{"slug": "pandoc", "name": "Pandoc", "category": "terminal", "category_name": "Terminal and shell", "description": "Command-line universal document converter between Markdown, Word, LaTeX, HTML, Typst and more.", "recommenders": 25, "commenters": 41, "warners": 1, "score": 25.278, "rising": 2.11, "first": "2025-11-03", "latest": "2026-10-26", "why": "HN commenters like it for converting Markdown into almost any format, including PDFs via Typst or LaTeX and Word documents for Office workflows.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 26, "neutral": 13, "compare": 2, "warn": 1}, "spark": [2, 1, 2, 3, 0, 1, 5, 3, 1, 7, 1, 0], "listed": true, "loved": ["Format conversion", "PDF via Typst"], "caveat": "Docs and bloat", "short_quote": "I\u2019d highly recommend pandoc[0] if you need markdown conversion.", "icon": false, "domain": "pandoc.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://pandoc.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Pandoc", "pandoc"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like it for converting Markdown into almost any format,", "cites": [{"id": 762085568, "item_id": 47630348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630348", "by": "vessenes", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pandoc can turn it into almost any format.", "excerpt": "Hard, hard no on this. Why are we using Markdown? Why do I use it every day? It's easy to write. It's easy to read. Despite the OP's complaints, quality parsers exist. pandoc can turn it into almost any format. We will still be writing markdown in 50 years, because the design bridges a bunch of compromises very nicely.", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the heck are we still using Markdown?"}, {"id": 750387792, "item_id": 46899237, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46899237", "by": "roxolotl", "date": "2026-02-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019d highly recommend pandoc[0] if you need markdown conversion.", "excerpt": "I\u2019d highly recommend pandoc[0] if you need markdown conversion. Basically converts from everything and any markdown style to everything else. And then for clipboard just use `| pbcopy` on a Mac or `| xsel -ib`. Full command on a Mac would just be `pandoc README.md -t html | pbcopy`. If you want a docx you can get that too. 0: https://pandoc.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: CLI tool to convert Markdown to rich HTML clipboard content"}, {"id": 736346032, "item_id": 46021627, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46021627", "by": "procaryote", "date": "2025-11-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc lets me do things like generate libreoffice or microsoft word documents from the markdown", "excerpt": "I use markdown because it's easy to read without rendering. All of the alternatives in the article seem worse If I wanted more structure, I'd just write html; or mix html into the markdown. Pandoc lets me do things like generate libreoffice or microsoft word documents from the markdown, using a reference document for styling of headings etc. This also gives me good enough control to generate OK looking pdfs. It's not", "context": "", "use_case": "convert markdown to docs/PDF", "switched_from": "", "story": "Markdown is holding you back"}]}, {"text": " including PDFs via Typst or LaTeX and Word documents for Office workflows.", "cites": [{"id": 776772672, "item_id": 48548292, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48548292", "by": "aleks_me2", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can tell pandoc to use typst as pdf-engine.", "excerpt": "you can tell pandoc to use typst as pdf-engine. I use this command to create pdf from my md file. Downloads/pandoc-3.9/bin/pandoc \\ README.md \\ -o \"my-output.pdf\" \\ --pdf-engine=typst \\ -V papersize=a4 \\ -V fontsize=10pt \\ -V margin-left=2.5cm \\ -V margin-right=2.5cm \\ -V margin-top=2.5cm \\ -V margin-bottom=2.5cm \\ -V title=\"My title\" \\ -V lang=de \\ --include-in-header=typst-header.typ \\ --toc --toc-depth=3 2>&1 That", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown to PDF", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 776732545, "item_id": 48545784, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545784", "by": "applicative", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I pass from markdown to typst pdf via pandoc a few times a day.", "excerpt": "I pass from markdown to typst pdf via pandoc a few times a day. From that point of view it is just an alternative to latex or roff, e.g. pandoc -r markdown -w pdf --pdf-engine=typst input.md -o output.pdf", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown to PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 773492209, "item_id": 48343263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343263", "by": "quijoteuniv", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "by transforming your markdown with Pandoc", "excerpt": "Eisvogel template is a fantastic way to use Latex without knowing much about it, by transforming your markdown with Pandoc, mind you i used it before LLMs existed, but it was great to turn the notes of a project of a tesis into a super pro formated version without learning Latex.", "context": "", "use_case": "converting markdown documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 773366176, "item_id": 48335386, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335386", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would be lost had I have to use the Office tools to edit and format my text.", "excerpt": "I am a heavy user of Pandoc. As I write all my text in markdown using Obsidian, but have to create content for the MS Office environment, I use Pandoc to convert my markdown content into ms office formated content. I would be lost had I have to use the Office tools to edit and format my text. So thank you to all the maintainers of Pandoc.", "context": "heavy Pandoc user", "use_case": "converting markdown to Office formats", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is that its documentation and filter API have grown harder to follow,", "cites": [{"id": 780676256, "item_id": 48792266, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792266", "by": "lifthrasiir", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Is there anyone feeling that Pandoc is ever increasingly bloated?", "excerpt": "Is there anyone feeling that Pandoc is ever increasingly bloated? I have used Lua filters a decade ago [1] and the current documentation is nothing like my memories. I'm not even sure that how much of Lua scripts remain compatible across different Pandoc versions. [1] https://github.com/mearie/mearie.github.io/blob/source/res/writer.lua", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion with Lua filters", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Lua Filters"}, {"id": 780777360, "item_id": 48798585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798585", "by": "riedel", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use pandoc filters when automatically updating/building packages", "excerpt": "I use pandoc filters when automatically updating/building packages (chocolatey) from GitHub repos/releases. When I built them I remember the documentation and API much less than this. As a developer I might have been easily