pandoc/man/man1/pandoc.1.md

% PANDOC(1) Pandoc User Manuals % John MacFarlane % June 30, 2007

NAME

pandoc - general markup converter

SYNOPSIS

pandoc [options] [input-file]...

DESCRIPTION

Pandoc converts files from one markup format to another. It can read markdown and (subsets of) reStructuredText, HTML, and LaTeX, and it can write markdown, reStructuredText, HTML, LaTeX, ConTeXt, groff man, RTF, DocBook XML, and S5 HTML slide shows.

If no input-file is specified, input is read from STDIN. Otherwise, the input-files are concatenated (with a blank line between each) and used as input. Output goes to STDOUT by default. For output to a file, use the -o option:

pandoc -o output.html input.txt

The input and output formats may be specified using command-line options (see OPTIONS, below, for details). If these formats are not specified explicitly, Pandoc will attempt to determine them from the extensions of the input and output filenames. If input comes from STDIN or from a file with an unknown extension, the input is assumed to be markdown. If no output filename is specified using the -o option, or if a filename is specified but its extension is unknown, the output will default to HTML. Thus, for example,

pandoc -o chap1.tex chap1.txt

converts chap1.txt from markdown to LaTeX. And

pandoc README

converts README from markdown to HTML.

Pandoc's version of markdown is an extended variant of standard markdown: the differences are described in the README file in the user documentation. If standard markdown syntax is desired, the --strict option may be used.

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:

iconv -t utf-8 input.txt | pandoc | iconv -f utf-8

Pandoc's HTML parser is not very forgiving. If your input is HTML, consider running it through tidy(1) before passing it to Pandoc. Or use html2markdown(1), a wrapper around pandoc.

OPTIONS

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

Specify input format. FORMAT can be native (native Haskell), markdown (markdown or plain text), rst (reStructuredText), html (HTML), or latex (LaTeX).

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

Specify output format. FORMAT can be native (native Haskell), man (groff man page), markdown (markdown or plain text), rst (reStructuredText), html (HTML), latex (LaTeX), context (ConTeXt), man (groff man), docbook (DocBook XML), s5 (S5 HTML and javascript slide show), or rtf (rich text format).

-s, --standalone

Produce output with an appropriate header and footer (e.g. a standalone HTML, LaTeX, or RTF file, not a fragment).

-o FILE, --output=FILE

Write output to FILE instead of STDOUT. If FILE is `-', output will go to STDOUT.

-p, --preserve-tabs

Preserve tabs instead of converting them to spaces.

--tab-stop=TABSTOP

Specify tab stop (default is 4).

--strict

Use strict markdown syntax, with no extensions or variants.

--reference-links

Use reference-style links, rather than inline links, in writing markdown or reStructuredText.

-R, --parse-raw

Parse untranslatable HTML codes and LaTeX environments as raw HTML or LaTeX, instead of ignoring them.

-S, --smart

Use smart quotes, dashes, and ellipses. (This option is significant only when the input format is markdown. It is selected automatically when the output format is latex or context.)

-mURL, --asciimathml=URL

Use ASCIIMathML to display embedded LaTeX math in HTML output. To insert a link to a local copy of the ASCIIMathML.js script, provide a URL. If no URL is provided, the contents of the script will be inserted directly into the HTML header.

-i, --incremental

Make list items in S5 display incrementally (one by one).

-N, --number-sections

Number section headings in LaTeX output. (Default is not to number them.)

--no-wrap

Disable text wrapping in Markdown, reStructuredText, DocBook, HTML, and man output. (Default is to wrap text.)

--toc, --table-of-contents

Include an automatically generated table of contents (HTML, markdown, RTF) or an instruction to create one (LaTeX, reStructuredText). This option has no effect on man, DocBook, or S5 output.

-c CSS, --css=CSS

Link to a CSS style sheet. CSS is the pathname of the style sheet.

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

Include contents of FILE at the end of the header. Implies -s.

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

Include contents of FILE at the beginning of the document body.

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

Include contents of FILE at the end of the document body.

-C FILE, --custom-header=FILE

Use contents of FILE as the document header (overriding the default header, which can be printed by using the -D option). Implies -s.

-D FORMAT, --print-default-header=FORMAT

Print the default header for FORMAT (html, s5, latex, context, docbook, man, markdown, rst, rtf).

-T STRING, --title-prefix=STRING

Specify STRING as a prefix to the HTML window title.

--dump-args

Print information about command-line arguments to STDOUT, then exit. 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. This option is intended primarily for use in wrapper scripts.

--ignore-args

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

-v, --version

Print version.

-h, --help

Show usage message.

SEE ALSO

html2markdown(1), markdown2pdf(1). The README file distributed with Pandoc contains full documentation.

The Pandoc source code and all documentation may be downloaded from http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/.