https://github.com/sleepymurph/template_markdown_for_printing
A markdown document with YAML header, for PDF output via Pandoc
https://github.com/sleepymurph/template_markdown_for_printing
Last synced: 6 months ago
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A markdown document with YAML header, for PDF output via Pandoc
- Host: GitHub
- URL: https://github.com/sleepymurph/template_markdown_for_printing
- Owner: sleepymurph
- Created: 2018-05-08T06:29:54.000Z (about 7 years ago)
- Default Branch: master
- Last Pushed: 2018-05-08T06:30:36.000Z (about 7 years ago)
- Last Synced: 2024-08-09T02:19:58.296Z (10 months ago)
- Homepage:
- Size: 2.93 KB
- Stars: 1
- Watchers: 2
- Forks: 0
- Open Issues: 0
-
Metadata Files:
- Readme: README.md
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README
Markdown Document For Printing
==================================================
For quick printed documents like letters, I like to write in Markdown
and convert to PDF with [Pandoc](https://pandoc.org/).
Pandoc lets you put a YAML block at the beginning of the document with
variables that affect the paper size, margins, PDF metadata, etc.
I always forget what those options are, so I wanted to have a starter document
that I could copy and edit at will.
To use:
1. Copy the document `doc.markdown`
2. Edit it
3. Convert to PDF with Pandoc: `pandoc doc.markdown -o doc.pdf`
Give yourself a Vim macro:
:nmap p :w \| :!pandoc -o %.pdf %
For more complicated documents, I also have a project template for a LaTeX article:
Notes
--------------------------------------------------
### A4 paper
Note that this template insists on A4 paper because I live in Europe.
This is set by the `papersize: a4` in the YAML header.
Delete or change that as needed.
If you do change it, note that the Pandoc LaTeX template concatenates `paper` to the `papersize` setting.
So `papersize: a4` becomes `\documentclass[a4paper]{article}` in the LaTeX.
So whatever paper size you use, you need to leave the `paper` part off of the
`papersize` option.
Remembering exactly how to set this is probably the biggest reason I
need this template.
### Dependency: Open Sans
[Open Sans](https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Open+Sans)
is the official font at the university where I work.
Therefore it is the default font for my templates.
This means that this template requires the
[`opensans` package for LaTeX](https://ctan.org/pkg/opensans).
On Ubuntu this package is part of the
[`texlive-fonts-extra` package](https://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/texlive-fonts-extra).
apt install texlive-fonts-extra
Or you can use a different font by editing the file.
Edit or remove the `fontfamily` and `fontfamilyoptions`
values in the YAML block.
#### Trade-off: Open Sans vs full UTF-8 support
This method of switching to Open Sans only works with the default `pdflatex` engine.
And the `pdflatex` engine has impartial UTF-8 support.
The Pandoc LaTeX template (and my LaTeX template) use the `inputenc` package for partial support.
This works for most of my purposes, but it can still give errors like the following:
```
! Package inputenc Error: Unicode char А (U+410)
(inputenc) not set up for use with LaTeX.
See the inputenc package documentation for explanation.
Type H for immediate help.
...
l.66 ...YZŽabcčćdđefghijklmnopqrsštuvwxyzžА
Try running pandoc with --latex-engine=xelatex.
pandoc: Error producing PDF
shell returned 43
```
If you switch to `xelatex` for better UTF-8 support,
the document will no longer be in Open Sans:
pandoc doc.markdown -o doc.markdown.pdf --latex-engine=xelatex
Apparently fonts work completely differently in XeLaTeX,
and I have not had a chance to figure that out.
TODO: Figure out how to get Open Sans with `xelatex` too.
### More options
Options to set can be found by looking at Pandoc's LaTeX template.
On my Ubuntu system, that lives at
[`/usr/share/pandoc/data/templates/default.latex`](file:///usr/share/pandoc/data/templates/default.latex)
Look for directives that are surrounded by dollar signs:
$if(geometry)$
\usepackage[$for(geometry)$$geometry$$sep$,$endfor$]{geometry}
$endif$
Here we see `geometry` used in a loop.
So it would seem that we can create an array in the YAML with an array of configuration options for the geometry package.