I will give a basic introduction to using Pandoc. This will include converting from Markdown (.md) notes to various other formats, including Word (.docx ), PDF, Powerpoint (.pptx ), and Revealjs slideshows.
I will also show how Pandoc can be used with a reference manager to cite sources in your Markdown notes, and have Pandoc build a reference list for you in your chosen reference style. Templates will also be discussed so that you can format your notes as desired.
Lastly, I show an integration with the Snippets plugin, so that you donāt even have to leave Obsidian to run the Pandoc command!
Technical Requirements: Try to install Pandoc before the talk, but that is only necessary if you want to follow along with me during the live presentation. No experience with Pandoc is required.
You can find the voting poll here. Please feel free to ask any questions related to this talk, or share any thoughts/comments!
Any chance you can cover how to use pandoc templates? Iām specifically trying to figure out how to set up a bunch of templates for various short story markets so I can just easily export my markdown story into the right format and itās honestly exhausting.
Which format do you generally have to export to? If itās a Word docx, then Iāve already got some content on templates for that! if itās another format, Iāll have to do some reading, but I can definitely talk about as much as I manage to learn.
(This is because pandoc templates work for most formats except for Word so you actually have to use a different method for Word ātemplatesā, but they are still super useful)
It would actually be really helpful to put a few reference docs all in one placeā¦ Iām going to make a folder for this talk on the public Community Talks Google Drive folder. Do you mind uploading yours there too?
Sure thing. Have uploaded. They are kind of ādesignedā (one for a journal, another for an edited volume, and another is my standard reference.docx. hope they are useful to people. cheers, Simon
I really must be missing something in this reveal.js workflow. I keep getting resource not found errors for CSS, or else I successfully output to HTML and there are no references to the js or css files. @SkepticMystic Are you storing the full Reveal.js library somewhere in your vault? Iāve even used the --css= to reference a custom stylesheet, but it still errors out and says itās missing reveal.js/css/reveal.css.
To be fair, I am just working from command line, rather than trying the Snippets/Templater shortcuts you demoāed in the video. But I donāt see why that would change things, since at the end of the day everything is happening at the Terminal level anyway.
Is there some key setup/config we have to do to get pandoc to convert to reveal.js and include all the proper CSS and JS files?
UPDATE: I managed to get it working, but only after manually updating all the CSS/JS references in the outputted file. Confused about how to get pandoc set up properly so that it just inserts the desired tags automatically, but Iām guessing I just have to figure out how to create a template?
UPDATE #2: Just for anyone else who may run into this rather specific issue, I had two versions of pandoc on my Mac. On the command line, I first checked the version with pandoc --version (it was 2.0 something) and then which pandoc to see where it was installed. Then I ran brew uninstall pandoc since I remembered installing it that way at some point previously. Then I ran which pandoc again, and it turned up another pandoc at another location on my machine. So then I successfully wiped any other versions using the perl script you can find on the MacOS installation instructions here. With a clean slate, I ran brew install pandoc again, and then did a quick pandoc --version and saw that I was now running 2.14 something. That did the trick!
if itās another format, Iāll have to do some reading, but I can definitely talk about as much as I manage to learn.
so you actually have to use a different method for Word ātemplatesā, but they are still super useful)
