Plain TeX writer

["Vít Novotný" <witiko-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

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In pull request #1541 <https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/1541>, John 
MacFarlane floated the idea of having a Pandoc writer whose output could be 
“processed by plain tex (or perhaps eplain), without latex or context 
macros.” In their proof of concept 
<https://github.com/drehak/pandoc-to-markdown>, Dominik Rehák 
<https://github.com/drehak> explores what this would look like in practice. 

Dominik’s proof of concept contains a custom Lua writer 
pandoc-to-markdown.lua that you can use as follows: 


*$ cat > example.md*Under his pillow P'raps found  
~~A cake that weighed a half a pound.~~  
A plenty of space to roll around.

 $ pandoc -i example.md -f pandoc-to-markdown.lua -o example.tex

*$ cat example.tex*\pandocDocumentBegin
Under\pandocSpace{}his\pandocSpace{}pillow\pandocSpace{}P’raps\pandocSpace{}found\pandocLineBreak
\pandocStrikeout{A\pandocSpace{}cake\pandocSpace{}that\pandocSpace{}weighed\pandocSpace{}a\pandocSpace{}half\pandocSpace{}a\pandocSpace{}pound.}\pandocLineBreak
A\pandocSpace{}plenty\pandocSpace{}of\pandocSpace{}space\pandocSpace{}to\pandocSpace{}roll\pandocSpace{}around.
\pandocDocumentEnd

To typeset the example document, you can use a macro package that defines 
how the various \pandoc... commands should be formatted. For LaTeX, the 
proof of concept contains the pandoc-to-markdown.sty style file that you 
can use as follows: 


*$ cat > example.ltx*\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{pandoc-to-markdown}
\begin{document}
\input example.tex
\end{document} 

$ pdflatex example.ltx

Here is the output document example.pdf:

 [image: example.png]

The proof-of-concept contains many more examples for you to try out in the 
examples/ directory 
<https://github.com/drehak/pandoc-to-markdown/tree/main/examples>.

Dominik's work is part of their bachelor's thesis, which is to appear this 
fall. Dominik has already published two articles about their work in 
hobbyist journals: the CSTUG Bulletin 31:1–4 
<https://www.cstug.cz/bulletin/pdf/2021-1-4.pdf#page=85> (in Slovak, see a 
machine translation to English 
<https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https://www.fi.muni.cz/~xnovot32/bulletin/2021-1-4/06-rehak-pandoc/&client=webapp>) 
and in TUGboat 43:1 
<https://www.tug.org/TUGboat/tb43-1/tb133novotny-markdown.pdf#page=3> (see 
Section 2.3). The implementation rests on my Markdown package for TeX 
<https://ctan.org/pkg/markdown>, which provides formatting for most 
elements of the Pandoc AST across different TeX formats such as plain TeX, 
LaTeX, and ConTeXt. 

Here are some limitations of the proof of concept:

   - 
   
   For the sake of convenience, some of the \pandoc... commands that we 
   produce are in a form that closely mimics the commands provided by the 
   Markdown package rather than Pandoc’s AST. For example, the \pandocCode, 
   \pandocLink, and \pandocHeader commands discard attributes, the 
   \pandocImage and \pandocCaptionedImage commands receive parameters with 
   TeX’s special characters escaped in a way required by the Markdown package, 
   and the LineBlock element of Pandoc’s AST is simulated by a series of 
   \pandocLineBreak commands.
   
   In the future, we would like to make the  \pandoc... commands closer to 
   the Pandoc’s AST, so that a lossless round trip from AST to TeX and back is 
   possible. In TeX, we can process text using regular expressions (see the 
   l3regex module of the expl3 macro package 
   <https://www.ctan.org/pkg/l3kernel>), which allows us to move most 
   parameter preprocessing code from our Lua writer to the definitions of the 
   \pandoc… commands.
   - 
   
   The custom Lua writer pandoc-to-markdown.lua uses the old-style custom 
   Lua writer API that will no longer be supported in Pandoc 3.0.0. We would 
   like to rewrite the custom Lua write to Haskell, so that it can become an 
   integral part of Pandoc independent of Pandoc’s Lua API.
   
   In the future, the ConTeXt and LaTeX writers of Pandoc could be replaced 
   by a single writer that would produce format-agnostic TeX code. Formatting 
   for the TeX code would then be provided by format-specific TeX macro 
   packages such as the pandoc-to-markdown.sty style file for LaTeX. This 
   approach will reduce the amount of code maintained by Pandoc and increase 
   the number of supported TeX formats, which is a win-win for both Pandoc 
   maintainers and Pandoc users. Both Dominik and I would be happy to discuss 
   with you how to best get there.
   

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