see print-css.rocks for a good introduction to PDF generation from HTML/CSS)
- -t ms: groff
- -t typst: typst
This option is normally intended to be used when a PDF file is specified as -o/--output. However, it may still have an effect when other output formats are requested. For example, ms output will include .pdfhref macros only if a --pdf-engine is selected, and the macros will be differently encoded depending on whether groff or pdfroff is specified.

--pdf-engine-opt=STRING

Use the given string as a command-line argument to the pdf-engine.
For example, to use a persistent directory foo for latexmk‘s auxiliary files, use --pdf-engine-opt=-outdir=foo. Note that no check for duplicate options is done.

Citation rendering

-C, --citeproc

Process the citations in the file, replacing them with
rendered citations and adding a bibliography. Citation processing will not take place unless bibliographic data is supplied, either through an external file specified using the --bibliography option or the bibliography field in metadata, or via a references section in metadata containing a list of citations in CSL YAML format with Markdown formatting. The style is controlled by a [CSL] stylesheet specified using the --csl option or the csl field in metadata. (If no stylesheet is specified, the chicago-author-date style will be used by default.) The citation processing transformation may be applied before or after filters or Lua filters (see --filter, --lua-filter): these transformations are applied in the order they appear on the command line. For more information, see the section on [Citations].
Note: if this option is specified, the citations extension will be disabled automatically in the writer, to ensure that the citeproc-generated citations will be rendered instead of the format’s own citation syntax.

--bibliography=FILE

Set the bibliography field in the document’s metadata to FILE,
overriding any value set in the metadata. If you supply this argument multiple times, each FILE will be added to bibliography. If FILE is a URL, it will be fetched via HTTP. If FILE is not found relative to the working directory, it will be sought in the resource path (see --resource-path).

--csl=FILE

Set the csl field in the document’s metadata to FILE,
overriding any value set in the metadata. (This is equivalent to --metadata csl=FILE.) If FILE is a URL, it will be fetched via HTTP. If FILE is not found relative to the working directory, it will be sought in the resource path (see --resource-path) and finally in the csl subdirectory of the pandoc user data directory.

--citation-abbreviations=FILE

Set the citation-abbreviations field in the document’s metadata to
FILE, overriding any value set in the metadata. (This is equivalent to --metadata citation-abbreviations=FILE.) If FILE is a URL, it will be fetched via HTTP. If FILE is not found relative to the working directory, it will be sought in the resource path (see --resource-path) and finally in the csl subdirectory of the pandoc user data directory.

--natbib

Use natbib for citations in LaTeX output. This option
is not for use with the --citeproc option or with PDF output. It is intended for use in producing a LaTeX file that can be processed with [bibtex].

--biblatex

Use biblatex for citations in LaTeX output. This option
is not for use with the --citeproc option or with PDF output. It is intended for use in producing a LaTeX file that can be processed with [bibtex] or [biber].

Math rendering in HTML

The default is to render TeX math as far as possible using Unicode characters. Formulas are put inside a span with class="math", so that they may be styled differently from the surrounding text if needed. However, this gives acceptable results only for basic math, usually you will want to use --mathjax or another of the following options.

--mathjax[=URL]

Use MathJax to display embedded TeX math in HTML output.
TeX math will be put between $...$ (for inline math) or \[...\] (for display math) and wrapped in <span> tags with class math. Then the MathJax JavaScript will render it. The URL should point to the MathJax.js load script. If a URL is not provided, a link to the Cloudflare CDN will be inserted.

--mathml

Convert TeX math to MathML (in epub3, docbook4,
docbook5, jats, html4 and html5). This is the default in odt output. MathML is supported natively by the main web browsers and select e-book readers.

--webtex[=URL]

Convert TeX formulas to <img> tags that link to an external script
that converts formulas to images. The formula will be URL-encoded and concatenated with the URL provided. For SVG images you can for example use --webtex https://latex.codecogs.com/svg.latex?. If no URL is specified, the CodeCogs URL generating PNGs will be used (https://latex.codecogs.com/png.latex?). Note: the --webtex option will affect Markdown output as well as HTML, which is useful if you’re targeting a version of Markdown without native math support.

--katex[=URL]

Use KaTeX to display embedded TeX math in HTML output.
The URL is the base URL for the KaTeX library. That directory should contain a katex.min.js and a katex.min.css file. If a URL is not provided, a link to the KaTeX CDN will be inserted.

--gladtex

Enclose TeX math in <eq> tags in HTML output. The resulting HTML
can then be processed by [GladTeX] to produce SVG images of the typeset formulas and an HTML file with these images embedded.
```
pandoc -s --gladtex input.md -o myfile.htex
gladtex -d image_dir myfile.htex
# produces myfile.html and images in image_dir
```

Options for wrapper scripts

--dump-args[=true|false]

Print information about command-line arguments to stdout, then exit.
This option is intended primarily for use in wrapper scripts. The first line of output contains the name of the output file specified with the -o option, or - (for stdout) if no output file was specified. The remaining lines contain the command-line arguments, one per line, in the order they appear. These do not include regular pandoc options and their arguments, but do include any options appearing after a -- separator at the end of the line.

--ignore-args[=true|false]

Ignore command-line arguments (for use in wrapper scripts).
Regular pandoc options are not ignored. Thus, for example,
```
pandoc --ignore-args -o foo.html -s foo.txt -- -e latin1
```
is equivalent to
```
pandoc -o foo.html -s
```

Exit codes

If pandoc completes successfully, it will return exit code 0. Nonzero exit codes have the following meanings:

Defaults files

Code	Error
1	PandocIOError
3	PandocFailOnWarningError
4	PandocAppError
5	PandocTemplateError
6	PandocOptionError
21	PandocUnknownReaderError
22	PandocUnknownWriterError
23	PandocUnsupportedExtensionError
24	PandocCiteprocError
25	PandocBibliographyError
31	PandocEpubSubdirectoryError
43	PandocPDFError
44	PandocXMLError
47	PandocPDFProgramNotFoundError
61	PandocHttpError
62	PandocShouldNeverHappenError
63	PandocSomeError
64	PandocParseError
66	PandocMakePDFError
67	PandocSyntaxMapError
83	PandocFilterError
84	PandocLuaError
89	PandocNoScriptingEngine
91	PandocMacroLoop
92	PandocUTF8DecodingError
93	PandocIpynbDecodingError
94	PandocUnsupportedCharsetError
95	PandocInputNotTextError
97	PandocCouldNotFindDataFileError
98	PandocCouldNotFindMetadataFileError
99	PandocResourceNotFound

The --defaults option may be used to specify a package of options, in the form of a YAML or JSON file. Examples in this section will be given in YAML, but the equivalent forms in JSON will also work.

Fields that are omitted will just have their regular default values. So a defaults file can be as simple as one line:

In fields that expect a file path (or list of file paths), the following syntax may be used to interpolate environment variables:

${USERDATA} may also be used; this will always resolve to the user data directory that is current when the defaults file is parsed, regardless of the setting of the environment variable USERDATA.

${.} will resolve to the directory containing the defaults file itself. This allows you to refer to resources contained in that directory:

This environment variable interpolation syntax only works in fields that expect file paths.

Defaults files can be placed in the defaults subdirectory of the user data directory and used from any directory. For example, one could create a file specifying defaults for writing letters, save it as letter.yaml in the defaults subdirectory of the user data directory, and then invoke these defaults from any directory using pandoc --defaults letter or pandoc -dletter.

Note that, where command-line arguments may be repeated (--metadata-file, --css, --include-in-header, --include-before-body, --include-after-body, --variable, --metadata, --syntax-definition), the values specified on the command line will combine with values specified in the defaults file, rather than replacing them.

The following tables show the mapping between the command line and defaults file entries.

command line	defaults file
`foo.md`	`yaml input-file: foo.md`
`foo.md bar.md`	`input-files: - foo.md - bar.md`

The value of input-files may be left empty to indicate input from stdin, and it can be an empty sequence [] for no input.

General options

command line	defaults file
`--from markdown+emoji`	`yaml from: markdown+emoji` `yaml reader: markdown+emoji`
`--to markdown+hard_line_breaks`	`yaml to: markdown+hard_line_breaks` `yaml writer: markdown+hard_line_breaks`
`--output foo.pdf`	`yaml output-file: foo.pdf`
`--output -`	`yaml output-file:`
`--data-dir dir`	`yaml data-dir: dir`
`--defaults file`	`defaults: - file`
`--verbose`	`yaml verbosity: INFO`
`--quiet`	`yaml verbosity: ERROR`
`--fail-if-warnings`	`yaml fail-if-warnings: true`
`--sandbox`	`yaml sandbox: true`
`--log=FILE`	`yaml log-file: FILE`

Options specified in a defaults file itself always have priority over those in another file included with a defaults: entry.

Reader options

Metadata values specified in a defaults file are parsed as literal string text, not Markdown.

command line	defaults file
`--shift-heading-level-by -1`	`yaml shift-heading-level-by: -1`
`--indented-code-classes python`	`indented-code-classes: - python`
`--default-image-extension ".jpg"`	`yaml default-image-extension: '.jpg'`
`--file-scope`	`yaml file-scope: true`
`--citeproc \ --lua-filter count-words.lua \ --filter special.lua`	`filters: - citeproc - count-words.lua - type: json path: special.lua`
`--metadata key=value \ --metadata key2`	`yaml metadata: key: value key2: true`
`--metadata-file meta.yaml`	`metadata-files: - meta.yaml` `metadata-file: meta.yaml`
`--preserve-tabs`	`yaml preserve-tabs: true`
`--tab-stop 8`	`yaml tab-stop: 8`
`--track-changes accept`	`yaml track-changes: accept`
`--extract-media dir`	`yaml extract-media: dir`
`--abbreviations abbrevs.txt`	`yaml abbreviations: abbrevs.txt`
`--typst-input foo=bar`	`yaml typst-inputs: foo: bar`
`--trace`	`yaml trace: true`

Filters will be assumed to be Lua filters if they have the .lua extension, and JSON filters otherwise. But the filter type can also be specified explicitly, as shown. Filters are run in the order specified. To include the built-in citeproc filter, use either citeproc or {type: citeproc}.

General writer options

Options affecting specific writers

Citation rendering

command line	defaults file
`--standalone`	`yaml standalone: true`
`--template letter`	`yaml template: letter`
`--variable key=val \ --variable key2`	`yaml variables: key: val key2: true`
`--eol nl`	`yaml eol: nl`
`--dpi 300`	`yaml dpi: 300`
`--wrap preserve`	`yaml wrap: "preserve"`
`--columns 72`	`yaml columns: 72`
`--table-of-contents`	`yaml table-of-contents: true`
`--toc`	`yaml toc: true`
`--toc-depth 3`	`yaml toc-depth: 3`
`--strip-comments`	`yaml strip-comments: true`
`--no-highlight`	`yaml syntax-highlighting: 'none'`
`--syntax-highlighting kate`	`yaml syntax-highlighting: kate`
`--syntax-definition mylang.xml`	`syntax-definitions: - mylang.xml` `syntax-definition: mylang.xml`
`--include-in-header inc.tex`	`include-in-header: - inc.tex`
`--include-before-body inc.tex`	`include-before-body: - inc.tex`
`--include-after-body inc.tex`	`include-after-body: - inc.tex`
`--resource-path .:foo`	`yaml resource-path: ['.','foo']`
`--request-header foo:bar`	`request-headers: - ["User-Agent", "Mozilla/5.0"]`
`--no-check-certificate`	`yaml no-check-certificate: true`

command line	defaults file
`--self-contained`	`yaml self-contained: true`
`--link-images`	`yaml link-images: true`
`--html-q-tags`	`yaml html-q-tags: true`
`--ascii`	`yaml ascii: true`
`--reference-links`	`yaml reference-links: true`
`--reference-location block`	`yaml reference-location: block`
`--figure-caption-position=above`	`yaml figure-caption-position: above`
`--table-caption-position=below`	`yaml table-caption-position: below`
`--markdown-headings atx`	`yaml markdown-headings: atx`
`--list-tables`	`yaml list-tables: true`
`--top-level-division chapter`	`yaml top-level-division: chapter`
`--number-sections`	`yaml number-sections: true`
`--number-offset=1,4`	`yaml number-offset: \[1,4\]`
`--listings`	`yaml listings: true`
`--list-of-figures`	`yaml list-of-figures: true`
`--lof`	`yaml lof: true`
`--list-of-tables`	`yaml list-of-tables: true`
`--lot`	`yaml lot: true`
`--incremental`	`yaml incremental: true`
`--slide-level 2`	`yaml slide-level: 2`
`--section-divs`	`yaml section-divs: true`
`--email-obfuscation references`	`yaml email-obfuscation: references`
`--id-prefix ch1`	`yaml identifier-prefix: ch1`
`--title-prefix MySite`	`yaml title-prefix: MySite`
`--css styles/screen.css \ --css styles/special.css`	`css: - styles/screen.css - styles/special.css`
`--reference-doc my.docx`	`yaml reference-doc: my.docx`
`--epub-cover-image cover.jpg`	`yaml epub-cover-image: cover.jpg`
`--epub-title-page=false`	`yaml epub-title-page: false`
`--epub-metadata meta.xml`	`yaml epub-metadata: meta.xml`
`--epub-embed-font special.otf \ --epub-embed-font headline.otf`	`epub-fonts: - special.otf - headline.otf`
`--split-level 2`	`yaml split-level: 2`
`--chunk-template="%i.html"`	`yaml chunk-template: "%i.html"`
`--epub-subdirectory=""`	`yaml epub-subdirectory: ''`
`--ipynb-output best`	`yaml ipynb-output: best`
`--pdf-engine xelatex`	`yaml pdf-engine: xelatex`
`--pdf-engine-opt=--shell-escape`	`pdf-engine-opts: - '-shell-escape'` `pdf-engine-opt: '-shell-escape'`

command line	defaults file
`--citeproc`	`yaml citeproc: true`
`--bibliography logic.bib`	`yaml bibliography: logic.bib`
`--csl ieee.csl`	`yaml csl: ieee.csl`
`--citation-abbreviations ab.json`	`yaml citation-abbreviations: ab.json`
`--natbib`	`yaml cite-method: natbib`
`--biblatex`	`yaml cite-method: biblatex`

cite-method can be citeproc, natbib, or biblatex. This only affects LaTeX output. If you want to use citeproc to format citations, you should also set ‘citeproc: true’.