overwhelmed by today's docs. On the other hand: today I guess those docs are rather read/ used by an AI than any human.", "context": "developer", "use_case": "building packages from GitHub releases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Lua Filters"}]}, {"text": " and some find it slow next to lighter Markdown converters.", "cites": [{"id": 786711521, "item_id": 49169470, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49169470", "by": "randusername", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use cmake to switch the backend between pandoc and lowdown", "excerpt": "I do this too, but I use cmake to switch the backend between pandoc and lowdown [0]. Lowdown is not a drop-in replacement for pandoc flavored markdown, but it's between 10-100X faster. It's very handy to switch when tinkering with template changes because I can convert ~ 1000 markdown files instantaneously on my mid 2010s desktop. [0]: https://kristaps.bsd.lv/lowdown/", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown conversion for static site", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Format conversion", "summary": "Converts Markdown to and from nearly any format, including docx, HTML and LaTeX.", "quotes": [{"id": 762085568, "item_id": 47630348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630348", "by": "vessenes", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pandoc can turn it into almost any format.", "excerpt": "Hard, hard no on this. Why are we using Markdown? Why do I use it every day? It's easy to write. It's easy to read. Despite the OP's complaints, quality parsers exist. pandoc can turn it into almost any format. We will still be writing markdown in 50 years, because the design bridges a bunch of compromises very nicely.", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the heck are we still using Markdown?"}, {"id": 750387792, "item_id": 46899237, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46899237", "by": "roxolotl", "date": "2026-02-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019d highly recommend pandoc[0] if you need markdown conversion.", "excerpt": "I\u2019d highly recommend pandoc[0] if you need markdown conversion. Basically converts from everything and any markdown style to everything else. And then for clipboard just use `| pbcopy` on a Mac or `| xsel -ib`. Full command on a Mac would just be `pandoc README.md -t html | pbcopy`. If you want a docx you can get that too. 0: https://pandoc.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: CLI tool to convert Markdown to rich HTML clipboard content"}, {"id": 736346032, "item_id": 46021627, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46021627", "by": "procaryote", "date": "2025-11-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc lets me do things like generate libreoffice or microsoft word documents from the markdown", "excerpt": "I use markdown because it's easy to read without rendering. All of the alternatives in the article seem worse If I wanted more structure, I'd just write html; or mix html into the markdown. Pandoc lets me do things like generate libreoffice or microsoft word documents from the markdown, using a reference document for styling of headings etc. This also gives me good enough control to generate OK looking pdfs. It's not", "context": "", "use_case": "convert markdown to docs/PDF", "switched_from": "", "story": "Markdown is holding you back"}]}, {"label": "PDF via Typst", "summary": "Commenters routinely produce PDFs from Markdown using Typst or LaTeX as the engine.", "quotes": [{"id": 776772672, "item_id": 48548292, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48548292", "by": "aleks_me2", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can tell pandoc to use typst as pdf-engine.", "excerpt": "you can tell pandoc to use typst as pdf-engine. I use this command to create pdf from my md file. Downloads/pandoc-3.9/bin/pandoc \\ README.md \\ -o \"my-output.pdf\" \\ --pdf-engine=typst \\ -V papersize=a4 \\ -V fontsize=10pt \\ -V margin-left=2.5cm \\ -V margin-right=2.5cm \\ -V margin-top=2.5cm \\ -V margin-bottom=2.5cm \\ -V title=\"My title\" \\ -V lang=de \\ --include-in-header=typst-header.typ \\ --toc --toc-depth=3 2>&1 That", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown to PDF", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 786644688, "item_id": 49165293, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49165293", "by": "jwr", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I mostly use it for Markdown->Typst these days and it does this job very well.", "excerpt": "Thank you for Pandoc! I used it for many things over the years, and it was always there as a good option. I mostly use it for Markdown->Typst these days and it does this job very well.", "context": "", "use_case": "Markdown to Typst conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 776732545, "item_id": 48545784, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545784", "by": "applicative", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I pass from markdown to typst pdf via pandoc a few times a day.", "excerpt": "I pass from markdown to typst pdf via pandoc a few times a day. From that point of view it is just an alternative to latex or roff, e.g. pandoc -r markdown -w pdf --pdf-engine=typst input.md -o output.pdf", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown to PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}]}, {"label": "Office interop", "summary": "Bridges Markdown writing with Word and Outlook content required by others.", "quotes": [{"id": 773366176, "item_id": 48335386, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335386", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would be lost had I have to use the Office tools to edit and format my text.", "excerpt": "I am a heavy user of Pandoc. As I write all my text in markdown using Obsidian, but have to create content for the MS Office environment, I use Pandoc to convert my markdown content into ms office formated content. I would be lost had I have to use the Office tools to edit and format my text. So thank you to all the maintainers of Pandoc.", "context": "heavy Pandoc user", "use_case": "converting markdown to Office formats", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 786599024, "item_id": 49162439, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49162439", "by": "rahimnathwani", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc is great. I use it multiple times per day", "excerpt": "Pandoc is great. I use it multiple times per day to move content between Outlook emails and a coding harness: https://gist.github.com/rahimnathwani/210b1f9cb6ce731a30432227772d6f85 cat email-to-xyz.md | md2clip clip2md > email-from-xyz.md", "context": "", "use_case": "converting Outlook emails to markdown", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 773367584, "item_id": 48335474, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335474", "by": "ltrg", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used it to output my doctoral thesis in LaTeX from Markdown 10 years ago", "excerpt": "I used it to output my doctoral thesis in LaTeX from Markdown 10 years ago, and similarly for going back and forth between my supervisor's Word documents and the main thesis text. Embarrassingly, a horrible little script for