Re: Markdown, tables and CSV

[John Gabriele <jgabriele-97jfqw80gc6171pxa8y+qA@public.gmane.org>]

John, this may be something that could stand to be in the faq:

----------------------
Q. Can I write csv content in my input file and have Pandoc render it as
a table?

A. Pandoc doesn't support this directly, but you *can* put your csv data
into a delimited code block, mark the block $thusly, then use then use a
filter to process these specially-marked blocks. For example, {snip}.

A nice benefit of this is that it will degrade gracefully if the
document is then processed without using the filter.

There may be other options available on the [Pandoc Extras page],
including ... {snip preprocessors, scripts, ...?}
----------------------

Not sure about what "$thusly" would be though. Also have not used Pandoc
filters before.

-- John



On Fri, May 20, 2016, at 02:36 PM, John MACFARLANE wrote:
> +++ Martin Fenner [May 20 16 12:38 ]:
> >   I would rather use Pandoc with a CSV reader, but my Haskell isn't good
> >   enough to write one.
> 
> This would be a pretty easy project for someone trying to
> learn Haskell; maybe someone on the list wants to try it?
> The cassava library works well for csv parsing.
> 
> >   For the second use case I see a clear advantage of CSV over the various
> >   attempts to format tables in markdown (simple_tables, multiline_tables,
> >   grid_tables, pipe_tables). Everyone (and many tools) understands the
> >   CSV format, and you can do most of the things with CSV that the other
> >   table formats allow (multi-column formats and column alignment are a
> >   bit trickier). This has been done before using Pandoc filters, but I
> >   think a Pandoc "csv_tables" Pandoc extension would make this easier for
> >   the casual user. Using the grid_tables example from the Pandoc
> >   documentation, this could look like this:
> >
> >   : Sample csv table.
> >   ,,,
> >   Fruit,Price,Advantages
> >   Bananas,$1.34,- built-in wrapper\n- bright color
> >   Oranges,$2.10, - cures scurvy\n- tasty
> >   ,,,
> 
> I think that using a filter that processes specially marked
> code blocks is a better way to go than introducing yet
> another delimited block type.
> 
> For one thing, this will degrade much more gracefully when
> you render it with a standard markdown renderer.
> (The CSV will show up as code rather than garbage.)
> 
> One could think about integrating the filter into pandoc
> itself, as an option, but the code and syntax would not
> have to be different, I think.
> 
> 
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