If you need control over when the citeproc processing is done relative to other filters, you should instead use citeproc in the list of filters (see Reader options).

Math rendering in HTML

command line	defaults file
`--mathjax`	`yaml html-math-method: method: mathjax`
`--mathml`	`yaml html-math-method: method: mathml`
`--webtex`	`yaml html-math-method: method: webtex`
`--katex`	`yaml html-math-method: method: katex`
`--gladtex`	`yaml html-math-method: method: gladtex`

If the command line option accepts a URL argument, an url: field can be added to html-math-method:.

Options for wrapper scripts

Templates

command line	defaults file
`--dump-args`	`yaml dump-args: true`
`--ignore-args`	`yaml ignore-args: true`

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

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:

Note that docx, odt, and pptx output can also be customized using --reference-doc. Use a reference doc to adjust the styles in your document; use a template to handle variable interpolation and customize the presentation of metadata, the position of the table of contents, boilerplate text, etc.

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][Extension: yaml_metadata_block] or with the -M/--metadata option. In addition, some variables are given default values by pandoc. See Variables below for a list of variables used in pandoc’s default templates.

If you use custom templates, you may need to revise them as pandoc changes. We recommend tracking the changes in the default templates, and modifying your custom templates accordingly. An easy way to do this is to fork the pandoc-templates repository and merge in changes after each pandoc release.

Template syntax

Comments

Anything between the sequence $-- and the end of the line will be treated as a comment and omitted from the output.

Delimiters

To mark variables and control structures in the template, either $…$ or ${…} may be used as delimiters. The styles may also be mixed in the same template, but the opening and closing delimiter must match in each case. The opening delimiter may be followed by one or more spaces or tabs, which will be ignored. The closing delimiter may be preceded by one or more spaces or tabs, which will be ignored.

Interpolated variables

A slot for an interpolated variable is a variable name surrounded by matched delimiters. Variable names must begin with a letter and can contain letters, numbers, _, -, and .. The keywords it, if, else, endif, for, sep, and endfor may not be used as variable names. Examples:

Variable names with periods are used to get at structured variable values. So, for example, employee.salary will return the value of the salary field of the object that is the value of the employee field.

Conditionals

A conditional begins with if(variable) (enclosed in matched delimiters) and ends with endif (enclosed in matched delimiters). It may optionally contain an else (enclosed in matched delimiters). The if section is used if variable has a true value, otherwise the else section is used (if present). The following values count as true:

Note that in YAML metadata (and metadata specified on the command line using -M/--metadata), unquoted true and false will be interpreted as Boolean values. But a variable specified on the command line using -V/--variable will always be given a string value. Hence a conditional if(foo) will be triggered if you use -V foo=false, but not if you use -M foo=false.

For loops

A for loop begins with for(variable) (enclosed in matched delimiters) and ends with endfor (enclosed in matched delimiters).

You may optionally specify a separator between consecutive values using sep (enclosed in matched delimiters). The material between sep and the endfor is the separator.

Instead of using variable inside the loop, the special anaphoric keyword it may be used.

Partials

Partials (subtemplates stored in different files) may be included by using the name of the partial, followed by (), for example:

Partials will be sought in the directory containing the main template. The file name will be assumed to have the same extension as the main template if it lacks an extension. When calling the partial, the full name including file extension can also be used:

(If a partial is not found in the directory of the template and the template path is given as a relative path, it will also be sought in the templates subdirectory of the user data directory.)

If articles is an array, this will iterate over its values, applying the partial bibentry() to each one. So the second example above is equivalent to

Note that the anaphoric keyword it must be used when iterating over partials. In the above examples, the bibentry partial should contain it.title (and so on) instead of articles.title.

A separator between values of an array may be specified in square brackets, immediately after the variable name or partial:

The separator in this case is literal and (unlike with sep in an explicit for loop) cannot contain interpolated variables or other template directives.

Nesting

To ensure that content is “nested,” that is, subsequent lines indented, use the ^ directive:

In this example, if item.description has multiple lines, they will all be indented to line up with the first line:

To nest multiple lines to the same level, align them with the ^ directive in the template. For example:

If a variable occurs by itself on a line, preceded by whitespace and not followed by further text or directives on the same line, and the variable’s value contains multiple lines, it will be nested automatically.

Breakable spaces

Normally, spaces in the template itself (as opposed to values of the interpolated variables) are not breakable, but they can be made breakable in part of the template by using the ~ keyword (ended with another ~).

Pipes

A pipe transforms the value of a variable or partial. Pipes are specified using a slash (/) between the variable name (or partial) and the pipe name. Example:

Variables

Metadata variables

title, author, date

allow identification of basic aspects of the document. Includedin PDF metadata through LaTeX and ConTeXt. These can be set through a [pandoc title block][Extension: pandoc_title_block], which allows for multiple authors, or through a [YAML metadata block][Extension: yaml_metadata_block]:
```
---
author:
- Aristotle
- Peter Abelard
...
```
Note that if you just want to set PDF or HTML metadata, without including a title block in the document itself, you can set the title-meta, author-meta, and date-meta variables. (By default these are set automatically, based on title, author, and date.) The page title in HTML is set by pagetitle, which is equal to title by default.

subtitle

document subtitle, included in HTML, EPUB, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and docxdocuments

abstract

document summary, included in HTML, LaTeX, ConTeXt, AsciiDoc, and docxdocuments

abstract-title

title of abstract, currently used only in HTML, EPUB, docx, and Typst.This will be set automatically to a localized value, depending on lang, but can be manually overridden.

keywords

list of keywords to be included in HTML, PDF, ODT, pptx, docxand AsciiDoc metadata; repeat as for author, above

subject

document subject, included in ODT, PDF, docx, EPUB, and pptx metadata

description

document description, included in ODT, docx and pptx metadata. Someapplications show this as Comments metadata.

category

document category, included in docx and pptx metadata

Additionally, any root-level string metadata, not included in ODT, docx or pptx metadata is added as a custom property. The following YAML metadata block for instance:

will include title, author and description as standard document properties and subtitle as a custom property when converting to docx, ODT or pptx.

Language variables

lang

identifies the main language of the document using IETF languagetags (following the [BCP 47] standard), such as en or en-GB. The [Language subtag lookup] tool can look up or verify these tags. This affects most formats, and controls hyphenation in PDF output when using LaTeX (through [babel] and [polyglossia]) or ConTeXt.Use native pandoc [Divs and Spans] with the lang attribute to switch the language:
```
---
lang: en-GB
...

Text in the main document language (British English).

::: {lang=fr-CA}
> Cette citation est écrite en français canadien.
:::

More text in English. ['Zitat auf Deutsch.']{lang=de}
```

dir

the base script direction, either rtl (right-to-left)or ltr (left-to-right).For bidirectional documents, native pandoc spans and divs with the dir attribute (value rtl or ltr) can be used to override the base direction in some output formats. This may not always be necessary if the final renderer (e.g. the browser, when generating HTML) supports the [Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm].When using LaTeX for bidirectional documents, only the xelatex engine is fully supported (use --pdf-engine=xelatex).

Variables for HTML

document-css

Enables inclusion of most of the CSS in the styles.htmlpartial (have a look with pandoc --print-default-data-file=templates/styles.html). Unless you use --css, this variable is set to true by default. You can disable it with e.g. pandoc -M document-css=false.

mainfont

sets the CSS font-family property on the html element.

fontsize

sets the base CSS font-size, which you’d usually setto e.g. 20px, but it also accepts pt (12pt = 16px in most browsers).

fontcolor

sets the CSS color property on the html element.

linkcolor

sets the CSS color property on all links.

monofont

sets the CSS font-family property on code elements.

monobackgroundcolor

sets the CSS background-color property on code elementsand adds extra padding.

linestretch

sets the CSS line-height property on the html element,which is preferred to be unitless.

maxwidth

sets the CSS max-width property (default is 36em).

backgroundcolor

sets the CSS background-color property on the html element.

margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom

sets the corresponding CSS padding properties on the body element.

Variables for HTML math

classoption

when using --katex, you can render display math equationsflush left using YAML metadata or with -M classoption=fleqn.

Variables for HTML slides

institute

author affiliations: can be a list when there are multiple authors

revealjs-url

base URL for reveal.js documents (defaults tohttps://unpkg.com/reveal.js@^5)

s5-url

base URL for S5 documents (defaults to s5/default)

slidy-url

base URL for Slidy documents (defaults tohttps://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy2)

slideous-url

base URL for Slideous documents (defaults to slideous)

title-slide-attributes

additional attributes for the title slide of reveal.js slide shows.See [background in reveal.js, beamer, and pptx] for an example.

highlightjs-theme

highlight.js theme for code highlighting when using--syntax-highlighting=idiomatic with reveal.js (defaults to monokai). See the [highlight.js demo page] for available themes.

All reveal.js configuration options are available as variables. To turn off boolean flags that default to true in reveal.js, use 0.

Variables for Beamer slides

aspectratio

slide aspect ratio (43 for 4:3 [default], 169 for 16:9,1610 for 16:10, 149 for 14:9, 141 for 1.41:1, 54 for 5:4, 32 for 3:2)

beameroption

add extra beamer option with \setbeameroption{}

institute

author affiliations: can be a list when there are multiple authors

logo

logo image for slides

logooptions

options for logo image (e.g., width, height)

navigation

controls navigation symbols (default is empty for no navigationsymbols; other valid values are frame, vertical, and horizontal)

section-titles

enables “title pages” for new sections (default is true)

theme, colortheme, fonttheme, innertheme, outertheme

beamer themes

themeoptions, colorthemeoptions, fontthemeoptions, innerthemeoptions, outerthemeoptions

options for LaTeX beamer themes (lists)

titlegraphic

image for title slide: can be a list

titlegraphicoptions

options for title slide image (e.g., width, height)

shorttitle, shortsubtitle, shortauthor, shortinstitute, shortdate

some beamer themes use short versions of the title, subtitle, author,institute, date

Variables for PowerPoint

These variables control the visual aspects of a slide show that are not easily controlled via templates.

monofont

font to use for code.

Variables for LaTeX

Layout

block-headings

make \paragraph and \subparagraph (fourth- andfifth-level headings, or fifth- and sixth-level with book classes) free-standing rather than run-in; requires further formatting to distinguish from \subsubsection (third- or fourth-level headings). Instead of using this option, [KOMA-Script] can adjust headings more extensively:

---
documentclass: scrartcl
header-includes: |
  \RedeclareSectionCommand[
    beforeskip=-10pt plus -2pt minus -1pt,
    afterskip=1sp plus -1sp minus 1sp,
    font=\normalfont\itshape]{paragraph}
  \RedeclareSectionCommand[
    beforeskip=-10pt plus -2pt minus -1pt,
    afterskip=1sp plus -1sp minus 1sp,
    font=\normalfont\scshape,
    indent=0pt]{subparagraph}
...

classoption

option for document class, e.g. oneside; repeat for multiple options:
```
---
classoption:
- twocolumn
- landscape
...
```

documentclass

document class: usually one of the standard classes,[article], [book], and [report]; the [KOMA-Script] equivalents, scrartcl, scrbook, and scrreprt, which default to smaller margins; or [memoir]

geometry

option for geometry package, e.g. margin=1in;repeat for multiple options:
```
---
geometry:
- top=30mm
- left=20mm
- heightrounded
...
```

shorthands

Enable language-specific shorthands when loading babel.(By default, pandoc includes shorthands=off when loading babel, disabling language-specific shorthands.)

hyperrefoptions

option for hyperref package, e.g. linktoc=all;repeat for multiple options:

---
hyperrefoptions:
- linktoc=all
- pdfwindowui
- pdfpagemode=FullScreen
...

indent

if true, pandoc will use document class settings forindentation (the default LaTeX template otherwise removes indentation and adds space between paragraphs)

linestretch

adjusts line spacing using the setspacepackage, e.g. 1.25, 1.5

margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom

sets margins if geometry is not used (otherwise geometryoverrides these)

pagestyle

control \pagestyle{}: the default article classsupports plain (default), empty (no running heads or page numbers), and headings (section titles in running heads)

papersize

paper size, e.g. letter, a4

secnumdepth

numbering depth for sections (with --number-sections optionor numbersections variable)

beamerarticle

produce an article from Beamer slides. Note: if you setthis variable, you must specify the beamer writer but use the default LaTeX template: for example, pandoc -Vbeamerarticle -t beamer --template default.latex.

handout

produce a handout version of Beamer slides (with overlays condensedinto single slides)

csquotes

load csquotes package and use \enquote or \enquote* for quoted text.

csquotesoptions

options to use for csquotes package (repeat for multiple options).

babeloptions

options to pass to the babel package (may be repeated formultiple options). This defaults to provide=* if the main language isn’t a European language written with Latin or Cyrillic script or Vietnamese. Most users will not need to adjust the default setting.