converting Pandoc's Markdown endnotes to inline format remains my most-starred GitHub repo: https://github.com/ltrgoddard/inliner/", "context": "former doctoral student", "use_case": "thesis conversion between Markdown, LaTeX, Word", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}]}, {"label": "Site generators", "summary": "Small bash scripts around pandoc serve as simple static site and blog generators.", "quotes": [{"id": 786650048, "item_id": 49165628, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49165628", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I gobbled together some bash scripts around pandoc to build a site generator for my personal website. Works great.", "excerpt": "A few years ago, I gobbled together some bash scripts around pandoc to build a site generator for my personal website. Works great. I use html templates, markdown for the content, etc. Mostly the bash scripts just serve to list files and process them one by one. I actually process them concurrently by forking processes so it's reasonably fast. A bit wonky but it works fine for my use case. As for Haskell, I guess tre", "context": "", "use_case": "static site generator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 786606688, "item_id": 49162918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49162918", "by": "malkosta", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Love pandoc, I use it for all sorts of stuff", "excerpt": "Love pandoc, I use it for all sorts of stuff\u2026here is my minimal static site generator: find . -name '*.md' -type f -exec sh -c ' for file do out=\"docs/${file#./}\" out=\"${out%.md}.html\" mkdir -p \"$(dirname \"$out\")\" pandoc --quiet --template template.html \"$file\" -o \"$out\" done ' sh {} +", "context": "", "use_case": "static site generation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 745105249, "item_id": 46569078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569078", "by": "adityaathalye", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "hand-rolled pandoc + bash site maker", "excerpt": "Opposite day! I moved from markdown (hugo) to org plaintext built and rendered using a hand-rolled pandoc + bash site maker. No Emacs needed. ~350 lines of Bash, and it hot-builds, and it hot-reloads :) https://github.com/adityaathalye/shite (README has GIF demos, and explains the design of the code) Also, I use literal HTML exports in my org files, like this: #+begin_export html <form class=\"footer cluster\" action=\"", "context": "", "use_case": "building a static site", "switched_from": "", "story": "Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text"}]}, {"label": "Book publishing", "summary": "Used in pipelines to produce novels and books in multiple output formats.", "quotes": [{"id": 773365744, "item_id": 48335359, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335359", "by": "ktzar", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc is such an amazing piece of software.", "excerpt": "Pandoc is such an amazing piece of software. I used it to format my novel and made it part of a GitHub action to produce all the formats I required. I wasn't aware of templates, but some look really sleek. I keep thinking that modern text editors are just flawed and markdown, with all its downsides and limitations, is what 99% is the people need.", "context": "novel writer", "use_case": "formatting novel into multiple formats", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 776733585, "item_id": 48545849, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545849", "by": "raybb", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It all works quite beautifully.", "excerpt": "I'm currently working on my fourth book produced using Typst, and it has been nothing but amazing. LLMs struggle with Typst a bit but other than that it has been an absolute joy to work with. I have a pretty good workflow set up for publishing these books, which are mostly collections of student essays. I use Pandoc to convert the students' Word documents into Typst, then unify the formatting, styles, and headers (mo", "context": "publishes books of student essays", "use_case": "document format conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 745088401, "item_id": 46568025, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568025", "by": "beej71", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent.", "excerpt": "I use Markdown for all my books, currently. It used to be a custom XML format, but that was really annoying to type even with custom Vim keybindings. I do wish Markdown were more capable, but it's a good lowest common denominator for HTML and PDF. Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent. My current flow is: Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML -> page-splitter -> sp", "context": "writes books in Markdown", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text"}]}, {"label": "Filters", "summary": "Lua and other filters let users extend conversions, with long-term stability across updates.", "quotes": [{"id": 741810304, "item_id": 46363144, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46363144", "by": "jez", "date": "2025-12-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Eventually I switched to Pandoc lua filters, which eliminated the toil while also being platform agnostic", "excerpt": "I have maintained a pandoc filter in Haskell for a while. Pandoc is written in Haskell, and so takes a similar approach: JSON API for arbitrary languages, but with a library for trivially parsing that JSON back into the same Haskell datatype that Pandoc uses under the hood. When you sit down to write the filter for the first time, it\u2019s amazing. You\u2019re using a typed IR that\u2019s well documented, a language that catches y", "context": "maintains a pandoc filter", "use_case": "document conversion filters", "switched_from": "Pandoc Haskell filters", "story": "Plugins case study: mdBook preprocessors"}, {"id": 797596864, "item_id": 49849804, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49849804", "by": "leephillips", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pandoc has a Typst reader. I use a pandoc filter to write in markdown with math in Typst and convert to LaTeX", "excerpt": "Not the person you\u2019re asking, but I\u2019ll just mention that pandoc has a Typst reader. I use a pandoc filter to write in markdown with math in Typst and convert to LaTeX: https://lee-phillips.org/typstfilters/", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion markdown to LaTeX", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst makes big strides"}, {"id": 780692944, "item_id": 48793309, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793309", "by": "a1o", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We use it for seven years and it still runs fine when we update Pandoc", "excerpt": "We use it for seven years and it still runs fine when we update Pandoc - we usually always update things. I don\u2019t remember anything about the docs, so not sure what changed.", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Lua Filters"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Docs and bloat", "summary": "Some feel pandoc and its docs have become bloated and overwhelming, with uncertain Lua filter compatibility.", "quotes": [{"id": 780676256, "item_id": 