pandoc

A universal document converter.

Specifying options

via CLI

# adapt URL colors:
pandoc -i input.md -o output.pdf -V colorlinks=true -V linkcolor=blue -V urlcolor=red -V toccolor=gray

# specifying papersize or geometry:
pandoc -V papersize:a4 -i input.md -o output.pdf
pandoc -V geometry:a4paper -i input.md -o output.pdf # ... for smaller margins

via YAML frontmatter

Given the following text.md file:

---
fontfamily: libertinus
fontsize: 12pt
linestretch: 1.5
---

# Chapter 1

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do
eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad
minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut
aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in
reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla
pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in
culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.

calling

pandoc -i text.md -o text.pdf

will create a text.pdf with the lorem ipsum text in the Libertine font in fontsize 12 with 1.5 line spacing.

Citations

The powertool that it is, pandoc also seamlessly supports scientific citations with the help of bibtex (.bib) and Citation Style Language (.csl) files.

Given a directory like this,

.
├── style.csl
├── library.bib
├── my_article.md
...

and the following frontmatter and content in my_article.md,

---
bibliography: library.bib
csl: style.csl
---

In their seminal paper on ... @author123 describe .... However, the
strength of the effect remains disputed [@author4; @author5].

running pandoc --citeproc -i my_article.md -o my_article.pdf will build a bibliography at the end of your pdf document and cite the sources in the text as defined per the referenced citation style (as long as the bibtexkeys cited in my_article.md are actually specified in library.bib).

For more info, have a look at pandoc's documentation on citations or consult this pandoc citation tutorial.

Common issues

Page numbering

Normally, specifying the pagestyle variable as empty should do the trick. However, it might be necessary to additionally add \thispagestyle{empty} after \maketitle{}.