Fonts

fontenc

allows font encoding to be specified through fontenc package (withpdflatex); default is T1 (see [LaTeX font encodings guide])

fontfamily

font package for use with pdflatex:[TeX Live] includes many options, documented in the [LaTeX Font Catalogue]. The default is [Latin Modern][lm].

fontfamilyoptions

options for package used as fontfamily; repeat for multiple options.For example, to use the Libertine font with proportional lowercase (old-style) figures through the [libertinus] package:
```
---
fontfamily: libertinus
fontfamilyoptions:
- osf
- p
...
```

fontsize

font size for body text. The standard classes allow 10pt, 11pt, and12pt. To use another size, set documentclass to one of the [KOMA-Script] classes, such as scrartcl or scrbook.

mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont, CJKmainfont, CJKsansfont, CJKmonofont

font families for use with xelatex orlualatex: take the name of any system font, using the [fontspec] package. CJKmainfont uses the [xecjk] package if xelatex is used, or the [luatexja] package if lualatex is used.

mainfontoptions, sansfontoptions, monofontoptions, mathfontoptions, CJKoptions, luatexjapresetoptions

options to use with mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont,CJKmainfont in xelatex and lualatex. Allow for any choices available through [fontspec]; repeat for multiple options. For example, to use the [TeX Gyre] version of Palatino with lowercase figures:
```
---
mainfont: TeX Gyre Pagella
mainfontoptions:
- Numbers=Lowercase
- Numbers=Proportional
...
```

mainfontfallback, sansfontfallback, monofontfallback

fonts to try if a glyph isn’t found in mainfont, sansfont, or monofontrespectively. These are lists. The font name must be followed by a colon and optionally a set of options, for example:
```
---
mainfontfallback:
  - "FreeSans:"
  - "NotoColorEmoji:mode=harf"
...
```
Font fallbacks currently only work with lualatex.

babelfonts

a map of Babel language names (e.g. chinese) to the fontto be used with the language:
```
---
babelfonts:
  chinese-hant: "Noto Serif CJK TC"
  russian: "Noto Serif"
...
```

microtypeoptions

options to pass to the microtype package

Links

colorlinks

add color to link text; automatically enabled if any oflinkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor, or toccolor are set

boxlinks

add visible box around links (has no effect if colorlinks is set)

linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor, toccolor

color for internal links, external links, citation links, linkedURLs, and links in table of contents, respectively: uses options allowed by [xcolor], including the dvipsnames, svgnames, and x11names lists

links-as-notes

causes links to be printed as footnotes

urlstyle

style for URLs (e.g., tt, rm, sf, and, the default, same)

Front matter

lof, lot

include list of figures, list of tables (can also be set using--lof/--list-of-figures, --lot/--list-of-tables)

thanks

contents of acknowledgments footnote after document title

toc

include table of contents (can also be set using--toc/--table-of-contents)

toc-depth

level of section to include in table of contents

BibLaTeX Bibliographies

biblatexoptions

list of options for biblatex

biblio-style

bibliography style, when used with --natbib and --biblatex

biblio-title

bibliography title, when used with --natbib and --biblatex

bibliography

bibliography to use for resolving references

natbiboptions

list of options for natbib

Other

pdf-trailer-id

the PDF trailer ID; must be two PDF byte strings if set,conventionally with 16 bytes each. E.g., <00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff> <00112233445566778899aabbccddeeff>.See the section on [reproducible builds].

pdfstandard

PDF standard(s) for the document, e.g. ua-2, a-4f.Supports PDF/A, PDF/X, and PDF/UA variants. Requires LuaLaTeX and LaTeX 2023+. Repeat for multiple standards:
```
---
pdfstandard:
- ua-2
- a-4f
...
```

Variables for ConTeXt

fontsize

font size for body text (e.g. 10pt, 12pt)

headertext, footertext

text to be placed in running header or footer (see [ConTeXt Headers andFooters]); repeat up to four times for different placement

indenting

controls indentation of paragraphs, e.g. yes,small,next (see[ConTeXt Indentation]); repeat for multiple options

interlinespace

adjusts line spacing, e.g. 4ex (using setupinterlinespace);repeat for multiple options

layout

options for page margins and text arrangement (see ConTeXt Layout);repeat for multiple options

linkcolor, contrastcolor

color for links outside and inside a page, e.g. red, blue (see[ConTeXt Color])

linkstyle

typeface style for links, e.g. normal, bold, slanted, boldslanted,type, cap, small

lof, lot

include list of figures, list of tables

mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont

font families: take the name of any system font (see[ConTeXt Font Switching])

mainfontfallback, sansfontfallback, monofontfallback

list of fonts to try, in order, if a glyph is not found in themain font. Use \definefallbackfamily-compatible font name syntax. Emoji fonts are unsupported.

margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom

sets margins, if layout is not used (otherwise layoutoverrides these)

pagenumbering

page number style and location (using setuppagenumbering);repeat for multiple options

papersize

paper size, e.g. letter, A4, landscape (see ConTeXt Paper Setup);repeat for multiple options

pdfa

adds to the preamble the setup necessary to generate PDF/Aof the type specified, e.g. 1a:2005, 2a. If no type is specified (i.e. the value is set to True, by e.g. --metadata=pdfa or pdfa: true in a YAML metadata block), 1b:2005 will be used as default, for reasons of backwards compatibility. Using --variable=pdfa without specified value is not supported. To successfully generate PDF/A the required ICC color profiles have to be available and the content and all included files (such as images) have to be standard-conforming. The ICC profiles and output intent may be specified using the variables pdfaiccprofile and pdfaintent. See also [ConTeXt PDFA] for more details.

pdfaiccprofile

when used in conjunction with pdfa, specifies the ICC profile to usein the PDF, e.g. default.cmyk. If left unspecified, sRGB.icc is used as default. May be repeated to include multiple profiles. Note that the profiles have to be available on the system. They can be obtained from [ConTeXt ICC Profiles].

pdfaintent

when used in conjunction with pdfa, specifies the output intent forthe colors, e.g. ISO coated v2 300\letterpercent\space (ECI) If left unspecified, sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is used as default.

toc

include table of contents (can also be set using--toc/--table-of-contents)

urlstyle

typeface style for links without link text, e.g. normal, bold, slanted, boldslanted,type, cap, small

whitespace

spacing between paragraphs, e.g. none, small (using[setupwhitespace])

includesource

include all source documents as file attachments in the PDF file

Variables for wkhtmltopdf

Pandoc uses these variables when creating a PDF with wkhtmltopdf. The --css option also affects the output.

footer-html, header-html

add information to the header and footer

margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom

set the page margins

papersize

sets the PDF paper size

Variables for man pages

adjusting

adjusts text to left (l), right (r), center (c),or both (b) margins

footer

footer in man pages

header

header in man pages

section

section number in man pages

Variables for Texinfo

version

version of software (used in title and title page)

filename

name of info file to be generated (defaults to a name based on thetexi filename)

Variables for Typst

template

Typst template to use (relative path only).

margin

A dictionary with the fields defined in the Typst documentation:x, y, top, bottom, left, right.

papersize

Paper size: a4, us-letter, etc.

mainfont

Name of system font to use for the main font.

fontsize

Font size (e.g., 12pt).

section-numbering

Schema to use for numbering sections, e.g. 1.A.1.

page-numbering

Schema to use for numbering pages, e.g. 1 or i, oran empty string to omit page numbering.

columns

Number of columns for body text.

thanks

contents of acknowledgments footnote after document title

mathfont, codefont

Name of system font to use for math and code, respectively.

linestretch

adjusts line spacing, e.g. 1.25, 1.5

linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor

color for external links, internal links, and citation links,respectively: expects a hexadecimal color code

Variables for ms

fontfamily

A (Avant Garde), B (Bookman), C (Helvetica), HN(Helvetica Narrow), P (Palatino), or T (Times New Roman). This setting does not affect source code, which is always displayed using monospace Courier. These built-in fonts are limited in their coverage of characters. Additional fonts may be installed using the script [install-font.sh] provided by Peter Schaffter and documented in detail on [his web site][ms-font-steps].

indent

paragraph indent (e.g. 2m)

lineheight

line height (e.g. 12p)

pointsize

point size (e.g. 10p)

Variables set automatically

Pandoc sets these variables automatically in response to options or document contents; users can also modify them. These vary depending on the output format, and include the following:

body

body of document

date-meta

the date variable converted to ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD,included in all HTML based formats (dzslides, epub, html, html4, html5, revealjs, s5, slideous, slidy). The recognized formats for date are: mm/dd/yyyy, mm/dd/yy, yyyy-mm-dd (ISO 8601), dd MM yyyy (e.g. either 02 Apr 2018 or 02 April 2018), MM dd, yyyy (e.g. Apr. 02, 2018 or April 02, 2018), yyyy[mm[dd]](e.g.20180402, 201804 or 2018).

header-includes

contents specified by -H/--include-in-header (may have multiplevalues)

include-before

contents specified by -B/--include-before-body (may havemultiple values)

include-after

contents specified by -A/--include-after-body (may havemultiple values)

meta-json

JSON representation of all of the document’s metadata. Fieldvalues are transformed to the selected output format.

numbersections

non-null value if -N/--number-sections was specified

sourcefile, outputfile

source and destination filenames, as given on the command line.sourcefile can also be a list if input comes from multiple files, or empty if input is from stdin. You can use the following snippet in your template to distinguish them:
```
$if(sourcefile)$
$for(sourcefile)$
$sourcefile$
$endfor$
$else$
(stdin)
$endif$
```
Similarly, outputfile can be - if output goes to the terminal.If you need absolute paths, use e.g. $curdir$/$sourcefile$.

pdf-engine

name of PDF engine if provided using --pdf-engine, or thedefault engine for the format if PDF output is requested.

curdir

working directory from which pandoc is run.

pandoc-version

pandoc version.

toc

non-null value if --toc/--table-of-contents was specified

toc-title

title of table of contents (works only with EPUB,HTML, revealjs, opendocument, odt, docx, pptx, beamer, LaTeX). Note that in docx and pptx a custom toc-title will be picked up from metadata, but cannot be set as a variable.

Extensions

The behavior of some of the readers and writers can be adjusted by enabling or disabling various extensions.

An extension can be enabled by adding +EXTENSION to the format name and disabled by adding -EXTENSION. For example, --from markdown_strict+footnotes is strict Markdown with footnotes enabled, while --from markdown-footnotes-pipe_tables is pandoc’s Markdown without footnotes or pipe tables.

The Markdown reader and writer make by far the most use of extensions. Extensions only used by them are therefore covered in the section [Pandoc’s Markdown] below (see Markdown variants for commonmark and gfm). In the following, extensions that also work for other formats are covered.

Note that Markdown extensions added to the ipynb format affect Markdown cells in Jupyter notebooks (as do command-line options like --markdown-headings).

Typography

Extension: smart

Interpret straight quotes as curly quotes, --- as em-dashes, -- as en-dashes, and ... as ellipses. Nonbreaking spaces are inserted after certain abbreviations, such as “Mr.”

input formats

markdown, commonmark, latex, mediawiki, org, rst, twiki, html

output formats

markdown, latex, context, org, rst

enabled by default in

markdown, latex, context (both input and output)

Note: If you are writing Markdown, then the smart extension has the reverse effect: what would have been curly quotes comes out straight.

In LaTeX, smart means to use the standard TeX ligatures for quotation marks (`` and '' for double quotes, ` and ' for single quotes) and dashes (-- for en-dash and --- for em-dash). If smart is disabled, then in reading LaTeX pandoc will parse these characters literally. In writing LaTeX, enabling smart tells pandoc to use the ligatures when possible; if smart is disabled pandoc will use unicode quotation mark and dash characters.

Headings and sections

Extension: auto_identifiers

A heading without an explicitly specified identifier will be automatically assigned a unique identifier based on the heading text.

input formats

markdown, latex, rst, mediawiki, textile, man

output formats

markdown, muse

enabled by default in

markdown, muse, man

Heading	Identifier
`Heading identifiers in HTML`	`heading-identifiers-in-html`
`Maître d'hôtel`	`maître-dhôtel`
`Dogs?--in my house?`	`dogs--in-my-house`
`[HTML], [S5], or [RTF]?`	`html-s5-or-rtf`
`3. Applications`	`applications`
`33`	`section`

These rules should, in most cases, allow one to determine the identifier from the heading text. The exception is when several headings have the same text; in this case, the first will get an identifier as described above; the second will get the same identifier with -1 appended; the third with -2; and so on.

(However, a different algorithm is used if gfm_auto_identifiers is enabled; see below.)

These identifiers are used to provide link targets in the table of contents generated by the --toc|--table-of-contents option. They also make it easy to provide links from one section of a document to another. A link to this section, for example, might look like this:

Note, however, that this method of providing links to sections works only in HTML, LaTeX, and ConTeXt formats.

If the --section-divs option is specified, then each section will be wrapped in a section (or a div, if html4 was specified), and the identifier will be attached to the enclosing <section> (or <div>) tag rather than the heading itself. This allows entire sections to be manipulated using JavaScript or treated differently in CSS.

Extension: ascii_identifiers

Causes the identifiers produced by auto_identifiers to be pure ASCII. Accents are stripped off of accented Latin letters, and non-Latin letters are omitted.

Extension: gfm_auto_identifiers

Changes the algorithm used by auto_identifiers to conform to GitHub’s method. Spaces are converted to dashes (-), uppercase characters to lowercase characters, and punctuation characters other than - and _ are removed. Emojis are replaced by their names.

Math Input

However, they can also be used with HTML input. This is handy for reading web pages formatted using MathJax, for example.

Raw HTML/TeX

The following extensions are described in more detail in their respective sections of [Pandoc’s Markdown]:

Literate Haskell support

Extension: literate_haskell

input formats

markdown, rst, latex

output formats

markdown, rst, latex, html

If you append +lhs (or +literate_haskell) to one of the formats above, pandoc will treat the document as literate Haskell source. This means that

reads literate Haskell source formatted with Markdown conventions and writes ordinary HTML (without bird tracks).

writes HTML with the Haskell code in bird tracks, so it can be copied and pasted as literate Haskell source.

Note that GHC expects the bird tracks in the first column, so indented literate code blocks (e.g. inside an itemized environment) will not be picked up by the Haskell compiler.