48792266, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792266", "by": "lifthrasiir", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Is there anyone feeling that Pandoc is ever increasingly bloated?", "excerpt": "Is there anyone feeling that Pandoc is ever increasingly bloated? I have used Lua filters a decade ago [1] and the current documentation is nothing like my memories. I'm not even sure that how much of Lua scripts remain compatible across different Pandoc versions. [1] https://github.com/mearie/mearie.github.io/blob/source/res/writer.lua", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion with Lua filters", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Lua Filters"}, {"id": 780777360, "item_id": 48798585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798585", "by": "riedel", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use pandoc filters when automatically updating/building packages", "excerpt": "I use pandoc filters when automatically updating/building packages (chocolatey) from GitHub repos/releases. When I built them I remember the documentation and API much less than this. As a developer I might have been easily overwhelmed by today's docs. On the other hand: today I guess those docs are rather read/ used by an AI than any human.", "context": "developer", "use_case": "building packages from GitHub releases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Lua Filters"}]}, {"label": "Speed", "summary": "Lighter tools like lowdown are much faster, and the LaTeX-to-PDF route can be slow.", "quotes": [{"id": 786711521, "item_id": 49169470, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49169470", "by": "randusername", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use cmake to switch the backend between pandoc and lowdown", "excerpt": "I do this too, but I use cmake to switch the backend between pandoc and lowdown [0]. Lowdown is not a drop-in replacement for pandoc flavored markdown, but it's between 10-100X faster. It's very handy to switch when tinkering with template changes because I can convert ~ 1000 markdown files instantaneously on my mid 2010s desktop. [0]: https://kristaps.bsd.lv/lowdown/", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown conversion for static site", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 745088401, "item_id": 46568025, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568025", "by": "beej71", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent.", "excerpt": "I use Markdown for all my books, currently. It used to be a custom XML format, but that was really annoying to type even with custom Vim keybindings. I do wish Markdown were more capable, but it's a good lowest common denominator for HTML and PDF. Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent. My current flow is: Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML -> page-splitter -> sp", "context": "writes books in Markdown", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text"}]}, {"label": "Complex books", "summary": "One author struggled with Markdown plus pandoc for multi-format book output and switched to Asciidoc.", "quotes": [{"id": 736388625, "item_id": 46024289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024289", "by": "meonkeys", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I was struggling with Markdown+pandoc+custom scripts/styles, so I switched to Asciidoc.", "excerpt": "I wouldn't use Markdown for that. You're right to start with your requirements. Try to get detailed, like the list @WA wrote out, then match it up with appropriate tech. I wrote a technical book and I also wanted multiple decent-looking outputs. In my case: HTML, EPUB/mobi, screen and print PDFs. I was struggling with Markdown+pandoc+custom scripts/styles, so I switched to Asciidoc. I wrote about that process here: h", "context": "wrote a technical book", "use_case": "book format conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Markdown is holding you back"}]}, {"label": "Docx round-trips", "summary": "Merging edits from generated docx files back into Markdown is manual.", "quotes": [{"id": 797626528, "item_id": 49851658, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49851658", "by": "jwrallie", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Markdown + Pandoc compiling to a .docx as a workaround", "excerpt": "No, git is understood as an unreasonably difficult Dropbox for most people that do not code substantially. I use Markdown + Pandoc compiling to a .docx as a workaround, but merging changes back is manual.", "context": "", "use_case": "writing docs and compiling to docx", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"}]}], "who": [{"by": "riedel", "context": "developer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798585", "date": "2026-07-05"}, {"by": "raybb", "context": "publishes books of student essays", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545849", "date": "2026-06-15"}, {"by": "ifh-hn", "context": "student writing papers", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48336880", "date": "2026-05-30"}, {"by": "ltrg", "context": "former doctoral student", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335474", "date": "2026-05-30"}, {"by": "submeta", "context": "heavy Pandoc user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335386", "date": "2026-05-30"}, {"by": "ktzar", "context": "novel writer", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335359", "date": "2026-05-30"}, {"by": "dont__panic", "context": "has worked on docs at many companies", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46610769", "date": "2026-01-13"}, {"by": "beej71", "context": "writes books in Markdown", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568025", "date": "2026-01-10"}, {"by": "jez", "context": "maintains a pandoc filter", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46363144", "date": "2025-12-22"}, {"by": "meonkeys", "context": "wrote a technical book", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024289", "date": "2025-11-23"}], "tags": ["for Markdown writers", "for book authors", "for academic papers", "for static sites", "for documentarians"], "use_cases": ["document conversion", "markdown to pdf conversion", "markdown to pdf", "writing docs and compiling to docx", "document conversion markdown to latex", "markup rendering for wikis"], "compared": [{"slug": "typst", "name": "Typst", "co": 11, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "latex", "name": "LaTeX", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "quarto", "name": "Quarto", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "asciidoctor", "name": "Asciidoctor", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "obsidian", "name": "Obsidian", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "org-mode", "name": "Org mode", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49156750", "title": "Twenty Years of Pandoc", "mentions": 7}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48334515", "title": "Pandoc Templates", "mentions": 6}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48544396", "title": "Typst 0.15.0", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48773079", "title": "Pandoc Lua Filters", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877253", "title": "Ask HN: What's your preferred Python tool