Re: Setting a template based on YAML metadata blocks

[John MacFarlane <fiddlosopher-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

> On Aug 1, 2023, at 11:16 PM, JJ <jj-pl4xscvadcE@public.gmane.org> wrote:
> 
> Hello, I've been acquainting myself with pandoc for the past few days.
> It's quite neat. I particularly do like pandoc's markdown flavour:
> it's everything I've ever wanted out of such an extension! I had some
> questions that I've been unable to find answers to in the manpage or
> elsewhere, however.
> 
> Is it possible to specify a template that pandoc is to use in a YAML
> metadata block? Presumably this would only work with --standalone.
> I've attempted `template: ` after seeing it elsewhere and hoping it
> may work, but no dice. This seems like a common enough use case that
> I'd imagine there is an option I am missing: or perhaps people on this
> mailing list have external solutions. (though I was hoping to avoid
> the use of sed: for no reason other than I've only had to use pandoc
> in my script so far, which has been quite neat)

No.  You can use a defaults file for this.  We try to separate metadata from processing instructions.

> Also, what is best practice for "including" HTML fragments in pandoc?
> I've found nothing in pandoc for this purpose so far - which, well,
> makes a lot of sense. I was planning on first trying to rework things
> to rely entirely on templates, and then in the event of failure just
> sed-ing it up. But I harbour some concerns about accidentally
> replacing text strings or code blocks.

I'd need more information about what exactly you're trying to do.  In the template, you could include a variable and then populate it from a file using --variable myvar=$(cat myfile.html). In the document itself, there's no built-in way to do this, but you could use a small Lua filter to replace some element of the text (say, a code block marked with the file name to be included) with raw HTML from a file, which would be passed on unmolested to the output.

> Also also I am curious: what is the background behind *default* html
> templates needing the .html5 extension, but regular html templates
> using .html? This threw me for a bit of a loop for a bit.

html4 and html5 are separate output formats (but `html` defaults to `html5`).  That's why.  The templates are a bit different.


> -- JJ
> 
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