Other extensions

Extension: empty_paragraphs

input formats

docx, html

output formats

docx, odt, opendocument, html, latex

Extension: native_numbering

output formats

odt, opendocument, docx

Extension: xrefs_name

Links to headings, figures and tables inside the document are substituted with cross-references that will use the name or caption of the referenced item. The original link text is replaced once the generated document is refreshed. This extension can be combined with xrefs_number in which case numbers will appear before the name.

Text in cross-references is only made consistent with the referenced item once the document has been refreshed.

output formats

odt, opendocument

Extension: xrefs_number

Links to headings, figures and tables inside the document are substituted with cross-references that will use the number of the referenced item. The original link text is discarded. This extension can be combined with xrefs_name in which case the name or caption numbers will appear after the number.

For the xrefs_number to be useful heading numbers must be enabled in the generated document, also table and figure captions must be enabled using for example the native_numbering extension.

Numbers in cross-references are only visible in the final document once it has been refreshed.

output formats

odt, opendocument

Extension: styles ###

When converting from docx, add custom-styles attributes for all docx styles, regardless of whether pandoc understands the meanings of these styles. Because attributes cannot be added directly to paragraphs or text in the pandoc AST, paragraph styles will cause Divs to be created and character styles will cause Spans to be created to hold the attributes. (Table styles will be added to the Table elements directly.) This extension can be used with docx custom styles.

input formats

docx

Extension: amuse

In the muse input format, this enables Text::Amuse extensions to Emacs Muse markup.

Extension: raw_markdown

In the ipynb input format, this causes Markdown cells to be included as raw Markdown blocks (allowing lossless round-tripping) rather than being parsed. Use this only when you are targeting ipynb or a Markdown-based output format.

Extension: citations (typst)

When the citations extension is enabled in typst (as it is by default), typst citations will be parsed as native pandoc citations, and native pandoc citations will be rendered as typst citations.

Extension: citations (org)

When the citations extension is enabled in org, org-cite and org-ref style citations will be parsed as native pandoc citations, and org-cite citations will be used to render native pandoc citations.

Extension: citations (docx)

When citations is enabled in docx, citations inserted by Zotero or Mendeley or EndNote plugins will be parsed as native pandoc citations. (Otherwise, the formatted citations generated by the bibliographic software will be parsed as regular text.)

Extension: fancy_lists (org)

Some aspects of Pandoc’s Markdown fancy lists are also accepted in org input, mimicking the option org-list-allow-alphabetical in Emacs. As in Org Mode, enabling this extension allows lowercase and uppercase alphabetical markers for ordered lists to be parsed in addition to arabic ones. Note that for Org, this does not include roman numerals or the # placeholder that are enabled by the extension in Pandoc’s Markdown.

Extension: element_citations

In the jats output formats, this causes reference items to be replaced with <element-citation> elements. These elements are not influenced by CSL styles, but all information on the item is included in tags.

Extension: ntb

In the context output format this enables the use of Natural Tables (TABLE) instead of the default Extreme Tables (xtables). Natural tables allow more fine-grained global customization but come at a performance penalty compared to extreme tables.

Extension: smart_quotes (org)

Interpret straight quotes as curly quotes during parsing. When writing Org, then the smart_quotes extension has the reverse effect: what would have been curly quotes comes out straight.

Extension: special_strings (org)

Interpret --- as em-dashes, -- as en-dashes, \- as shy hyphen, and ... as ellipses.

Extension: tagging ###

Enabling this extension with context output will produce markup suitable for the production of tagged PDFs. This includes additional markers for paragraphs and alternative markup for emphasized text. The emphasis-command template variable is set if the extension is enabled.

Pandoc’s Markdown

Pandoc understands an extended and slightly revised version of John Gruber’s Markdown syntax. This document explains the syntax, noting differences from original Markdown. Except where noted, these differences can be suppressed by using the markdown_strict format instead of markdown. Extensions can be enabled or disabled to specify the behavior more granularly. They are described in the following. See also Extensions above, for extensions that work also on other formats.

Philosophy

Markdown is designed to be easy to write, and, even more importantly, easy to read:

This principle has guided pandoc’s decisions in finding syntax for tables, footnotes, and other extensions.

There is, however, one respect in which pandoc’s aims are different from the original aims of Markdown. Whereas Markdown was originally designed with HTML generation in mind, pandoc is designed for multiple output formats. Thus, while pandoc allows the embedding of raw HTML, it discourages it, and provides other, non-HTMLish ways of representing important document elements like definition lists, tables, mathematics, and footnotes.

Paragraphs

A paragraph is one or more lines of text followed by one or more blank lines. Newlines are treated as spaces, so you can reflow your paragraphs as you like. If you need a hard line break, put two or more spaces at the end of a line.

Extension: escaped_line_breaks

A backslash followed by a newline is also a hard line break. Note: in multiline and grid table cells, this is the only way to create a hard line break, since trailing spaces in the cells are ignored.

Headings

Setext-style headings

A setext-style heading is a line of text “underlined” with a row of = signs (for a level-one heading) or - signs (for a level-two heading):

The heading text can contain inline formatting, such as emphasis (see Inline formatting, below).

ATX-style headings

An ATX-style heading consists of one to six # signs and a line of text, optionally followed by any number of # signs. The number of # signs at the beginning of the line is the heading level:

Extension: blank_before_header

Original Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a heading. Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at the beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement is that it is all too easy for a # to end up at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line wrapping). Consider, for example:

Extension: space_in_atx_header

Many Markdown implementations do not require a space between the opening #s of an ATX heading and the heading text, so that #5 bolt and #hashtag count as headings. With this extension, pandoc does require the space.

Heading identifiers

Extension: header_attributes

Headings can be assigned attributes using this syntax at the end of the line containing the heading text:

Thus, for example, the following headings will all be assigned the identifier foo:

Note that although this syntax allows assignment of classes and key/value attributes, writers generally don’t use all of this information. Identifiers, classes, and key/value attributes are used in HTML and HTML-based formats such as EPUB and slidy. Identifiers are used for labels and link anchors in the LaTeX, ConTeXt, Textile, Jira markup, and AsciiDoc writers.

Headings with the class unnumbered will not be numbered, even if --number-sections is specified. A single hyphen (-) in an attribute context is equivalent to .unnumbered, and preferable in non-English documents. So,

If the unlisted class is present in addition to unnumbered, the heading will not be included in a table of contents. (Currently this feature is only implemented for certain formats: those based on LaTeX and HTML, PowerPoint, and RTF.)

Extension: implicit_header_references

Pandoc behaves as if reference links have been defined for each heading. So, to link to a heading

If there are multiple headings with identical text, the corresponding reference will link to the first one only, and you will need to use explicit links to link to the others, as described above.

Explicit link reference definitions always take priority over implicit heading references. So, in the following example, the link will point to bar, not to #foo:

Block quotations

Markdown uses email conventions for quoting blocks of text. A block quotation is one or more paragraphs or other block elements (such as lists or headings), with each line preceded by a > character and an optional space. (The > need not start at the left margin, but it should not be indented more than three spaces.)

A “lazy” form, which requires the > character only on the first line of each block, is also allowed:

Among the block elements that can be contained in a block quote are other block quotes. That is, block quotes can be nested:

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 >:

Extension: blank_before_blockquote

Original Markdown syntax does not require a blank line before a block quote. Pandoc does require this (except, of course, at the beginning of the document). The reason for the requirement is that it is all too easy for a > to end up at the beginning of a line by accident (perhaps through line wrapping). So, unless the markdown_strict format is used, the following does not produce a nested block quote in pandoc:

Verbatim (code) blocks

Indented code blocks

A block of text indented four spaces (or one tab) is treated as verbatim text: that is, special characters do not trigger special formatting, and all spaces and line breaks are preserved. For example,

The initial (four space or one tab) indentation is not considered part of the verbatim text, and is removed in the output.

Fenced code blocks

Extension: fenced_code_blocks

In addition to standard indented code blocks, pandoc supports fenced code blocks. These begin with a row of three or more tildes (~) and end with a row of tildes that must be at least as long as the starting row. Everything between these lines is treated as code. No indentation is necessary:

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:

Extension: backtick_code_blocks

Extension: fenced_code_attributes

Optionally, you may attach attributes to fenced or backtick code block using this syntax:

Here mycode is an identifier, haskell and numberLines are classes, and startFrom is an attribute with value 100. Some output formats can use this information to do syntax highlighting. Currently, the only output formats that use this information are HTML, LaTeX, Docx, Ms, and PowerPoint. If highlighting is supported for your output format and language, then the code block above will appear highlighted, with numbered lines. (To see which languages are supported, type pandoc --list-highlight-languages.) Otherwise, the code block above will appear as follows:

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.

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 --syntax-highlighting=none option. To set the highlighting style or method, use --syntax-highlighting. For more information on highlighting, see Syntax highlighting, below.

Line blocks

Extension: line_blocks

A line block is a sequence of lines beginning with a vertical bar (|) followed by a space. The division into lines will be preserved in the output, as will any leading spaces; otherwise, the lines will be formatted as Markdown. This is useful for verse and addresses:

The lines can be hard-wrapped if needed, but the continuation line must begin with a space.

Inline formatting (such as emphasis) is allowed in the content (though it can’t cross line boundaries). Block-level formatting (such as block quotes or lists) is not recognized.

Lists

Bullet lists

A bullet list is a list of bulleted list items. A bulleted list item begins with a bullet (*, +, or -). Here is a simple example:

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:

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):

Block content in list items

A list item may contain multiple paragraphs and other block-level content. However, subsequent paragraphs must be preceded by a blank line and indented to line up with the first non-space content after the list marker.

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:

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.

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.

Ordered lists

Ordered lists work just like bulleted lists, except that the items begin with enumerators rather than bullets.

In original Markdown, enumerators are decimal numbers followed by a period and a space. The numbers themselves are ignored, so there is no difference between this list:

Extension: fancy_lists

Unlike original Markdown, pandoc allows ordered list items to be marked with uppercase and lowercase letters and roman numerals, in addition to Arabic numerals. List markers may be enclosed in parentheses or followed by a single right-parenthesis or period. They must be separated from the text that follows by at least one space, and, if the list marker is a capital letter with a period, by at least two spaces.¹

The fancy_lists extension also allows ‘#’ to be used as an ordered list marker in place of a numeral:

Extension: startnum

Pandoc also pays attention to the type of list marker used, and to the starting number, and both of these are preserved where possible in the output format. Thus, the following yields a list with numbers followed by a single parenthesis, starting with 9, and a sublist with lowercase roman numerals:

Pandoc will start a new list each time a different type of list marker is used. So, the following will create three lists:

Extension: task_lists

Definition lists

Extension: definition_lists

Pandoc supports definition lists, using the syntax of PHP Markdown Extra with some extensions.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 indented block elements (paragraph, code block, list, etc.). The blocks in the definition shoud be indented to the column of the first non-space content after the : or ~ marker, or (if the four_space_rule extension is enabled) four spaces or one tab stop. As with other Markdown lists, you can “lazily” omit indentation in paragraph continuation lines:

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:

Numbered example lists

Extension: example_lists

The special list marker @ can be used for sequentially numbered examples. The first list item with a @ marker will be numbered ‘1’, the next ‘2’, and so on, throughout the document. The numbered examples need not occur in a single list; each new list using @ will take up where the last stopped. So, for example:

The label can be any string of alphanumeric characters, underscores, or hyphens.

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.

This only works reliably, though, if the repeated item is in a list by itself, because each numbered example list will be numbered continuously from its starting number.

Ending a list

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:

You can use the same trick if you want two consecutive lists instead of one big list:

Horizontal rules

A line containing a row of three or more *, -, or _ characters (optionally separated by spaces) produces a horizontal rule:

We strongly recommend that horizontal rules be separated from surrounding text by blank lines. If a horizontal rule is not followed by a blank line, pandoc may try to interpret the lines that follow as a YAML metadata block or a table.

Tables

Four kinds of tables may be used. The first three kinds presuppose the use of a fixed-width font, such as Courier. The fourth kind can be used with proportionally spaced fonts, as it does not require lining up columns.

Extension: table_captions

A caption may optionally be provided with all 4 kinds of tables (as illustrated in the examples below). A caption is a paragraph beginning with the string Table: (or table: or just :), which will be stripped off. It may appear either before or after the table.

Extension: simple_tables

The header and table rows must each fit on one line. Column alignments are determined by the position of the header text relative to the dashed line below it:³

The table must end with a blank line, or a line of dashes followed by a blank line.

The column header row may be omitted, provided a dashed line is used to end the table. For example:

When the header row is omitted, column alignments are determined on the basis of the first line of the table body. So, in the tables above, the columns would be right, left, center, and right aligned, respectively.

Extension: multiline_tables

Multiline tables allow header and table rows to span multiple lines of text (but cells that span multiple columns or rows of the table are not supported). Here is an example:

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.

It is possible for a multiline table to have just one row, but the row should be followed by a blank line (and then the row of dashes that ends the table), or the table may be interpreted as a simple table.

Extension: grid_tables

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.).

Alignments can be specified as with pipe tables, by putting colons at the boundaries of the separator line after the header:

A table foot can be defined by enclosing it with separator lines that use = instead of -:

Grid tables can be created easily using Emacs’ table-mode (M-x table-insert).

Extension: pipe_tables

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:

The cells of pipe tables cannot contain block elements like paragraphs and lists, and cannot span multiple lines. If any line of the Markdown source is longer than the column width (see --columns), then the table will take up the full text width and the cell contents will wrap, with the relative cell widths determined by the number of dashes in the line separating the table header from the table body. (For example ---|- would make the first column 3/4 and the second column 1/4 of the full text width.) On the other hand, if no lines are wider than column width, then cell contents will not be wrapped, and the cells will be sized to their contents.

Note: pandoc also recognizes pipe tables of the following form, as can be produced by Emacs’ orgtbl-mode:

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.

Extension: table_attributes

Attributes may be attached to tables by including them at the end of the caption. (For the syntax, see [header_attributes][Extension: header_attributes].)