to convert Markdown to print ready PDF", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46564116", "title": "Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 2}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-01": {"recommend": 2, "neutral": 2}, "2026-02": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 5, "neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"compare": 2, "neutral": 1, "recommend": 3}, "2026-07": {"warn": 1, "recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 7, "neutral": 1}, "2026-09": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 803893683, "item_id": 50243355, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50243355", "by": "pidgeon_lover", "date": "2026-10-26", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "CopyAsMarkdown [4] (with Pandoc)", "excerpt": "I agree that websites should be printable. I'm a fan of RSS and eInk displays (Kindles, and when I can afford one, a PC monitor), and printable websites would make using them on paper-like displays easier. I've been using the PrintFriendly [1] browser extension for years (to print otherwise unprintable websites), but it gotten worse, so while looking at alternatives I started with The Printliminator [2] (which uses t", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Websites Should Be Printable"}, {"id": 797626528, "item_id": 49851658, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49851658", "by": "jwrallie", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Markdown + Pandoc compiling to a .docx as a workaround", "excerpt": "No, git is understood as an unreasonably difficult Dropbox for most people that do not code substantially. I use Markdown + Pandoc compiling to a .docx as a workaround, but merging changes back is manual.", "context": "", "use_case": "writing docs and compiling to docx", "switched_from": "", "story": "Dutch governments builds alternative for Microsoft based on NixOS"}, {"id": 797596864, "item_id": 49849804, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49849804", "by": "leephillips", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pandoc has a Typst reader. I use a pandoc filter to write in markdown with math in Typst and convert to LaTeX", "excerpt": "Not the person you\u2019re asking, but I\u2019ll just mention that pandoc has a Typst reader. I use a pandoc filter to write in markdown with math in Typst and convert to LaTeX: https://lee-phillips.org/typstfilters/", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion markdown to LaTeX", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst makes big strides"}, {"id": 789350368, "item_id": 49334398, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49334398", "by": "dima55", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "You should hook up pandoc to it, and support everything it can handle.", "excerpt": "I want org-mode markup support for the wikis and readmes. Github supports this, and gitlab sorta does. You should hook up pandoc to it, and support everything it can handle.", "context": "", "use_case": "markup rendering for wikis", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Alternatives to GitHub"}, {"id": 786711521, "item_id": 49169470, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49169470", "by": "randusername", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use cmake to switch the backend between pandoc and lowdown", "excerpt": "I do this too, but I use cmake to switch the backend between pandoc and lowdown [0]. Lowdown is not a drop-in replacement for pandoc flavored markdown, but it's between 10-100X faster. It's very handy to switch when tinkering with template changes because I can convert ~ 1000 markdown files instantaneously on my mid 2010s desktop. [0]: https://kristaps.bsd.lv/lowdown/", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown conversion for static site", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 786650736, "item_id": 49165671, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49165671", "by": "aleks_me2", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use it to create pdfs for my blog posts with that code", "excerpt": "Thanks also that new reader/writer are also integrated like typst. I use it to create pdfs for my blog posts with that code :-) python3 \"$SCRIPT_DIR/preprocess.py\" > blog-post.md && \\ /datadisk/Downloads/pandoc-3.9/bin/pandoc \\ blog-post.md \\ --pdf-engine=typst \\ --template=\"templates/blog.typ\" \\ -o \"out.pdf\" 2>/tmp/pdf-pandoc-err.txt;", "context": "", "use_case": "blog post PDFs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 786650048, "item_id": 49165628, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49165628", "by": "jillesvangurp", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I gobbled together some bash scripts around pandoc to build a site generator for my personal website. Works great.", "excerpt": "A few years ago, I gobbled together some bash scripts around pandoc to build a site generator for my personal website. Works great. I use html templates, markdown for the content, etc. Mostly the bash scripts just serve to list files and process them one by one. I actually process them concurrently by forking processes so it's reasonably fast. A bit wonky but it works fine for my use case. As for Haskell, I guess tre", "context": "", "use_case": "static site generator", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 786644688, "item_id": 49165293, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49165293", "by": "jwr", "date": "2026-08-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I mostly use it for Markdown->Typst these days and it does this job very well.", "excerpt": "Thank you for Pandoc! I used it for many things over the years, and it was always there as a good option. I mostly use it for Markdown->Typst these days and it does this job very well.", "context": "", "use_case": "Markdown to Typst conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 786608608, "item_id": 49163038, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49163038", "by": "aanet", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc is my go-to tool.", "excerpt": "That a professor of philosophy [1] made tools [2] that are used by millions around the world... that's just mind boggling. In a good (great!) way. Pandoc is my go-to tool. Thank you, Sir! [1] https://johnmacfarlane.net/index.html [2] https://johnmacfarlane.net/tools.html", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 786606688, "item_id": 49162918, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49162918", "by": "malkosta", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Love pandoc, I use it for all sorts of stuff", "excerpt": "Love pandoc, I use it for all sorts of stuff\u2026here is my minimal static site generator: find . -name '*.md' -type f -exec sh -c ' for file do out=\"docs/${file#./}\" out=\"${out%.md}.html\" mkdir -p \"$(dirname \"$out\")\" pandoc --quiet --template template.html \"$file\" -o \"$out\" done ' sh {} +", "context": "", "use_case": "static site generation", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 786599024, "item_id": 49162439, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49162439", "by": "rahimnathwani", "date": "2026-08-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc is great. I use it multiple times per