Markdown Discuss - Dec 2012 - Tools for converting markdown to other formats with templating support

Hi all,

I'm new to the list but I've been using markdown for a while and I
wonder if it might make the things I've been doing recently easier if I
could find a tool that does what I need.

Essentially, I've been writing a lot of technical proposals of late (mostly
using google docs), but I'd like to switch to writing them in Markdown
(which handily means I can track revisions and collaborate with git). However,
the finished output needs to be in both pdf and html and I'd like to apply
templates to both. Additionally I have a requirement for a cover page for the
PDF Copy. I'd also like to be able to paginate the HTML at the same
boundaries as the PDF copy is paginated.

Now I've seen a number of markdown libraries that can generate TeX and HTML
but I don't seem to be able to apply a TeX template to them (and indeed my
knowledge of TeX stops at writing a CV for which I haven't written a
document template).

So, my requirements are:
- Generate a PDF copy
  - With company cover page
  - With company header, footer and ideally something in a margin like a logo
- Generate a HTML copy
  - With company branding applied via CSS
  - Ideally paginated at the breaks of where the PDF would be paginated.

Now, for the cover page, I explored three possibilities:
- Document-level metadata (as supported by python-markdown with a plugin).
Specify some fields in there that I could manually output in the right format.
- Inline metadata (as supported by ruby's maruku). Not sure how i'd make
it spit this out differently though
- Specially formatting some fields (e.g. building a level 1 header with
DOCTITLE: in it or something, parsing it out before it hits the markdown library
and prepending it to the document)

Yes, I'm aware HTML isn't designed to be paginated as such and I'm
willing to lose that (though it would be nice just as a cross-platform fallback
for where PDFs are not supported). I've also spent several hours searching
for tools or libraries that do all of this out of the box and found nothing
(which leads me to believe it doesn't exist).

My current approach is likely to be taking Pegdown (a java markdown library) and
writing new renderers (it exposes the AST directly), but that's obviously a
substantial amount of work. I'd be grateful for any pointers people have as
alternatives, or perhaps someone knows of a tool?

Oh and I know this is the markdown list, but if the above already exists for
another markup language, I'd consider switching, provided it was of a
similar theme to markdown.

Cheers,
James

This might help:
http://www.princexml.com

I've not used it, but the creators of the CSS spec used it to print their
book, which they discuss here:
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/boom

- TH


On Dec 22, 2012, at 1:06 PM, James Laver wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm new to the list but I've been using markdown for a while and I
wonder if it might make the things I've been doing recently easier if I
could find a tool that does what I need.
> 
> Essentially, I've been writing a lot of technical proposals of late
(mostly using google docs), but I'd like to switch to writing them in
Markdown (which handily means I can track revisions and collaborate with git).
However, the finished output needs to be in both pdf and html and I'd like
to apply templates to both. Additionally I have a requirement for a cover page
for the PDF Copy. I'd also like to be able to paginate the HTML at the same
boundaries as the PDF copy is paginated.
> 
> Now I've seen a number of markdown libraries that can generate TeX and
HTML but I don't seem to be able to apply a TeX template to them (and indeed
my knowledge of TeX stops at writing a CV for which I haven't written a
document template).
> 
> So, my requirements are:
> - Generate a PDF copy
>  - With company cover page
>  - With company header, footer and ideally something in a margin like a
logo
> - Generate a HTML copy
>  - With company branding applied via CSS
>  - Ideally paginated at the breaks of where the PDF would be paginated.
> 
> Now, for the cover page, I explored three possibilities:
> - Document-level metadata (as supported by python-markdown with a plugin).
Specify some fields in there that I could manually output in the right format.
> - Inline metadata (as supported by ruby's maruku). Not sure how i'd
make it spit this out differently though
> - Specially formatting some fields (e.g. building a level 1 header with
DOCTITLE: in it or something, parsing it out before it hits the markdown library
and prepending it to the document)
> 
> Yes, I'm aware HTML isn't designed to be paginated as such and
I'm willing to lose that (though it would be nice just as a cross-platform
fallback for where PDFs are not supported). I've also spent several hours
searching for tools or libraries that do all of this out of the box and found
nothing (which leads me to believe it doesn't exist).
> 
> My current approach is likely to be taking Pegdown (a java markdown
library) and writing new renderers (it exposes the AST directly), but that's
obviously a substantial amount of work. I'd be grateful for any pointers
people have as alternatives, or perhaps someone knows of a tool?
> 
> Oh and I know this is the markdown list, but if the above already exists
for another markup language, I'd consider switching, provided it was of a
similar theme to markdown.
> 
> Cheers,
> James

+++ James Laver [Dec 22 12 18:06 ]:
> Hi all,
> 
> I'm new to the list but I've been using markdown for a while and I
wonder if it might make the things I've been doing recently easier if I
could find a tool that does what I need.
> 
> Essentially, I've been writing a lot of technical proposals of late
(mostly using google docs), but I'd like to switch to writing them in
Markdown (which handily means I can track revisions and collaborate with git).
However, the finished output needs to be in both pdf and html and I'd like
to apply templates to both. Additionally I have a requirement for a cover page
for the PDF Copy. I'd also like to be able to paginate the HTML at the same
boundaries as the PDF copy is paginated.
> 
> Now I've seen a number of markdown libraries that can generate TeX and
HTML but I don't seem to be able to apply a TeX template to them (and indeed
my knowledge of TeX stops at writing a CV for which I haven't written a
document template).
> 
> So, my requirements are:
> - Generate a PDF copy
>   - With company cover page
>   - With company header, footer and ideally something in a margin like a
logo
> - Generate a HTML copy
>   - With company branding applied via CSS
>   - Ideally paginated at the breaks of where the PDF would be paginated.
Pandoc should be able to do all of this, except for synchronizing
the page breaks.  Pandoc supports templates for all formats:
http://johnmacfarlane.net/pandoc/README.html#templates

Since PDF output is via LaTeX, you'll need to customize the LaTeX
template for PDF.  The pandoc-discuss group is a good place to
ask questions about this if you get stuck.  Pandoc supports a
title block with title, author, and date; if you need other metadata
you can populate template variables with a command-line flag.

John