Metadata blocks

Extension: pandoc_title_block

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 date 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:

The title may occupy multiple lines, but continuation lines must begin with leading space, thus:

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:

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,

Extension: yaml_metadata_block

A YAML metadata block is a valid YAML object, delimited by a line of three hyphens (---) at the top and a line of three hyphens (---) or three dots (...) at the bottom. The initial line --- must not be followed by a blank line. A YAML metadata block may occur anywhere in the document, but if it is not at the beginning, it must be preceded by a blank line. (Note that JSON may be used as well, because JSON is a subset of YAML.)

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:

Just be sure that the YAML file begins with --- and ends with --- or .... Alternatively, you can use the --metadata-file option. Using that approach however, you cannot reference content (like footnotes) from the main Markdown input document.

Metadata will be taken from the fields of the YAML object and added to any existing document metadata. Metadata can contain lists and objects (nested arbitrarily), but all string scalars will be interpreted as Markdown. Fields with names ending in an underscore will be ignored by pandoc. (They may be given a role by external processors.) Field names must not be interpretable as YAML numbers or boolean values (so, for example, yes, True, and 15 cannot be used as field names).

A document may contain multiple metadata blocks. If two metadata blocks attempt to set the same field, the value from the second block will be taken.

Each metadata block is handled internally as an independent YAML document. This means, for example, that any YAML anchors defined in a block cannot be referenced in another block.

When pandoc is used with -t markdown to create a Markdown document, a YAML metadata block will be produced only if the -s/--standalone option is used. All of the metadata will appear in a single block at the beginning of the document.

Note that YAML escaping rules must be followed. Thus, for example, if a title contains a colon, it must be quoted, and if it contains a backslash escape, then it must be ensured that it is not treated as a YAML escape sequence. The pipe character (|) can be used to begin an indented block that will be interpreted literally, without need for escaping. This form is necessary when the field contains blank lines or block-level formatting:

The literal block after the | must be indented relative to the line containing the |. If it is not, the YAML will be invalid and pandoc will not interpret it as metadata. For an overview of the complex rules governing YAML, see the Wikipedia entry on YAML syntax.

Template variables will be set automatically from the metadata. Thus, for example, in writing HTML, the variable abstract will be set to the HTML equivalent of the Markdown in the abstract field:

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:

To use the structured authors in the example above, you would need a custom template:

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:

Note: the yaml_metadata_block extension works not just with markdown but with commonmark (and it is enabled by default in gfm and commonmark_x). However, in commonmark, gfm, and commonmark_x, the following restrictions apply:

Backslash escapes

Extension: all_symbols_escapable

Except inside a code block or inline code, any punctuation or space character preceded by a backslash will be treated literally, even if it would normally indicate formatting. Thus, for example, if one writes

This rule is easier to remember than original Markdown’s rule, which allows only the following characters to be backslash-escaped:

(However, if the markdown_strict format is used, the original Markdown rule will be used.)

A backslash-escaped space is parsed as a nonbreaking space. In TeX output, it will appear as ~. In HTML and XML output, it will appear as a literal unicode nonbreaking space character (note that it will thus actually look “invisible” in the generated HTML source; you can still use the --ascii command-line option to make it appear as an explicit entity).

A backslash-escaped newline (i.e. a backslash occurring at the end of a line) is parsed as a hard line break. It will appear in TeX output as \\ and in HTML as <br />. This is a nice alternative to Markdown’s “invisible” way of indicating hard line breaks using two trailing spaces on a line.

Inline formatting

Emphasis

A * or _ character surrounded by spaces, or backslash-escaped, will not trigger emphasis:

Extension: intraword_underscores

Because _ is sometimes used inside words and identifiers, pandoc does not interpret a _ surrounded by alphanumeric characters as an emphasis marker. If you want to emphasize just part of a word, use *:

Strikeout

Extension: strikeout

To strike out a section of text with a horizontal line, begin and end it with ~~. Thus, for example,

Superscripts and subscripts

Extension: superscript, subscript

Superscripts may be written by surrounding the superscripted text by ^ characters; subscripts may be written by surrounding the subscripted text by ~ characters. Thus, for example,

The text between ^...^ or ~...~ may not contain spaces or newlines. If the superscripted or subscripted text contains spaces, these spaces must be escaped with backslashes. (This is to prevent accidental superscripting and subscripting through the ordinary use of ~ and ^, and also bad interactions with footnotes.) Thus, if you want the letter P with ‘a cat’ in subscripts, use P~a\ cat~, not P~a cat~.

Verbatim

(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:

Extension: inline_code_attributes

Underline

Small caps

Highlighting

Math

Extension: tex_math_dollars

Anything between two $ characters will be treated as TeX math. The opening $ must have a non-space character immediately to its right, while the closing $ must have a non-space character immediately to its left, and must not be followed immediately by a digit. Thus, $20,000 and $30,000 won’t parse as math. If for some reason you need to enclose text in literal $ characters, backslash-escape them and they won’t be treated as math delimiters.

For display math, use $$ delimiters. (In this case, the delimiters may be separated from the formula by whitespace. However, there can be no blank lines between the opening and closing $$ delimiters.)

TeX math will be printed in all output formats. How it is rendered depends on the output format:

LaTeX

It will appear verbatim surrounded by $...$ (for inlinemath) or \[...\] (for display math).

Markdown, Emacs Org mode, ConTeXt, ZimWiki

It will appear verbatim surrounded by $...$ (for inlinemath) or $$...$$ (for display math).

XWiki

It will appear verbatim surrounded by {{formula}}..{{/formula}}.

reStructuredText

It will be rendered using an interpreted text role :math:.

AsciiDoc

For AsciiDoc output math will appear verbatim surrounded bylatexmath:[...]. For asciidoc_legacy the bracketed material will also include inline or display math delimiters.

Texinfo

It will be rendered inside a @math command.

roff man, Jira markup

It will be rendered verbatim without $‘s.

MediaWiki, DokuWiki

It will be rendered inside <math> tags.

Textile

It will be rendered inside <span class="math"> tags.

RTF, OpenDocument

It will be rendered, if possible, using Unicode characters,and will otherwise appear verbatim.

ODT

It will be rendered, if possible, using MathML.

DocBook

If the --mathml flag is used, it will be rendered using MathMLin an inlineequation or informalequation tag. Otherwise it will be rendered, if possible, using Unicode characters.

Docx and PowerPoint

It will be rendered using OMML math markup.

FictionBook2

If the --webtex option is used, formulas are rendered as imagesusing CodeCogs or other compatible web service, downloaded and embedded in the e-book. Otherwise, they will appear verbatim.

HTML, Slidy, DZSlides, S5, EPUB

The way math is rendered in HTML will depend on thecommand-line options selected. Therefore see [Math rendering in HTML] above.

Raw HTML

Extension: raw_html

Markdown allows you to insert raw HTML (or DocBook) anywhere in a document (except verbatim contexts, where <, >, and & are interpreted literally). (Technically this is not an extension, since standard Markdown allows it, but it has been made an extension so that it can be disabled if desired.)

The raw HTML is passed through unchanged in HTML, S5, Slidy, Slideous, DZSlides, EPUB, Markdown, CommonMark, Emacs Org mode, and Textile output, and suppressed in other formats.

For a more explicit way of including raw HTML in a Markdown document, see the [raw_attribute extension][Extension: raw_attribute].

In the CommonMark format, if raw_html is enabled, superscripts, subscripts, strikeouts and small capitals will be represented as HTML. Otherwise, plain-text fallbacks will be used. Note that even if raw_html is disabled, tables will be rendered with HTML syntax if they cannot use pipe syntax.

Extension: markdown_in_html_blocks

Original Markdown allows you to include HTML “blocks”: blocks of HTML between balanced tags that are separated from the surrounding text with blank lines, and start and end at the left margin. Within these blocks, everything is interpreted as HTML, not Markdown; so (for example), * does not signify emphasis.

Pandoc behaves this way when the markdown_strict format is used; but by default, pandoc interprets material between HTML block tags as Markdown. Thus, for example, pandoc will turn

There is one exception to this rule: text between <script>, <style>, <pre>, and <textarea> tags is not interpreted as Markdown.

This departure from original Markdown should make it easier to mix Markdown with HTML block elements. For example, one can surround a block of Markdown text with <div> tags without preventing it from being interpreted as Markdown.

Extension: native_divs

Use native pandoc Div blocks for content inside <div> tags. For the most part this should give the same output as markdown_in_html_blocks, but it makes it easier to write pandoc filters to manipulate groups of blocks.

Extension: native_spans

Use native pandoc Span blocks for content inside <span> tags. For the most part this should give the same output as raw_html, but it makes it easier to write pandoc filters to manipulate groups of inlines.

Extension: raw_tex

In addition to raw HTML, pandoc allows raw LaTeX, TeX, and ConTeXt to be included in a document. Inline TeX commands will be preserved and passed unchanged to the LaTeX and ConTeXt writers. Thus, for example, you can use LaTeX to include BibTeX citations:

the material between the begin and end tags will be interpreted as raw LaTeX, not as Markdown.

For a more explicit and flexible way of including raw TeX in a Markdown document, see the [raw_attribute extension][Extension: raw_attribute].

Inline LaTeX is ignored in output formats other than Markdown, LaTeX, Emacs Org mode, and ConTeXt.

Generic raw attribute

Extension: raw_attribute

Inline spans and fenced code blocks with a special kind of attribute will be parsed as raw content with the designated format. For example, the following produces a raw roff ms block:

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.

LaTeX macros

Extension: latex_macros

When this extension is enabled, pandoc will parse LaTeX macro definitions and apply the resulting macros to all LaTeX math and raw LaTeX. So, for example, the following will work in all output formats, not just LaTeX:

Note that LaTeX macros will not be applied if they occur inside a raw span or block marked with the raw_attribute extension.

When latex_macros is disabled, the raw LaTeX and math will not have macros applied. This is usually a better approach when you are targeting LaTeX or PDF.

Macro definitions in LaTeX will be passed through as raw LaTeX only if latex_macros is not enabled. Macro definitions in Markdown source (or other formats allowing raw_tex) will be passed through regardless of whether latex_macros is enabled.

Links

Automatic links

If you enclose a URL or email address in pointy brackets, it will become a link:

Inline links

An inline link consists of the link text in square brackets, followed by the URL in parentheses. (Optionally, the URL can be followed by a link title, in quotes.)

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:

Reference links

An explicit reference link has two parts, the link itself and the link definition, which may occur elsewhere in the document (either before or after the link).

The link consists of link text in square brackets, followed by a label in square brackets. (There cannot be space between the two unless the spaced_reference_links extension is enabled.) If the label is empty ([]), then it will be implicitly be taken to be the same as the link text; thus [foo][] is equivalent to [foo][foo]. (If the shortcut_reference_links extension is enabled, the empty [] may be omitted.)

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.

The link definition may come either before or after a reference link that uses the label.

Note: In some 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 all implementations:

Extension: shortcut_reference_links

In a shortcut reference link, the second pair of brackets may be omitted entirely:

Internal links

To link to another section of the same document, use the automatically generated identifier (see Heading identifiers). For example:

Internal links are currently supported for HTML formats (including HTML slide shows and EPUB), LaTeX, and ConTeXt.

Images

A link immediately preceded by a ! will be treated as an image. The link text will be used as the image’s alt text:

Extension: implicit_figures

An image with nonempty alt text, occurring by itself in a paragraph, will be rendered as a figure with a caption. The image’s description will be used as the caption.

How this is rendered depends on the output format. Some output formats (e.g. RTF) do not yet support figures. In those formats, you’ll just get an image in a paragraph by itself, with no caption.

If you just want a regular inline image, just make sure it is not the only thing in the paragraph. One way to do this is to insert a nonbreaking space after the image:

Note that in reveal.js slide shows, an image in a paragraph by itself that has the r-stretch class will fill the screen, and the caption and figure tags will be omitted.

To specify an alt text for the image that is different from the caption, you can use an explicit attribute (assuming the link_attributes extension is set):

For LaTeX output, you can specify a figure’s positioning by adding the latex-placement attribute.

Extension: link_attributes

(This syntax is compatible with PHP Markdown Extra when only #id and .class are used.)

For HTML and EPUB, all known HTML5 attributes except width and height (but including srcset and sizes) are passed through as is. Unknown attributes are passed through as custom attributes, with data- prepended. The other writers ignore attributes that are not specifically supported by their output format.

The width and height attributes on images are treated specially. When used without a unit, the unit is assumed to be pixels. However, any of the following unit identifiers can be used: px, cm, mm, in, inch and %. There must not be any spaces between the number and the unit. For example:

Divs and Spans

Using the native_divs and native_spans extensions (see [above][Extension: native_divs]), HTML syntax can be used as part of Markdown to create native Div and Span elements in the pandoc AST (as opposed to raw HTML). However, there is also nicer syntax available:

Extension: fenced_divs

Allow special fenced syntax for native Div blocks. A Div starts with a fence containing at least three consecutive colons plus some attributes. The attributes may optionally be followed by another string of consecutive colons.

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.

Fenced divs can be nested. Opening fences are distinguished because they must have attributes:

Fences without attributes are always closing fences. Unlike with fenced code blocks, the number of colons in the closing fence need not match the number in the opening fence. However, it can be helpful for visual clarity to use fences of different lengths to distinguish nested divs from their parents.

Extension: bracketed_spans

A bracketed sequence of inlines, as one would use to begin a link, will be treated as a Span with attributes if it is followed immediately by attributes:

Footnotes

Extension: footnotes

The identifiers in footnote references may not contain spaces, tabs, newlines, or the characters ^, [, or ]. These identifiers are used only to correlate the footnote reference with the note itself; in the output, footnotes will be numbered sequentially.

The footnotes themselves need not be placed at the end of the document. They may appear anywhere except inside other block elements (lists, block quotes, tables, etc.). Each footnote should be separated from surrounding content (including other footnotes) by blank lines.