day", "excerpt": "Pandoc is great. I use it multiple times per day to move content between Outlook emails and a coding harness: https://gist.github.com/rahimnathwani/210b1f9cb6ce731a30432227772d6f85 cat email-to-xyz.md | md2clip clip2md > email-from-xyz.md", "context": "", "use_case": "converting Outlook emails to markdown", "switched_from": "", "story": "Twenty Years of Pandoc"}, {"id": 780777360, "item_id": 48798585, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48798585", "by": "riedel", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use pandoc filters when automatically updating/building packages", "excerpt": "I use pandoc filters when automatically updating/building packages (chocolatey) from GitHub repos/releases. When I built them I remember the documentation and API much less than this. As a developer I might have been easily overwhelmed by today's docs. On the other hand: today I guess those docs are rather read/ used by an AI than any human.", "context": "developer", "use_case": "building packages from GitHub releases", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Lua Filters"}, {"id": 780692944, "item_id": 48793309, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48793309", "by": "a1o", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "We use it for seven years and it still runs fine when we update Pandoc", "excerpt": "We use it for seven years and it still runs fine when we update Pandoc - we usually always update things. I don\u2019t remember anything about the docs, so not sure what changed.", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Lua Filters"}, {"id": 780676256, "item_id": 48792266, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48792266", "by": "lifthrasiir", "date": "2026-07-05", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Is there anyone feeling that Pandoc is ever increasingly bloated?", "excerpt": "Is there anyone feeling that Pandoc is ever increasingly bloated? I have used Lua filters a decade ago [1] and the current documentation is nothing like my memories. I'm not even sure that how much of Lua scripts remain compatible across different Pandoc versions. [1] https://github.com/mearie/mearie.github.io/blob/source/res/writer.lua", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion with Lua filters", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Lua Filters"}, {"id": 777979137, "item_id": 48623696, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48623696", "by": "verdverm", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "and pandoc as others have suggested", "excerpt": "Native support: https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/onedriveblog/introducing-markdown-support-in-sharepoint-and-onedrive/4512174 Microsoft OSS python: https://github.com/microsoft/markitdown There seem to be many addons that enable this, and pandoc as others have suggested", "context": "", "use_case": "convert Word to Markdown", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: How should I convert Microsoft Word documents to Markdown?"}, {"id": 777324256, "item_id": 48582766, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48582766", "by": "vincent-uden", "date": "2026-06-18", "stance": "compare", "quote": "Benchmarks are hard to evaluate without a comparison to pandoc or other solutions.", "excerpt": "A screenshot of the UI would've been nice in the README. Benchmarks are hard to evaluate without a comparison to pandoc or other solutions. Still, neat project. I love small, pointed software", "context": "", "use_case": "Markdown to PDF", "switched_from": "", "story": "I built a 2.3MB Markdown-to-PDF app because Chromium felt absurd"}, {"id": 776772672, "item_id": 48548292, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48548292", "by": "aleks_me2", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "you can tell pandoc to use typst as pdf-engine.", "excerpt": "you can tell pandoc to use typst as pdf-engine. I use this command to create pdf from my md file. Downloads/pandoc-3.9/bin/pandoc \\ README.md \\ -o \"my-output.pdf\" \\ --pdf-engine=typst \\ -V papersize=a4 \\ -V fontsize=10pt \\ -V margin-left=2.5cm \\ -V margin-right=2.5cm \\ -V margin-top=2.5cm \\ -V margin-bottom=2.5cm \\ -V title=\"My title\" \\ -V lang=de \\ --include-in-header=typst-header.typ \\ --toc --toc-depth=3 2>&1 That", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown to PDF", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 776745843, "item_id": 48546615, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48546615", "by": "applicative", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Latex is in no sense required by pandoc and never has been", "excerpt": "Latex is in no sense required by pandoc and never has been, not ten years ago, not twenty years ago. Everything you are writing is deep conceptual confusion from top to bottom. You might as well say it has required Microsoft Word since the docx readers and writers came out. Latex is a typical route to produce pdfs according to your specification, but typst is what I use; occasionally groff. I use latex when what I am", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 776733585, "item_id": 48545849, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545849", "by": "raybb", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "It all works quite beautifully.", "excerpt": "I'm currently working on my fourth book produced using Typst, and it has been nothing but amazing. LLMs struggle with Typst a bit but other than that it has been an absolute joy to work with. I have a pretty good workflow set up for publishing these books, which are mostly collections of student essays. I use Pandoc to convert the students' Word documents into Typst, then unify the formatting, styles, and headers (mo", "context": "publishes books of student essays", "use_case": "document format conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 776732545, "item_id": 48545784, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545784", "by": "applicative", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I pass from markdown to typst pdf via pandoc a few times a day.", "excerpt": "I pass from markdown to typst pdf via pandoc a few times a day. From that point of view it is just an alternative to latex or roff, e.g. pandoc -r markdown -w pdf --pdf-engine=typst input.md -o output.pdf", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown to PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 776729522, "item_id": 48545595, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545595", "by": "opto", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "compare", "quote": "why would I use typst over org-mode or $your_fave_markdown + pandoc?", "excerpt": "As a non-developer who really only uses computers to write and produce documents, why would I use typst over org-mode or $your_fave_markdown + pandoc?", "context": "non-developer who writes and produces documents", "use_case": "writing documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Typst 0.15.0"}, {"id": 773492209, "item_id": 48343263, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48343263", "by": "quijoteuniv", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "by transforming your markdown with Pandoc", "excerpt": "Eisvogel template is a fantastic way to use Latex without knowing