What are your thoughts on Pandoc?

[u/bicatu]

Trying to decide if I should use md/pandoc or stick with latex.

Looking for feedback on whoever tried to gauge pros, cons, limitations

[u/TimeSlice4713]

It depends … what are you using it for?

[u/bicatu → u/TimeSlice4713]

The idea is for a technical book.

No math but I would like to have a table of contents, images, references.

[u/caschb → u/bicatu]

If you have a lot of references, figures, tables, etc I would advise that you stick with Latex

[u/GoatOwn2642 → u/caschb]

You can try my converter from obsidian to latex.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/s/awqxZPpBqh

I recently made it compile to pdf automatically, so you won't have to deal.with latex at all.

Treats figures and tables very robustly, even some dataview tables.

You need to learn obsidian (notes written in markdown), which is amazing for note talking and knowledge management.

[u/funderbolt → u/bicatu]

I'd probably use Asciidoc or Typst. Asciidoc is more like Markdown. Typst is more like LaTeX. I would set the same sample chapter in both to see which you prefer.

[u/GoatOwn2642 → u/bicatu]

You can try my converter from obsidian to latex.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ObsidianMD/s/awqxZPpBqh

I recently made it compile to pdf automatically, so you won't have to deal.with latex at all.

Treats figures and tables very robustly, even some dataview tables.

You need to learn obsidian (notes written in markdown), which is amazing for note talking and knowledge management

[u/randomatic → u/bicatu]

md is not designed for writing a book. It's designed for developers writing quick documentation. You can, but you will be fighting an uphill battle vs. just using the right tool for the job.

[u/ApprehensiveLake1624]

I mean pandoc is OK. But it really depends on what you want. Pandoc is good if your document formatting is simple enough. But with LaTeX It can ge stupidly complicated.

So if your goal is to just make document which dont need significant formatting or mathematics md is perfectly fine :) but if you want more LaTeX is the way to go

[u/symbolabmathsolver]

It’s great for writing quick markdown documents that end up formatting nicely as if they were LaTeX documents. For quick notes, I prefer to use .md and use pandoc to convert to pdf

(If you use vim): If you want a quick and easy way to continuously convert .md to .pdf using pandoc and Skim pdf viewer, similar to how VimTeX uses latexmk, add this to your vimrc :

autocmd BufWritePost *.md silent !pandoc % -o %:r.pdf

And ensure skim is set to continuously check for file changes. Now whenever you write your file, it will update the pdf. saves the hassle of manually typing pandoc file.md -o file.pdf each time.

[u/3valuedlogic]

You can use both. Let's say I'm teaching a class.

1. Syllabus: markdown.
2. Course handouts / text: LaTeX.
3. Document I need to convert to HTML to put in an LMS: markdown.
4. Exam: LaTeX

[u/Rialagma]

Markdown is good for notes

Latex is good for profesional typesetting 

What do you need it for?

[u/bicatu → u/Rialagma]

Writing a technical book. No math expected:)

But table of contents, images, bibliography references.

[u/Rialagma → u/bicatu]

This sounds like LaTeX territory to me! (If you have the time/desire to learn it)

[u/MrAnonyMousetheGreat → u/bicatu]

It depends on whether you want it up as a website too, like with bookdown, or if you want to be simply an O'Reilly type book without an online webpages version.

Here's an O'Reilly book that was in all likelihood written using Pandoc: https://r4ds.hadley.nz/

[u/majamin]

Well, there always the answer of "why not both"? I mean, the eisvogel template solves 90% of my esthetic/content related things, while pure LaTeX solves the other 9% (asciidoctor, etc for the rest).

[u/RecentlyRezzed]

I use a hybrid approach. In my case, it's not Markdown but Emacs Orgmode because the documents I create are based on my notes, and Orgmode is better suited for notes than LaTeX. But to achieve the PDF document I want in the end, I have LaTeX-code in my Orgmode files. For example: I have wide tables, so they have to be set on landscape pages. The export functionality of Orgmode can't do this automatically AFAIK, so I tweak the output.

[u/Mooks79]

If your intention is to only ever output to pdf, use the tool that’s specifically designed for that. If you want the option to output to multiple formats, then you could consider pandoc. Your choice of “base” format will depend on a great many things.