Extension: inline_notes

Inline footnotes are also allowed (though, unlike regular notes, they cannot contain multiple paragraphs). The syntax is as follows:

Citation syntax

Extension: citations

To cite a bibliographic item with an identifier foo, use the syntax @foo. Normal citations should be included in square brackets, with semicolons separating distinct items:

How this is rendered depends on the citation style. In an author-date style, it might render as

See the CSL user documentation for more information about CSL styles and how they affect rendering.

Unless a citation key starts with a letter, digit, or _, and contains only alphanumerics and single internal punctuation characters (:.#$%&-+?<>~/), it must be surrounded by curly braces, which are not considered part of the key. In @Foo_bar.baz., the key is Foo_bar.baz because the final period is not internal punctuation, so it is not included in the key. In @{Foo_bar.baz.}, the key is Foo_bar.baz., including the final period. In @Foo_bar--baz, the key is Foo_bar because the repeated internal punctuation characters terminate the key. The curly braces are recommended if you use URLs as keys: [@{https://example.com/bib?name=foobar&date=2000}, p. 33].

the first item (doe99) has prefix see , locator pp. 33-35, and suffix and *passim*. The second item (smith04) has locator chap. 1 and no prefix or suffix.

Pandoc uses some heuristics to separate the locator from the rest of the subject. It is sensitive to the locator terms defined in the CSL locale files. Either abbreviated or unabbreviated forms are accepted. In the en-US locale, locator terms can be written in either singular or plural forms, as book, bk./bks.; chapter, chap./chaps.; column, col./cols.; figure, fig./figs.; folio, fol./fols.; number, no./nos.; line, l./ll.; note, n./nn.; opus, op./opp.; page, p./pp.; paragraph, para./paras.; part, pt./pts.; section, sec./secs.; sub verbo, s.v./s.vv.; verse, v./vv.; volume, vol./vols.; ¶/¶¶; §/§§. If no locator term is used, “page” is assumed.

In complex cases, you can force something to be treated as a locator by enclosing it in curly braces or prevent parsing the suffix as locator by prepending curly braces:

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:

This will cause the author’s name to be rendered, followed by the bibliographical details. Use this form when you want to make the citation the subject of a sentence.

When you are using a note style, it is usually better to let citeproc create the footnotes from citations rather than writing an explicit note. If you do write an explicit note that contains a citation, note that normal citations will be put in parentheses, while author-in-text citations will not. For this reason, it is sometimes preferable to use the author-in-text style inside notes when using a note style.

Many CSL styles will format citations differently when the same source has been cited earlier. In documents with chapters, it is usually desirable to reset this position information at the beginning of every chapter. To do this, add the class reset-citation-positions to the heading for each chapter:

Note that this class only has an effect when placed on top-level headings; it is ignored in nested blocks.

Non-default extensions

The following Markdown syntax extensions are not enabled by default in pandoc, but may be enabled by adding +EXTENSION to the format name, where EXTENSION is the name of the extension. Thus, for example, markdown+hard_line_breaks is Markdown with hard line breaks.

Extension: rebase_relative_paths

Rewrite relative paths for Markdown links and images, depending on the path of the file containing the link or image link. For each link or image, pandoc will compute the directory of the containing file, relative to the working directory, and prepend the resulting path to the link or image path.

The use of this extension is best understood by example. Suppose you have a subdirectory for each chapter of a book, chap1, chap2, chap3. Each contains a file text.md and a number of images used in the chapter. You would like to have ![image](spider.jpg) in chap1/text.md refer to chap1/spider.jpg and ![image](spider.jpg) in chap2/text.md refer to chap2/spider.jpg. To do this, use

Without this extension, you would have to use ![image](chap1/spider.jpg) in chap1/text.md and ![image](chap2/spider.jpg) in chap2/text.md. Links with relative paths will be rewritten in the same way as images.

Absolute paths and URLs are not changed. Neither are empty paths or paths consisting entirely of a fragment, e.g., #foo.

Note that relative paths in reference links and images will be rewritten relative to the file containing the link reference definition, not the file containing the reference link or image itself, if these differ.

Extension: mark

To highlight out a section of text, begin and end it with with ==. Thus, for example,

Extension: attributes

Allows attributes to be attached to any inline or block-level element when parsing commonmark. The syntax for the attributes is the same as that used in [header_attributes][Extension: header_attributes].

Note that pandoc’s AST does not currently allow attributes to be attached to arbitrary elements. Hence a Span or Div container will be added if needed.

Extension: old_dashes

Selects the pandoc <= 1.8.2.1 behavior for parsing smart dashes: - before a numeral is an en-dash, and -- is an em-dash. This option only has an effect if smart is enabled. It is selected automatically for textile input.

Extension: angle_brackets_escapable

Allow < and > to be backslash-escaped, as they can be in GitHub flavored Markdown but not original Markdown. This is implied by pandoc’s default all_symbols_escapable.

Extension: lists_without_preceding_blankline

Extension: four_space_rule

Selects the pandoc <= 2.0 behavior for parsing lists, so that four spaces indent are needed for list item continuation paragraphs.

Extension: spaced_reference_links

Extension: hard_line_breaks

Causes all newlines within a paragraph to be interpreted as hard line breaks instead of spaces.

Extension: ignore_line_breaks

Causes newlines within a paragraph to be ignored, rather than being treated as spaces or as hard line breaks. This option is intended for use with East Asian languages where spaces are not used between words, but text is divided into lines for readability.

Extension: east_asian_line_breaks

Causes newlines within a paragraph to be ignored, rather than being treated as spaces or as hard line breaks, when they occur between two East Asian wide characters. This is a better choice than ignore_line_breaks for texts that include a mix of East Asian wide characters and other characters.

Extension: emoji

Extension: tex_math_gfm

Extension: tex_math_single_backslash

Causes anything between $ and $ to be interpreted as inline TeX math, and anything between \[ and \] to be interpreted as display TeX math. Note: a drawback of this extension is that it precludes escaping ( and [.

Extension: tex_math_double_backslash

Causes anything between \$ and \$ to be interpreted as inline TeX math, and anything between \\[ and \\] to be interpreted as display TeX math.

Extension: markdown_attribute

By default, pandoc interprets material inside block-level tags as Markdown. This extension changes the behavior so that Markdown is only parsed inside block-level tags if the tags have the attribute markdown=1.

Extension: mmd_title_block

Enables a MultiMarkdown style title block at the top of the document, for example:

See the MultiMarkdown documentation for details. If pandoc_title_block or yaml_metadata_block is enabled, it will take precedence over mmd_title_block.

Extension: abbreviations

Note that the pandoc document model does not support abbreviations, so if this extension is enabled, abbreviation keys are simply skipped (as opposed to being parsed as paragraphs).

Extension: alerts

Extension: autolink_bare_uris

Makes all absolute URIs into links, even when not surrounded by pointy braces <...>.

Extension: mmd_link_attributes

Parses MultiMarkdown-style key-value attributes on link and image references. This extension should not be confused with the link_attributes extension.

Extension: mmd_header_identifiers

Parses MultiMarkdown-style heading identifiers (in square brackets, after the heading but before any trailing #s in an ATX heading).

Extension: gutenberg

Use Project Gutenberg conventions for plain output: all-caps for strong emphasis, surround by underscores for regular emphasis, add extra blank space around headings.

Extension: sourcepos

Include source position attributes when parsing commonmark. For elements that accept attributes, a data-pos attribute is added; other elements are placed in a surrounding Div or Span element with a data-pos attribute.

Extension: short_subsuperscripts

Parse MultiMarkdown-style subscripts and superscripts, which start with a ‘~’ or ‘^’ character, respectively, and include the alphanumeric sequence that follows. For example:

Extension: wikilinks_title_after_pipe

Pandoc supports multiple Markdown wikilink syntaxes, regardless of whether the title is before or after the pipe.

Markdown variants

In addition to pandoc’s extended Markdown, the following Markdown variants are supported:

To see which extensions are supported for a given format, and which are enabled by default, you can use the command

Note that the list of extensions for commonmark, gfm, and commonmark_x are defined relative to default commonmark. So, for example, backtick_code_blocks does not appear as an extension, since it is enabled by default and cannot be disabled.

Citations

When the --citeproc option is used, pandoc can automatically generate citations and a bibliography in a number of styles. Basic usage is

Specifying bibliographic data

You can specify an external bibliography using the bibliography metadata field in a YAML metadata section or the --bibliography command line argument. If you want to use multiple bibliography files, you can supply multiple --bibliography arguments or set bibliography metadata field to YAML array. A bibliography may have any of these formats:

Format	File extension
BibLaTeX	.bib
BibTeX	.bibtex
CSL JSON	.json
CSL YAML	.yaml
RIS	.ris

Note that .bib can be used with both BibTeX and BibLaTeX files; use the extension .bibtex to force interpretation as BibTeX.

In BibTeX and BibLaTeX databases, pandoc parses LaTeX markup inside fields such as title; in CSL YAML databases, pandoc Markdown; and in CSL JSON databases, an HTML-like markup:

<i>...</i>

italics

<b>...</b>

bold

<span style="font-variant:small-caps;">...</span> or <sc>...</sc>

small capitals

<sub>...</sub>

subscript

<sup>...</sup>

superscript

<span class="nocase">...</span>

prevent a phrase from being capitalized as title case

As an alternative to specifying a bibliography file using --bibliography or the YAML metadata field bibliography, you can include the citation data directly in the references field of the document’s YAML metadata. The field should contain an array of YAML-encoded references, for example:

If both an external bibliography and inline (YAML metadata) references are provided, both will be used. In case of conflicting ids, the inline references will take precedence.

Note that pandoc can be used to produce such a YAML metadata section from a BibTeX, BibLaTeX, or CSL JSON bibliography:

Running pandoc on a bibliography file with the --citeproc option will create a formatted bibliography in the format of your choice:

Capitalization in titles

If you are using a bibtex or biblatex bibliography, then observe the following rules:

If you are using a CSL bibliography (either JSON or YAML), then observe the following rules:

Conference Papers, Published vs. Unpublished

For a formally published conference paper, use the biblatex entry type inproceedings (which will be mapped to CSL paper-conference).

For an unpublished manuscript, use the biblatex entry type unpublished without an eventtitle field (this entry type will be mapped to CSL manuscript).

For a talk, an unpublished conference paper, or a poster presentation, use the biblatex entry type unpublished with an eventtitle field (this entry type will be mapped to CSL speech). Use the biblatex type field to indicate the type, e.g. “Paper”, or “Poster”. venue and eventdate may be useful too, though eventdate will not be rendered by most CSL styles. Note that venue is for the event’s venue, unlike location which describes the publisher’s location; do not use the latter for an unpublished conference paper.

Specifying a citation style

Citations and references can be formatted using any style supported by the Citation Style Language, listed in the Zotero Style Repository. These files are specified using the --csl option or the csl (or citation-style) metadata field. By default, pandoc will use the Chicago Manual of Style author-date format. (You can override this default by copying a CSL style of your choice to default.csl in your user data directory.) The CSL project provides further information on finding and editing styles.

The --citation-abbreviations option (or the citation-abbreviations metadata field) may be used to specify a JSON file containing abbreviations of journals that should be used in formatted bibliographies when form="short" is specified. The format of the file can be illustrated with an example:

Citations in note styles

Pandoc’s citation processing is designed to allow you to move between author-date, numerical, and note styles without modifying the Markdown source. When you’re using a note style, avoid inserting footnotes manually. Instead, insert citations just as you would in an author-date style—for example,

The footnote will be created automatically. Pandoc will take care of removing the space and moving the note before or after the period, depending on the setting of notes-after-punctuation, as described below in Other relevant metadata fields.

In some cases you may need to put a citation inside a regular footnote. Normal citations in footnotes (such as [@foo, p. 33]) will be rendered in parentheses. In-text citations (such as @foo [p. 33]) will be rendered without parentheses. (A comma will be added if appropriate.) Thus:

Placement of the bibliography

If the style calls for a list of works cited, it will be placed in a div with id refs, if one exists:⁴

Otherwise, it will be placed at the end of the document. Generation of the bibliography can be suppressed by setting suppress-bibliography: true in the YAML metadata.

If you wish the bibliography to have a section heading, you can set reference-section-title in the metadata, or put the heading at the beginning of the div with id refs (if you are using it) or at the end of your document:

The bibliography will be inserted after this heading. Note that the unnumbered class will be added to this heading, so that the section will not be numbered.

If you want to put the bibliography into a variable in your template, one way to do that is to put the div with id refs into a metadata field, e.g.

You can then put the variable $refs$ into your template where you want the bibliography to be placed.

Including uncited items in the bibliography

If you want to include items in the bibliography without actually citing them in the body text, you can define a dummy nocite metadata field and put the citations there:

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:

For LaTeX output, you can also use natbib or biblatex to render the bibliography. In order to do so, specify bibliography files as outlined above, and add --natbib or --biblatex argument to pandoc invocation. Bear in mind that bibliography files have to be in either BibTeX (for --natbib) or BibLaTeX (for --biblatex) format.

Other relevant metadata fields

link-citations

If true, citations will be hyperlinked to thecorresponding bibliography entries (for author-date and numerical styles only). Defaults to false.

link-bibliography

If true, DOIs, PMCIDs, PMID, and URLs in bibliographies willbe rendered as hyperlinks. (If an entry contains a DOI, PMCID, PMID, or URL, but none of these fields are rendered by the style, then the title, or in the absence of a title the whole entry, will be hyperlinked.) Defaults to true.

lang

The lang field will affect how the style is localized,for example in the translation of labels, the use of quotation marks, and the way items are sorted. (For backwards compatibility, locale may be used instead of lang, but this use is deprecated.)A BCP 47 language tag is expected: for example, en, de, en-US, fr-CA, ug-Cyrl. The unicode extension syntax (after -u-) may be used to specify options for collation (sorting) more precisely. Here are some examples:
- zh-u-co-pinyin: Chinese with the Pinyin collation.
- es-u-co-trad: Spanish with the traditional collation (with Ch sorting after C).
- fr-u-kb: French with “backwards” accent sorting (with coté sorting after côte).
- en-US-u-kf-upper: English with uppercase letters sorting before lower (default is lower before upper).

notes-after-punctuation

If true (the default for note styles), pandoc will putfootnote references or superscripted numerical citations after following punctuation. For example, if the source contains blah blah [@jones99]., the result will look like blah blah.[^1], with the note moved after the period and the space collapsed. If false, the space will still be collapsed, but the footnote will not be moved after the punctuation. The option may also be used in numerical styles that use superscripts for citation numbers (but for these styles the default is not to move the citation).

