Pandoc

Pandoc is a commandline tool written in Haskell that can convert between different markup formats. For example, I write the pages of this blog in Markdown and convert them to HTML pages using Pandoc.

For detailed information about Pandoc commandline options please see man pandoc or the online manual.

• To convert a file from an input format to output format:

$ pandoc in.markdown -o out.html

• Input format is automatically detected, but can be specified explicitly using --from:

$ pandoc --from=markdown in.markdown -o out.html

• Output format is automatically detected, but can be specified explicitly using --to:

$ pandoc --to=html5 in.markdown -o out.html

• To increase or reduce the heading level in the output format use the --shift-heading-level-by option:

$ pandoc --shift-heading-level-by=1 in.markdown -o out.html

• To add a prefix to the output HTML title of the page use the --title-prefix option:

$ pandoc --title-prefix="Foobar" in.markdown -o out.html

This makes the title of the page as Foobar -- Actual title.

• To use a custom template file for the output file use the --template option:

$ pandoc --template=foobar.template in.markdown -o out.html

There is a default output template that is used for each output format and can be seen by using the --print-default-template option. This default template can be used as a starting point to create your own templates.

• To specify a variable name and its value that can be replaced inside the template file use the --variable option:

$ pandoc --variable="date:2015-Jan-23" --template=foobar.template in.markdown -o out.html

We are specifying a variable of name date and value 2015-Jan-23 here.

• To provide your own CSS stylesheet use the --css option:

$ pandoc --css=foobar.css in.markdown -o out.html

• To include a custom piece of text in the header of the output file use the --include-in-header option:

$ pandoc --include-in-header=header.txt in.markdown -o out.html

I find this useful for including the analytics JS code in the HTML header for example.

• To include output markup lines at the top of the output file use the --include-before-body option:

$ pandoc --include-before-body=header.html in.markdown -o out.html

• To include output markup lines at the bottom of the output file use the --include-after-body option:

$ pandoc --include-after-body=header.markdown in.markdown -o out.html

• Pandoc ships with a lot of extensions, many of which are applied by default depending on the input or output format. To enable or disable an extension, add +EXTENSIONNAME or -EXTENSIONNAME to the input format (--from) or output format (--to). For example, to enable two extensions on the input Markdown:

$ pandoc --from=markdown+gfm_auto_identifiers+autolink_bare_uris in.markdown -o out.html

Information on the extensions can be found in the Pandoc manual.

Tried with: Pandoc 2.9.2.1 and Ubuntu 22.04