much about it, by transforming your markdown with Pandoc, mind you i used it before LLMs existed, but it was great to turn the notes of a project of a tesis into a super pro formated version without learning Latex.", "context": "", "use_case": "converting markdown documents", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 773390080, "item_id": 48336880, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48336880", "by": "ifh-hn", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I think the tooling around pandoc is what makes it such a good tool.", "excerpt": "I used to use pandoc for my bachelors papers, which needed to be submitted as word documents. I never used templates but had a rather large \"one-liner\" pandoc command to convert my markdown files. At the time I'd not got round to understanding the yaml front matter etc. I even user Zettlr for a while [0]. I then discovered quarto [1] and this changed everything. Much nicer experience. I used this for my masters paper", "context": "student writing papers", "use_case": "converting markdown to Word", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 773375056, "item_id": 48335941, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335941", "by": "falsaberN1", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Pandoc fairly extensively", "excerpt": "Oh wow, I use Pandoc fairly extensively, and have my own templates, and I never knew you could make things as colorful as some of these. Oh no, inspiration has arrived. Guess I know what I'm wasting my weekend into, hah. Also this page seems to have existed for a while and I never heard of it! I'm glad I stumbled upon this. A lot of nice ideas here.", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion with custom templates", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 773367584, "item_id": 48335474, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335474", "by": "ltrg", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used it to output my doctoral thesis in LaTeX from Markdown 10 years ago", "excerpt": "I used it to output my doctoral thesis in LaTeX from Markdown 10 years ago, and similarly for going back and forth between my supervisor's Word documents and the main thesis text. Embarrassingly, a horrible little script for converting Pandoc's Markdown endnotes to inline format remains my most-starred GitHub repo: https://github.com/ltrgoddard/inliner/", "context": "former doctoral student", "use_case": "thesis conversion between Markdown, LaTeX, Word", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 773366176, "item_id": 48335386, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335386", "by": "submeta", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I would be lost had I have to use the Office tools to edit and format my text.", "excerpt": "I am a heavy user of Pandoc. As I write all my text in markdown using Obsidian, but have to create content for the MS Office environment, I use Pandoc to convert my markdown content into ms office formated content. I would be lost had I have to use the Office tools to edit and format my text. So thank you to all the maintainers of Pandoc.", "context": "heavy Pandoc user", "use_case": "converting markdown to Office formats", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 773365744, "item_id": 48335359, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48335359", "by": "ktzar", "date": "2026-05-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc is such an amazing piece of software.", "excerpt": "Pandoc is such an amazing piece of software. I used it to format my novel and made it part of a GitHub action to produce all the formats I required. I wasn't aware of templates, but some look really sleek. I keep thinking that modern text editors are just flawed and markdown, with all its downsides and limitations, is what 99% is the people need.", "context": "novel writer", "use_case": "formatting novel into multiple formats", "switched_from": "", "story": "Pandoc Templates"}, {"id": 764821825, "item_id": 47801364, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47801364", "by": "tmoertel", "date": "2026-04-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "pandoc --metadata-file=../templates/latex-header-includes.yaml -t pdf", "excerpt": "Sure, here's the Makefile. Also, if you want more examples of working Hakyll setups, there's a long list of them here: https://jaspervdj.be/hakyll/examples.html # Binary tool we use to build the website. bins = dist-newstyle/build/*/*/*/*/site/build/site tool = $(bins)/site # By default, we build everything if you invoke `make` without a target. all: build .PHONY: all # The tool used to build the site is a Hakyll bin", "context": "", "use_case": "generating PDFs from posts", "switched_from": "", "story": "The Future of Everything Is Lies, I Guess: Where Do We Go from Here?"}, {"id": 762085568, "item_id": 47630348, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47630348", "by": "vessenes", "date": "2026-04-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "pandoc can turn it into almost any format.", "excerpt": "Hard, hard no on this. Why are we using Markdown? Why do I use it every day? It's easy to write. It's easy to read. Despite the OP's complaints, quality parsers exist. pandoc can turn it into almost any format. We will still be writing markdown in 50 years, because the design bridges a bunch of compromises very nicely.", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Why the heck are we still using Markdown?"}, {"id": 752616467, "item_id": 47038529, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47038529", "by": "paultopia", "date": "2026-02-16", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "usually using markdown +\npandoc", "excerpt": "I love this. I use various text editors mostly used by devs (moving back and forth between emacs and sublime on mac and textastic on ipad) for serious longform writing all the time, usually using markdown + pandoc, and it has a bunch of advantages and disadvantages. IME the main advantages are (1) not having to fight with useless Microsoft word (and similar) behavior, bloat, bugs, etc. and (2) being able to mix in a ", "context": "", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Vim-pencil: Rethinking Vim as a tool for writing"}, {"id": 750387792, "item_id": 46899237, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46899237", "by": "roxolotl", "date": "2026-02-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I\u2019d highly recommend pandoc[0] if you need markdown conversion.", "excerpt": "I\u2019d highly recommend pandoc[0] if you need markdown conversion. Basically converts from everything and any markdown style to everything else. And then for clipboard just use `| pbcopy` on a Mac or `| xsel -ib`. Full command on a Mac would just be `pandoc README.md -t html | pbcopy`. If you want a docx you can get that too. 0: https://pandoc.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "markdown conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: CLI tool to convert Markdown to rich HTML clipboard content"}, {"id": 750090992, "item_id": 46880687, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46880687", "by": "dennisjoseph", "date": "2026-02-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "https://pandoc.org/", "excerpt": "https://pandoc.