Slide shows

You can use pandoc to produce an HTML + JavaScript slide presentation that can be viewed via a web browser. There are five ways to do this, using S5, DZSlides, Slidy, Slideous, or reveal.js. You can also produce a PDF slide show using LaTeX beamer, or slide shows in Microsoft PowerPoint format.

For Slidy, Slideous, reveal.js, and S5, the file produced by pandoc with the -s/--standalone option embeds a link to JavaScript and CSS files, which are assumed to be available at the relative path s5/default (for S5), slideous (for Slideous), reveal.js (for reveal.js), or at the Slidy website at w3.org (for Slidy). (These paths can be changed by setting the slidy-url, slideous-url, revealjs-url, or s5-url variables; see Variables for HTML slides, above.) For DZSlides, the (relatively short) JavaScript and CSS are included in the file by default.

With all HTML slide formats, the --self-contained option can be used to produce a single file that contains all of the data necessary to display the slide show, including linked scripts, stylesheets, images, and videos.

Note that a reveal.js slide show can also be converted to a PDF by printing it to a file from the browser.

Structuring the slide show

By default, the slide level is the highest heading level in the hierarchy that is followed immediately by content, and not another heading, somewhere in the document. In the example above, level-1 headings are always followed by level-2 headings, which are followed by content, so the slide level is 2. This default can be overridden using the --slide-level option.

These rules are designed to support many different styles of slide show. If you don’t care about structuring your slides into sections and subsections, you can either just use level-1 headings for all slides (in that case, level 1 will be the slide level) or you can set --slide-level=0.

Note: in reveal.js slide shows, if slide level is 2, a two-dimensional layout will be produced, with level-1 headings building horizontally and level-2 headings building vertically. It is not recommended that you use deeper nesting of section levels with reveal.js unless you set --slide-level=0 (which lets reveal.js produce a one-dimensional layout and only interprets horizontal rules as slide boundaries).

PowerPoint layout choice

When creating slides, the pptx writer chooses from a number of pre-defined layouts, based on the content of the slide:

Title Slide

This layout is used for the initial slide, which is generated andfilled from the metadata fields date, author, and title, if they are present.

Section Header

This layout is used for what pandoc calls “title slides”, i.e.slides which start with a header which is above the slide level in the hierarchy.

Two Content

This layout is used for two-column slides, i.e. slides containing adiv with class columns which contains at least two divs with class column.

Comparison

This layout is used instead of “Two Content” for any two-columnslides in which at least one column contains text followed by non-text (e.g. an image or a table).

Content with Caption

This layout is used for any non-two-column slides which contain textfollowed by non-text (e.g. an image or a table).

Blank

This layout is used for any slides which only contain blank content,e.g. a slide containing only speaker notes, or a slide containing only a non-breaking space.

Title and Content

This layout is used for all slides which do not match the criteriafor another layout.

These layouts are chosen from the default pptx reference doc included with pandoc, unless an alternative reference doc is specified using --reference-doc.

Incremental lists

By default, these writers produce lists that display “all at once.” If you want your lists to display incrementally (one item at a time), use the -i option. If you want a particular list to depart from the default, put it in a div block with class incremental or nonincremental. So, for example, using the fenced div syntax, the following would be incremental regardless of the document default:

While using incremental and nonincremental divs is the recommended method of setting incremental lists on a per-case basis, an older method is also supported: putting lists inside a blockquote will depart from the document default (that is, it will display incrementally without the -i option and all at once with the -i option):

Both methods allow incremental and nonincremental lists to be mixed in a single document.

If you want to include a block-quoted list, you can work around this behavior by putting the list inside a fenced div, so that it is not the direct child of the block quote:

Inserting pauses

You can add “pauses” within a slide by including a paragraph containing three dots, separated by spaces:

Styling the slides

You can change the style of HTML slides by putting customized CSS files in $DATADIR/s5/default (for S5), $DATADIR/slidy (for Slidy), or $DATADIR/slideous (for Slideous), where $DATADIR is the user data directory (see --data-dir, above). The originals may be found in pandoc’s system data directory (generally $CABALDIR/pandoc-VERSION/s5/default). Pandoc will look there for any files it does not find in the user data directory.

For dzslides, the CSS is included in the HTML file itself, and may be modified there.

All reveal.js configuration options can be set through variables. For example, themes can be used by setting the theme variable:

To style beamer slides, you can specify a theme, colortheme, fonttheme, innertheme, and outertheme, using the -V option:

Note that heading attributes will turn into slide attributes (on a <div> or <section>) in HTML slide formats, allowing you to style individual slides. In beamer, a number of heading classes and attributes are recognized as frame options and will be passed through as options to the frame: see Frame attributes in beamer, below.

Speaker notes

Speaker notes are supported in reveal.js, PowerPoint (pptx), and beamer output. You can add notes to your Markdown document thus:

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.

Speaker notes on the title slide (PowerPoint)

For PowerPoint output, the title slide is generated from the document’s YAML metadata block. To add speaker notes to this slide, use a notes field in the metadata:

Columns

To put material in side by side columns, you can use a native div container with class columns, containing two or more div containers with class column and a width attribute:

Additional columns attributes in beamer

The div containers with classes columns and column can optionally have an align attribute. The class columns can optionally have a totalwidth attribute or an onlytextwidth class.

The align attributes on columns and column can be used with the values top, top-baseline, center and bottom to vertically align the columns. It defaults to top in columns.

Frame attributes in beamer

Sometimes it is necessary to add the LaTeX [fragile] option to a frame in beamer (for example, when using the minted environment). This can be forced by adding the fragile class to the heading introducing the slide:

All of the other frame attributes described in Section 8.1 of the Beamer User’s Guide may also be used: allowdisplaybreaks, allowframebreaks, b, c, s, t, environment, label, plain, shrink, standout, noframenumbering, squeeze. allowframebreaks is recommended especially for bibliographies, as it allows multiple slides to be created if the content overfills the frame:

In addition, the frameoptions attribute may be used to pass arbitrary frame options to a beamer slide:

Background in reveal.js, beamer, and pptx

Background images can be added to self-contained reveal.js slide shows, beamer slide shows, and pptx slide shows.

On all slides (beamer, reveal.js, pptx)

With beamer and reveal.js, the configuration option background-image can be used either in the YAML metadata block or as a command-line variable to get the same image on every slide.

Note that for reveal.js, the background-image will be used as a parallaxBackgroundImage (see below).

For pptx, you can use a --reference-doc in which background images have been set on the relevant layouts.

parallaxBackgroundImage (reveal.js)

For reveal.js, there is also the reveal.js-native option parallaxBackgroundImage, which produces a parallax scrolling background. You must also set parallaxBackgroundSize, and can optionally set parallaxBackgroundHorizontal and parallaxBackgroundVertical to configure the scrolling behaviour. See the reveal.js documentation for more details about the meaning of these options.

In reveal.js’s overview mode, the parallaxBackgroundImage will show up only on the first slide.

On individual slides (reveal.js, pptx)

To set an image for a particular reveal.js or pptx slide, add {background-image="/path/to/image"} to the first slide-level heading on the slide (which may even be empty).

As the HTML writers pass unknown attributes through, other reveal.js background settings also work on individual slides, including background-size, background-repeat, background-color, transition, and transition-speed. (The data- prefix will automatically be added.)

Note: data-background-image is also supported in pptx for consistency with reveal.js – if background-image isn’t found, data-background-image will be checked.

On the title slide (reveal.js, pptx)

To add a background image to the automatically generated title slide for reveal.js, use the title-slide-attributes variable in the YAML metadata block. It must contain a map of attribute names and values. (Note that the data- prefix is required here, as it isn’t added automatically.)

For pptx, pass a --reference-doc with the background image set on the “Title Slide” layout.

Example (reveal.js)

EPUBs

EPUB Metadata

There are two ways to specify metadata for an EPUB. The first is to use the --epub-metadata option, which takes as its argument an XML file with Dublin Core elements.

The second way is to use YAML, either in a [YAML metadata block][Extension: yaml_metadata_block] in a Markdown document, or in a separate YAML file specified with --metadata-file. Here is an example of a YAML metadata block with EPUB metadata:

identifier

Either a string value or an object with fields text andscheme. Valid values for scheme are ISBN-10, GTIN-13, UPC, ISMN-10, DOI, LCCN, GTIN-14, ISBN-13, Legal deposit number, URN, OCLC number, Co-publisher’s ISBN-13, ISMN-13, ISBN-A, JP e-code, OLCC number, JP Magazine ID, UPC-12+5, BNF Control number, ISSN-13, ARK, Digital file internal version number.

title

Either a string value, or an object with fields file-as andtype, or a list of such objects. Valid values for type are main, subtitle, short, collection, edition, extended.

creator

Either a string value, or an object with fields role, file-as,and text, or a list of such objects. Valid values for role are [MARC relators], but pandoc will attempt to translate the human-readable versions (like “author” and “editor”) to the appropriate marc relators.

contributor

Same format as creator.

date

A string value in YYYY-MM-DD format. (Only the year is necessary.)Pandoc will attempt to convert other common date formats.

lang (or legacy: language)

A string value in BCP 47 format. Pandoc will default to the locallanguage if nothing is specified.

subject

Either a string value, or an object with fields text, authority,and term, or a list of such objects. Valid values for authority are either a [reserved authority value] (currently AAT, BIC, BISAC, CLC, DDC, CLIL, EuroVoc, MEDTOP, LCSH, NDC, Thema, UDC, and WGS) or an absolute IRI identifying a custom scheme. Valid values for term are defined by the scheme.

description

A string value.

type

A string value.

format

A string value.

relation

A string value.

coverage

A string value.

rights

A string value.

belongs-to-collection

A string value. Identifies the name of a collection to whichthe EPUB Publication belongs.

group-position

The group-position field indicates the numeric position in whichthe EPUB Publication belongs relative to other works belonging to the same belongs-to-collection field.

cover-image

A string value (path to cover image).

css (or legacy: stylesheet)

A string value (path to CSS stylesheet).

page-progression-direction

Either ltr or rtl. Specifies the page-progression-directionattribute for the [spine element].

accessModes

An array of strings (schema).Defaults to ["textual"].

accessModeSufficient

An array of strings (schema).Defaults to ["textual"].

accessibilityHazards

An array of strings (schema).Defaults to ["none"].

accessibilityFeatures

An array of strings (schema).Defaults to

- "alternativeText"
- "readingOrder"
- "structuralNavigation"
- "tableOfContents"

accessibilitySummary

A string value.

ibooks

iBooks-specific metadata, with the following fields:
- version: (string)
- specified-fonts: true|false (default false)
- ipad-orientation-lock: portrait-only|landscape-only
- iphone-orientation-lock: portrait-only|landscape-only
- binding: true|false (default true)
- scroll-axis: vertical|horizontal|default

The epub:type attribute

For epub3 output, you can mark up the heading that corresponds to an EPUB chapter using the epub:type attribute. For example, to set the attribute to the value prologue, use this Markdown:

Pandoc will output <body epub:type="bodymatter">, unless you use one of the following values, in which case either frontmatter or backmatter will be output.

Linked media

`epub:type` of first section	`epub:type` of body
prologue	frontmatter
abstract	frontmatter
acknowledgments	frontmatter
copyright-page	frontmatter
dedication	frontmatter
credits	frontmatter
keywords	frontmatter
imprint	frontmatter
contributors	frontmatter
other-credits	frontmatter
errata	frontmatter
revision-history	frontmatter
titlepage	frontmatter
halftitlepage	frontmatter
seriespage	frontmatter
foreword	frontmatter
preface	frontmatter
frontispiece	frontmatter
appendix	backmatter
colophon	backmatter
bibliography	backmatter
index	backmatter

By default, pandoc will download media referenced from any <img>, <audio>, <video> or <source> element present in the generated EPUB, and include it in the EPUB container, yielding a completely self-contained EPUB. If you want to link to external media resources instead, use raw HTML in your source and add data-external="1" to the tag with the src attribute. For example:

If the input format already is HTML then data-external="1" will work as expected for <img> elements. Similarly, for Markdown, external images can be declared with ![img](url){external=1}. Note that this only works for images; the other media elements have no native representation in pandoc’s AST and require the use of raw HTML.

EPUB styling

By default, pandoc will include some basic styling contained in its epub.css data file. (To see this, use pandoc --print-default-data-file epub.css.) To use a different CSS file, just use the --css command line option. A few inline styles are defined in addition; these are essential for correct formatting of pandoc’s HTML output.

The document-css variable may be set if the more opinionated styling of pandoc’s default HTML templates is desired (and in that case the variables defined in Variables for HTML may be used to fine-tune the style).

Chunked HTML

pandoc -t chunkedhtml will produce a zip archive of linked HTML files, one for each section of the original document. Internal links will automatically be adjusted to point to the right place, images linked to under the working directory will be incorporated, and navigation links will be added. In addition, a JSON file sitemap.json will be included describing the hierarchical structure of the files.

If an output file without an extension is specified, then it will be interpreted as a directory and the zip archive will be automatically unpacked into it (unless it already exists, in which case an error will be raised). Otherwise a .zip file will be produced.

The navigation links can be customized by adjusting the template. By default, a table of contents is included only on the top page. To include it on every page, set the toc variable manually.

