Sometimes you just want to write a simple markdown document and have nice pdf output without futzing with LaTeX.
Pandoc is doing all the heavy lifting---this just adds a simple LaTeX "header"
which gives decent-looking pdf output and a Makefile to tie it all together.
Note: if you need citations/references, check out the bibtex branch in this
repo.
- write your content in
document.md - run
make
If you know a bit of LaTeX and want to tweak the output, then you can mess with
the header stuff in pandoc-template.tex. If you want to get fancy, there are a
bunch of Pandoc-defined
variables you can
use.
Um, maybe.
This template allows you to write most of your content in markdown, but then "drop down" into LaTeX when you need more control over the output (since pandoc passes raw LaTeX code straight through). This is basically the same workflow for which markdown was invented, except in that case for HTML.
If the output you want is going to require lots of very specific control over the layout then you're probably better off just writing in LaTeX directly, but if you want to mostly focus on the content but occasionally have more control over the way it's displayed, sprinkling your markdown files with LaTeX can be a useful option.
Almost all of this can be done directly with Pandoc and the right CLI
flags/variables, but sometimes it's just easier to edit the LaTeX in the
template directly rather than dealing with long, complicated pandoc
invocations with heaps of flags.
Pandoc can generate all the output formats, but this template is really only geared towards the pdf-via-LaTeX pathway. So if you try and do something else it might not work.
Copyright (C) 2021 Ben Swift
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.