Yes, I intend the file with YAML to be pandoc markdown metadata.  I have 
had --- and --- surrounding all the content, except some comments at the 
end (with # as the comment character)
I replaced the final --- with ... and verified with pandoc 2.2.1 that the 
document produced is identical.

However, I am unsure where to put "-f markdown". I tried putting it in 
various places. For example, if the first two lines of the YAML document are
---
-f markdown

Then, pandoc 2.9.2.1 gives this message "[WARNING] Could not parse YAML 
metadata at line 6 column 1: did not find expected <document start>"

So instead, I tried using "-f markdown" on the command line. In this case, 
pandoc 2.9.2.1 gives this warning:
[WARNING] Could not parse YAML metadata at line 953 column 1: Duplicate key 
in mapping: Scalar (Pos {posByteOffset = 16004, posCharOffset = 15999, 
posLine = 386, posColumn = 0}) (SUnknown Nothing "educationtitle")

There are 951 lines in the file.

In both of the two latter cases, it appears that none of the metadata is 
read; the tex document is written as if all variables were the empty string.

I then tried removing most of the data from the YAML file and I find that 
pandoc 2.9.2.1, with "-f markdown" on the command line  *does* make the 
expected substitutions using the small amount of data in the YAML file. I 
see at least two possibilities: 1) My big metadata file is not legal YAML, 
but was accepted by older versions of pandoc. 2) My big metadata file is 
legal YAML, but there is a bug in newer versions of pandoc.

In any case, is the following true ? One can create a document from only a 
pandoc YAML metadata file and a custom template if one specifies "-f 
markdown" on the command line.

On Friday, April 17, 2020 at 9:31:15 AM UTC-7, John MacFarlane wrote:
>
>
> If the YAML is pandoc markdown metadata, between 
>
> --- 
>
> and 
>
> ... 
>
> you can just add -f markdown. 
>
> John Lapeyre <john....-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org <javascript:>> writes: 
>
> > With pandoc 2.2.1, the following would work 
> > 
> > pandoc --pdf-engine=xelatex  mydocdata.yml -o outputdoc.tex 
> > --template=input.pandoc.tex 
> > 
> > 
> > Here input.pandoc.tex is a highly customized template. All the variables 
> to 
> > fill in are defined in mydocdata.yml 
> > 
> > With pandoc 2.9.2.1, I get the error 
> > 
> >  [WARNING] Could not deduce format from file extension .yml 
> >    Defaulting to markdown 
> > 
> > 
> > Apparently, yaml is not supported as an input format. Does anyone know a 
> > way to get the same effect with recent versions of pandoc ? 
> > 
> > 
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>
>

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