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "Markdown to PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's your preferred Python tool to convert Markdown to print ready PDF"}, {"id": 750039344, "item_id": 46877459, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46877459", "by": "amir_karbasi", "date": "2026-02-03", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I ended up just using Pandoc", "excerpt": "I looked into this and nothing worked well for me. I ended up just using Pandoc: https://pandoc.org/", "context": "", "use_case": "Markdown to PDF conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What's your preferred Python tool to convert Markdown to print ready PDF"}, {"id": 746116195, "item_id": 46632262, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46632262", "by": "rasmus-kirk", "date": "2026-01-15", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "The blog is custom-made, built using Nix and pandoc.", "excerpt": "https://rasmuskirk.com/ My personal blog and resume. I have written a couple of blog-posts: - 2025-06-18: Lasso Transactions as an alternative to Copyright A Solution to Fund Creativity and Combat the Free-Rider Problem in a World Without Copyright. https://rasmuskirk.com/articles/2025-06-18_lasso-transactions-as-an-alternative-to-copyright - 2024-12-23: Why Nix Is the Perfect Package Manager for Your Steam Deck An a", "context": "", "use_case": "building blog", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Could you share your personal website here?"}, {"id": 745772304, "item_id": 46610769, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46610769", "by": "dont__panic", "date": "2026-01-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc is an incredible tool that every documentarian knows.", "excerpt": "I love the linux philosophy at work here. Pandoc is an incredible tool that every documentarian knows. Markdown is a great tool that covers 80%+ of docs requirements (admonitions and tabs are not well-defined in vanilla markdown, for instance, but you don't strictly _need_ those). I've worked on docs at quite a few companies at this point. Almost every company I've ever seen has built a Rube Goldberg machine and tota", "context": "has worked on docs at many companies", "use_case": "documentation", "switched_from": "", "story": "You Don't Need Mintlify"}, {"id": 745105249, "item_id": 46569078, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46569078", "by": "adityaathalye", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "hand-rolled pandoc + bash site maker", "excerpt": "Opposite day! I moved from markdown (hugo) to org plaintext built and rendered using a hand-rolled pandoc + bash site maker. No Emacs needed. ~350 lines of Bash, and it hot-builds, and it hot-reloads :) https://github.com/adityaathalye/shite (README has GIF demos, and explains the design of the code) Also, I use literal HTML exports in my org files, like this: #+begin_export html <form class=\"footer cluster\" action=\"", "context": "", "use_case": "building a static site", "switched_from": "", "story": "Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text"}, {"id": 745088401, "item_id": 46568025, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46568025", "by": "beej71", "date": "2026-01-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent.", "excerpt": "I use Markdown for all my books, currently. It used to be a custom XML format, but that was really annoying to type even with custom Vim keybindings. I do wish Markdown were more capable, but it's a good lowest common denominator for HTML and PDF. Also Pandoc-flavored markdown is pretty decent. My current flow is: Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML Markdown -> preprocess -> pandoc -> HTML -> page-splitter -> sp", "context": "writes books in Markdown", "use_case": "document conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Org Mode Syntax Is One of the Most Reasonable Markup Languages to Use for Text"}, {"id": 741810304, "item_id": 46363144, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46363144", "by": "jez", "date": "2025-12-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Eventually I switched to Pandoc lua filters, which eliminated the toil while also being platform agnostic", "excerpt": "I have maintained a pandoc filter in Haskell for a while. Pandoc is written in Haskell, and so takes a similar approach: JSON API for arbitrary languages, but with a library for trivially parsing that JSON back into the same Haskell datatype that Pandoc uses under the hood. When you sit down to write the filter for the first time, it\u2019s amazing. You\u2019re using a typed IR that\u2019s well documented, a language that catches y", "context": "maintains a pandoc filter", "use_case": "document conversion filters", "switched_from": "Pandoc Haskell filters", "story": "Plugins case study: mdBook preprocessors"}, {"id": 738912704, "item_id": 46182044, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46182044", "by": "nerdypepper", "date": "2025-12-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "the book/site is \"weaved\" with pandoc", "excerpt": "relatedly, i have been using literate haskell to document my advent of code journey this year: - day 5's solution for example: https://aoc.oppi.li/2.3-day-5.html#day-5 - literate haskell source: https://tangled.org/oppi.li/aoc/blob/main/src/2025/05.lhs the book/site is \"weaved\" with pandoc, the code is \"tangled\" with a custom markdown \"unlit\" program that is passed to GHC.", "context": "", "use_case": "generating literate programming site", "switched_from": "", "story": "What is \u201cliterate programming\u201d? (2024)"}, {"id": 736388625, "item_id": 46024289, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46024289", "by": "meonkeys", "date": "2025-11-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I was struggling with Markdown+pandoc+custom scripts/styles, so I switched to Asciidoc.", "excerpt": "I wouldn't use Markdown for that. You're right to start with your requirements. Try to get detailed, like the list @WA wrote out, then match it up with appropriate tech. I wrote a technical book and I also wanted multiple decent-looking outputs. In my case: HTML, EPUB/mobi, screen and print PDFs. I was struggling with Markdown+pandoc+custom scripts/styles, so I switched to Asciidoc. I wrote about that process here: h", "context": "wrote a technical book", "use_case": "book format conversion", "switched_from": "", "story": "Markdown is holding you back"}, {"id": 736346032, "item_id": 46021627, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46021627", "by": "procaryote", "date": "2025-11-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Pandoc lets me do things like generate libreoffice or microsoft word documents from the markdown", "excerpt": "I use markdown because it's easy to read without rendering. All of the alternatives in the article seem worse If I wanted more structure, I'd just write html; or mix html into the markdown. Pandoc lets me do things like generate libreoffice or microsoft word documents from the markdown, using a reference document for styling of headings etc. This also gives me good enough control to generate OK looking pdfs. It's not", "context": "", "use_case": "convert markdown to docs/PDF", "switched_from": "", "story": "Markdown is holding you back"}]}