Jupyter notebooks

When creating a Jupyter notebook, pandoc will try to infer the notebook structure. Code blocks with the class code will be taken as code cells, and intervening content will be taken as Markdown cells. Attachments will automatically be created for images in Markdown cells. Metadata will be taken from the jupyter metadata field. For example:

If you want to add cell attributes, group cells differently, or add output to code cells, then you need to include divs to indicate the structure. You can use either [fenced divs][Extension: fenced_divs] or [native divs][Extension: native_divs] for this. Here is an example:

If you include raw HTML or TeX in an output cell, use the raw attribute, as shown in the last cell of the example above. Although pandoc can process “bare” raw HTML and TeX, the result is often interspersed raw elements and normal textual elements, and in an output cell pandoc expects a single, connected raw block. To avoid using raw HTML or TeX except when marked explicitly using raw attributes, we recommend specifying the extensions -raw_html-raw_tex+raw_attribute when translating between Markdown and ipynb notebooks.

Note that options and extensions that affect reading and writing of Markdown will also affect Markdown cells in ipynb notebooks. For example, --wrap=preserve will preserve soft line breaks in Markdown cells; --markdown-headings=setext will cause Setext-style headings to be used; and --preserve-tabs will prevent tabs from being turned to spaces.

Vimdoc

Vimdoc writer generates Vim help files and makes use of the following metadata variables:

Complete header requires abstract, author, title and filename to be set. Compiling file with such metadata produces the following file (assumes --standalone, see Templates):

If vimdoc-prefix is set, all non-command tags are prefixed with its value, it is used to prevent tag collision: all headers have a tag (either inferred or explicit) and multiple help pages can have the same header names, therefore collision is to be expected. Let our input be the following markdown file:

Convert it to vimdoc with metadata variable set (e.g. with -M vimdoc-prefix=pandoc)

vim.b and Span got their prefixes but not :Fnl because ex-commands (those starting with :) don’t get a prefix, since they are considered unique across help pages.

Vim traditionally wraps at 78, but Pandoc defaults to 72. Use --columns 78 to match Vim.

Syntax highlighting

Pandoc will automatically highlight syntax in fenced code blocks that are marked with a language name. The Haskell library skylighting is used for highlighting. Currently highlighting is supported only for HTML, EPUB, Docx, Ms, Man, Typst, 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 --syntax-highlighting option. The default color scheme is pygments, which imitates the default color scheme used by the Python library pygments (though pygments is not actually used to do the highlighting). To see a list of highlight styles, type pandoc --list-highlight-styles.

If you are not satisfied with the predefined styles, you can use --print-highlight-style to generate a JSON .theme file which can be modified and used as the argument to --syntax-highlighting. To get a JSON version of the pygments style, for example:

If you are not satisfied with the built-in highlighting, or you want to highlight a language that isn’t supported, you can use the --syntax-definition option to load a KDE-style XML syntax definition file. Before writing your own, have a look at KDE’s repository of syntax definitions.

If you receive an error that pandoc “Could not read highlighting theme”, check that the JSON file is encoded with UTF-8 and has no Byte-Order Mark (BOM).

To use a format’s idiomatic syntax highlighting instead of pandoc’s built-in highlighting, use --syntax-highlighting=idiomatic. Currently, idiomatic only affects the following formats:

Custom Styles

Output

By default, pandoc’s odt, docx and ICML output applies a predefined set of styles for blocks such as paragraphs and block quotes, and uses largely default formatting (italics, bold) for inlines. This will work for most purposes, especially alongside a reference doc 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, Span, or Table with the attribute custom-style, pandoc will apply your specified style to the contained elements (with the exception of elements whose function depends on a style, like headings, code blocks, block quotes, or links). So, for example, using the bracketed_spans syntax,

would produce a file with “Get out” styled with character style Emphatically. Similarly, using the fenced_divs syntax,

Styles will be defined in the output file as inheriting from normal text (docx) or Default Paragraph Style (odt), if the styles are not yet in your reference doc. If they are already defined, pandoc will not alter the definition.

This feature allows for greatest customization in conjunction with pandoc filters. If you want all paragraphs after block quotes to be indented, you can write a filter to apply the styles necessary. If you want all italics to be transformed to the Emphasis character style (perhaps to change their color), you can write a filter which will transform all italicized inlines to inlines within an Emphasis custom-style span.

For docx or odt output, you don’t need to enable any extensions for custom styles to work.

In InDesign you’ll see that object style given to the image, and you’ll be able to customize it, or load its definition from a template of yours.

Input

The docx reader, by default, only reads those styles that it can convert into pandoc elements, either by direct conversion or interpreting the derivation of the input document’s styles.

By enabling the styles extension in the docx reader (-f docx+styles), you can produce output that maintains the styles of the input document, using the custom-style class. A custom-style attribute will be added for each style. Divs will be created to hold the paragraph styles, and Spans to hold the character styles. Table styles will be applied directly to the Table.

For example, using the custom-style-reference.docx file in the test directory, we have the following different outputs:

With these custom styles, you can use your input document as a reference-doc while creating docx output (see below), and maintain the same styles in your input and output files.

Custom readers and writers

Pandoc can be extended with custom readers and writers written in Lua. (Pandoc includes a Lua interpreter, so Lua need not be installed separately.)

To use a custom reader or writer, simply specify the path to the Lua script in place of the input or output format. For example:

If the script is not found relative to the working directory, it will be sought in the custom subdirectory of the user data directory (see --data-dir).

A custom reader is a Lua script that defines one function, Reader, which takes a string as input and returns a Pandoc AST. See the Lua filters documentation for documentation of the functions that are available for creating pandoc AST elements. For parsing, the lpeg parsing library is available by default. To see a sample custom reader:

If you want your custom reader to have access to reader options (e.g. the tab stop setting), you give your Reader function a second options parameter.

A custom writer is a Lua script that defines a function that specifies how to render each element in a Pandoc AST. See the djot-writer.lua for a full-featured example.

Note that custom writers have no default template. If you want to use --standalone with a custom writer, you will need to specify a template manually using --template or add a new default template with the name default.NAME_OF_CUSTOM_WRITER.lua to the templates subdirectory of your user data directory (see Templates).

Reproducible builds

Some of the document formats pandoc targets (such as EPUB, docx, and ODT) include build timestamps in the generated document. That means that the files generated on successive builds will differ, even if the source does not. To avoid this, set the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH environment variable, and the timestamp will be taken from it instead of the current time. SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH should contain an integer unix timestamp (specifying the number of seconds since midnight UTC January 1, 1970).

For reproducible builds with LaTeX, you can either specify the pdf-trailer-id in the metadata or leave it undefined, in which case pandoc will create a trailer-id based on a hash of the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH and the document’s contents.

Some document formats also include a unique identifier. For EPUB, this can be set explicitly by setting the identifier metadata field (see EPUB Metadata, above).

Accessible PDFs and PDF archiving standards

PDF is a flexible format, and using PDF in certain contexts requires additional conventions. For example, PDFs are not accessible by default; they define how characters are placed on a page but do not contain semantic information on the content. However, it is possible to generate accessible PDFs, which use tagging to add semantic information to the document.

Pandoc defaults to LaTeX to generate PDF. LaTeX’s \DocumentMetadata interface supports PDF standards and tagging when using LuaLaTeX; set the pdfstandard variable to enable this (see below). For older LaTeX installations, alternative engines must be used.

The PDF standards PDF/A and PDF/UA define further restrictions intended to optimize PDFs for archiving and accessibility. Tagging is commonly used in combination with these standards to ensure best results.

Note, however, that standard compliance depends on many things, including the colorspace of embedded images. Pandoc cannot check this, and external programs must be used to ensure that generated PDFs are in compliance.

LaTeX

Set the pdfstandard variable to produce tagged PDFs conforming to PDF/A, PDF/X, or PDF/UA standards. For example:

The required PDF version is inferred automatically. This feature requires LuaLaTeX in TeX Live 2025 with LaTeX kernel 2025-06-01 or newer.

ConTeXt

ConTeXt always produces tagged PDFs, but the quality depends on the input. The default ConTeXt markup generated by pandoc is optimized for readability and reuse, not tagging. Enable the tagging format extension to force markup that is optimized for tagging. For example:

A recent context version should be used, as older versions contained a bug that lead to invalid PDF metadata.

WeasyPrint

The HTML-based engine WeasyPrint includes experimental support for PDF/A and PDF/UA since version 57. Tagged PDFs can created with

Prince XML

The non-free HTML-to-PDF converter prince has extensive support for various PDF standards as well as tagging. E.g.:

Typst

Word Processors

Word processors like LibreOffice and MS Word can also be used to generate standardized and tagged PDF output. Pandoc does not support direct conversions via these tools. However, pandoc can convert a document to a docx or odt file, which can then be opened and converted to PDF with the respective word processor. See the documentation for Word and LibreOffice.

Running pandoc as a web server

If you rename (or symlink) the pandoc executable to pandoc-server, or if you call pandoc with server as the first argument, it will start up a web server with a JSON API. This server exposes most of the conversion functionality of pandoc. For full documentation, see the pandoc-server man page.

If you rename (or symlink) the pandoc executable to pandoc-server.cgi, it will function as a CGI program exposing the same API as pandoc-server.

pandoc-server is designed to be maximally secure; it uses Haskell’s type system to provide strong guarantees that no I/O will be performed on the server during pandoc conversions.

Running pandoc as a Lua interpreter

Calling the pandoc executable under the name pandoc-lua or with lua as the first argument will make it function as a standalone Lua interpreter. The behavior is mostly identical to that of the standalone lua executable, version 5.4. All pandoc.* packages, as well as the packages re and lpeg, are available via global variables. Furthermore, the globals PANDOC_VERSION, PANDOC_STATE, and PANDOC_API_VERSION are set at startup. For full documentation, see the pandoc-lua man page.

A note on security

Authors

Copyright 2006–2024 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 point of this rule is to ensure that normal paragraphs starting with people’s initials, like
```
B. Russell won a Nobel Prize (but not for "On Denoting").
```
do not get treated as list items.
This rule will not prevent
```
(C) 2007 Joe Smith
```
from being interpreted as a list item. In this case, a backslash escape can be used:
```
(C\) 2007 Joe Smith
```
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I have been influenced by the suggestions of David Wheeler.
Back
This scheme is due to Michel Fortin, who proposed it on the Markdown discussion list.
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Note that if --file-scope is used, a div written this way will be given an identifier of the form FILE__refs, to avoid duplicate identifiers (see --file-scope). In view of this possibility, pandoc will place the bibliography in any div whose identifier is refs or ends with __refs.
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Synopsis

Description

Using pandoc

Specifying formats

Character encoding

Creating a PDF

Reading from the Web

Options

General options

Reader options

General writer options

Options affecting specific writers

Citation rendering

Math rendering in HTML

Options for wrapper scripts

Exit codes

Defaults files

General options

Reader options

General writer options

Options affecting specific writers

Citation rendering

Math rendering in HTML

Options for wrapper scripts

Templates

Template syntax

Comments

Delimiters

Interpolated variables

Conditionals

For loops

Partials

Nesting

Breakable spaces

Pipes

Variables

Metadata variables

Language variables

Variables for HTML

Variables for HTML math

Variables for HTML slides

Variables for Beamer slides

Variables for PowerPoint

Variables for LaTeX

Layout

Fonts

Links

Front matter

BibLaTeX Bibliographies

Other

Variables for ConTeXt

Variables for wkhtmltopdf

Variables for man pages

Variables for Texinfo

Variables for Typst

Variables for ms

Variables set automatically

Extensions

Typography

Extension: smart

Headings and sections

Extension: auto_identifiers

Extension: ascii_identifiers

Extension: gfm_auto_identifiers

Math Input

Raw HTML/TeX

Literate Haskell support

Extension: literate_haskell

Other extensions

Extension: empty_paragraphs

Extension: native_numbering

Extension: xrefs_name

Extension: xrefs_number

Extension: styles ###

Extension: amuse

Extension: raw_markdown

Extension: citations (typst)

Extension: citations (org)

Extension: citations (docx)

Extension: fancy_lists (org)

Variables for `wkhtmltopdf`

Extension: `smart`

Extension: `auto_identifiers`

Extension: `ascii_identifiers`

Extension: `gfm_auto_identifiers`

Extension: `literate_haskell`

Extension: `empty_paragraphs`

Extension: `native_numbering`

Extension: `xrefs_name`

Extension: `xrefs_number`

Extension: `styles` ###

Extension: `amuse`

Extension: `raw_markdown`

Extension: `citations` (typst)

Extension: `citations` (org)

Extension: `citations` (docx)

Extension: `fancy_lists` (org)

Extension: `element_citations`

Extension: `ntb`

Extension: `smart_quotes` (org)

Extension: `special_strings` (org)

Extension: `tagging` ###

Extension: `escaped_line_breaks`

Extension: `blank_before_header`

Extension: `space_in_atx_header`

Extension: `header_attributes`

Extension: `implicit_header_references`

Extension: `blank_before_blockquote`

Extension: `fenced_code_blocks`

Extension: `backtick_code_blocks`

Extension: `fenced_code_attributes`

Extension: `line_blocks`

Extension: `fancy_lists`

Extension: `startnum`

Extension: `task_lists`

Extension: `definition_lists`

Extension: `example_lists`

Extension: `table_captions`

Extension: `simple_tables`

Extension: `multiline_tables`

Extension: `grid_tables`

Extension: `pipe_tables`

Extension: `table_attributes`

Extension: `pandoc_title_block`

Extension: `yaml_metadata_block`

Extension: `all_symbols_escapable`

Extension: `intraword_underscores`

Extension: `strikeout`

Extension: `superscript`, `subscript`

Extension: `inline_code_attributes`

Extension: `tex_math_dollars`

Extension: `raw_html`

Extension: `markdown_in_html_blocks`

Extension: `native_divs`