pandoc markdown to pdf using html5 engine

Converting markdown to a PDF is a nightmare, espeically when interfacing with LaTeX. This has proven to be a truly terrible experience, it is likely much easier to just write plain old LaTeX.

I was able to (finally) convert the file to a PDF, but it looked much worse off than than anything I could have put together in LaTeX.

Requirements:

• Ubuntu

Resources:

• Blog post on fancier markdown
• Blog post on colors and unknown characters

Steps

If you don't have any lists or tables:

sudo apt install texlive-latex-base texlive-fonts-recommended texlive-fonts-extra texlive-latex-extra pandoc
pandoc -t latex -o test.pdf test.md

If you do have lists or tables:

sudo apt install wkhtmltopdf pandoc
pandoc -t html5 -V papersize=a4 -o test.pdf test.md

Tips

• If you want linebreaks in your lists use a \ at the end of each item or just put

a newline between them.

• Anything you don't want concatenated into a wrapped line should have the above as well,

this gets needlessly verbose.

• If you want to have a table it must be in a code block, they look gross too

| my table |
|----------|
| something|