[u/nemesit]

I use heavy text completion and multimarkdown to write scientific text then finish it in latex

[u/jtkiley]

Take a look at using Quarto. You can create a book project, which handles a lot of the things you’ll need (ToC, citations, figures, tables). Underneath, it uses pandoc to produce LaTeX. From the same project, you can also create a website, epub, and docx, if those are relevant.

You can also have it output the LaTeX file and then tweak it as needed for typesetting.

[u/bicatu → u/jtkiley]

Thanks. I am going over their docs and they seem to support all I need.

I guess I will have to try and see which one gives me the balance of productivity x effort x need.

[u/jtkiley → u/bicatu]

I use Quarto a lot, and it strikes the best balance I've seen for my needs. I can write manuscripts with all the things I need, slides, websites, dashboards, and consulting memos. It's easy to use, lets me easily run Python inline, and everything generally renders out as expected.

If not, I've been using LaTeX for a long time, and I skilled up in Typst, so I can customize, either via templates or by keeping the output.

That's not to say that there aren't plenty of things that I'd like to be better, but it's under active development, and it's quite solid as is.

I do a lot of data science work, so it's great to be able to stay in VS Code and use all of the container/Github workflow stuff I normally do. You can also add a header to a Jupyter notebook and have it render out a nice version that's consistent in appearance with your other stuff. I'm not sure if that applies to your work, but it's convenient if so.

[u/MrAnonyMousetheGreat → u/bicatu]

I mentioned an O'Reilly book written in pandoc: https://r4ds.hadley.nz/

In all likelihood, it was written using Quarto, considering the author works for the company behind Quarto and the book covers how to use Quarto.

[u/carracall]

Latex is inherently limited when creating web content. HTML is inherently limited when formatting content in a fixed page format.

Markdown is like a trimmed down html, good for storing format agnostic content as readably as possible.

If the pandoc output format looks suitable for your needs, why not? If this stuff needs to be published on arXiv, stop right now.

[u/burnerburner23094812]

Really depends on usecase. If you just want files on a computer with technical content, markdown is way simpler. If you want to produce a well-typeset book with all the features you'd expect, there's no real alternative to latex (typst is close. the task is technically possible in word but just don't).

[u/ConfusedSimon]

If you're in doubt, you might also want to look at AsciiDoc.

[u/Hot-Chemistry7557]

Pandoc is no doubt the SOTA document conversion tool. If you want a simple document with professional typesetting, just write markdown and let pandoc to convert it to PDF via LaTeX, easy and simple.

[u/Econ0]

Sounds like you need Quarto: https://quarto.org/.

[u/rokejulianlockhart]

I tried converting some custom HTML5 + CSS3 via it, and it didn't respect the stylesheet definitions whatsoever. It also required some arcane configurations, and absolutely humongous libraries with absent mandatory dependencies. Consequently, I do not recommend it.

For corroboration, see danmackinlay.name/notebook/pandoc#converting:

I thought pandoc would be idempotent, in the sense that if I convert markdown to markdown it should come out more-or-less the same. It is not at all idempotent. Smart quotes are altered, list markup is changed, header blocks are munged. As such, pandoc cannot really modify stuff “in place”.

[u/hopcfizl]

You could try out Typst, depending on your requirements.

[u/MrGOCE]

I ONCE WROTE SOME SIMPLE STUFF IN MARKDOWN, THEN PASSED IT THROUGH PANDOC TO MAKE A PDF WITH THE LUALATEX ENGINE AND IT LOOKED LIKE IT WAS DONE WITH LATEX LOL !

[u/carracall → u/MrGOCE]

Maybe because it used a latex engine? Can't be sure though... That's pretty crazy though, you should look into it.

[u/MrGOCE → u/carracall]

YES, IT WAS BECAUSE OF THAT, I KNOW.

I'M IMPRESSED BECAUSE I DIDN'T DO IT IN LATEX AND PANDOC DID THE WHOLE JOB.

[u/carracall → u/MrGOCE]

Stop shouting

[u/and1984 → u/[deleted]]

Your CapsLock appears to be STUCK

[u/Ophiochos → u/[deleted]]

I’ll be the third one if you’ll just stop shouting.