Using YAML variables in docx

Using YAML variables in docx

['Adam Mackie' via pandoc-discuss]

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Hey folks,

Is there a straightforward way to use YAML-defined variables in my docx files? 

I generate docx files from markdown with headers and footers taken from a reference.docx. These headers always contain some document properties like "Title", "Revision" etc. Is there ANY way to get these to flow through from my YAML metadata?

I have looked through the readme and understand that reference.docx files are not like templates, so they're only intended to carry over document styles. I am also aware you can define "filters" for pandoc, but am unsure what they do for you or if they could be leveraged to solve this problem.

Just looking for ideas tbh, it's possible I've missed something somewhere, although I've poured over the readme/pandoc-discuss and gotten nowhere haha.

Cheers,
Adam

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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

[John MacFarlane]

Title and author and keywords defined in YAML blocks should
go into your document properties.  (Make sure you're using
the latest pandoc.)

Filters can't add things to the docx properties.
But they can add things to the body of the document.
You'd have to use specially labeled spans or something
in the document as placeholders. Then the filter could
replace these with values taken from the metadata.

+++ 'Adam Mackie' via pandoc-discuss [Oct 31 17 18:18 ]:
>Hey folks,
>
>Is there a straightforward way to use YAML-defined variables in my docx files?
>
>I generate docx files from markdown with headers and footers taken from a reference.docx. These headers always contain some document properties like "Title", "Revision" etc. Is there ANY way to get these to flow through from my YAML metadata?
>
>I have looked through the readme and understand that reference.docx files are not like templates, so they're only intended to carry over document styles. I am also aware you can define "filters" for pandoc, but am unsure what they do for you or if they could be leveraged to solve this problem.
>
>Just looking for ideas tbh, it's possible I've missed something somewhere, although I've poured over the readme/pandoc-discuss and gotten nowhere haha.
>
>Cheers,
>Adam
>
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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

['Adam Mackie' via pandoc-discuss]

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Thanks for the reply.

Will I be able to use this method to alter the headers and footers provided by the reference.docx? I'm playing around with filters just now and it looks like they get applied BEFORE the reference.docx...

Cheers,
Adam

Re: Using YAML variables in docx

[John MACFARLANE]

Yes, correct.  Filters can't modify the header or footer,
that's taken from the reference.docx.

+++ 'Adam Mackie' via pandoc-discuss [Nov 01 17 05:57 ]:
>Thanks for the reply.
>
>Will I be able to use this method to alter the headers and footers provided by the reference.docx? I'm playing around with filters just now and it looks like they get applied BEFORE the reference.docx...
>
>Cheers,
>Adam
>
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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

['Adam Mackie' via pandoc-discuss]

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So is there any way to accomplish what I want? I.e. have a file in markdown, convert it to docx, apply reference headers and then finally MODIFY the headers to have custom values as defined in a YAML block? So far it seems like I can do everything up to the last step.

I take it I couldn't do say, two passes, where I first apply the reference docx and THEN use a filter to alter the headers? Or am I right in saying the headers will get stripped off even if going from docx to docx...

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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

[John MACFARLANE]

No easy way to do this.  You could extract information from
your markdown file programatically (using pandoc's API or
a filter) and then postprocess the docx file itself.  Not
pretty.

+++ 'Adam Mackie' via pandoc-discuss [Nov 01 17 10:05 ]:
>So is there any way to accomplish what I want? I.e. have a file in markdown, convert it to docx, apply reference headers and then finally MODIFY the headers to have custom values as defined in a YAML block? So far it seems like I can do everything up to the last step.
>
>I take it I couldn't do say, two passes, where I first apply the reference docx and THEN use a filter to alter the headers? Or am I right in saying the headers will get stripped off even if going from docx to docx...
>
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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

[Agustín Martín]

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For certain standard properties (title, author...) it is already working.
Not in a general way for custom properties though.

Check https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/3034

On Wednesday, November 1, 2017 at 6:05:20 PM UTC+1, Adam Mackie wrote:
>
> So is there any way to accomplish what I want? I.e. have a file in 
> markdown, convert it to docx, apply reference headers and then finally 
> MODIFY the headers to have custom values as defined in a YAML block? So far 
> it seems like I can do everything up to the last step.
>
> I take it I couldn't do say, two passes, where I first apply the reference 
> docx and THEN use a filter to alter the headers? Or am I right in saying 
> the headers will get stripped off even if going from docx to docx...
>

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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

['Adam Mackie' via pandoc-discuss]

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To be honest, I sort of suspected this was not possible (well, easy). Maybe I can figure out a way to get the custom variables into the custom.xml file? I'll play around with that and see if I get anywhere.

I hope the custom properties make their way into pandoc at some point. Cheers for you help!

Re: Using YAML variables in docx

[Ophir Lifshitz]

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It might be useful to replace the limited "reference-doc" system with a 
full-fledged template system. Users could then naturally create a template 
as a .docx file¹ that could include $for$ loops, $variable$ substitution, 
and so on as usual.

___
¹ or .dotx too, I suppose? My knowledge of Word templates is at least 15 
years old.

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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

['Adam Mackie' via pandoc-discuss]

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At a minimum it would be useful to have YAML variables added as Custom Document Properties. I could do pretty much anything I want to if that feature existed. Docx seems to be a bit of a nightmare however, so that might be easier said than done. 

I'm curious how high a priority this is? I can see that new document properties (keywords) were added in 2.0 for docx.

Re: Using YAML variables in docx

[John MacFarlane]

The simplest idea would be to run the template resolver
on word/document.xml from the reference.docx, to produce
the new word/document.xml from the document body and
metadata values.

This could work, I think.  However, except in simple cases
you'd have to edit word/document.xml with a text editor,
rather than using Word, in order to get the template control
commands in the right place.  If you edit with Word, you'll
get things like

<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>$for(author)$</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>$author.name$ ($author.institute$)</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>$endfor$</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>

which (for two authors) would resolve to:

<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>

</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>Author 1 (Institute 1)</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>
</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>Author 2 (Institute 2)</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>
<w:p>
  <w:r>
    <w:t>
</w:t>
  </w:r>
</w:p>

This is valid (though I don't know if we can guarantee that
in all cases), but contains a number of empty paragraphs.


+++ Ophir Lifshitz [Nov 01 17 22:17 ]:
>   It might be useful to replace the limited "reference-doc" system with a
>   full-fledged template system. Users could then naturally create a
>   template as a .docx file¹ that could include $for$ loops, $variable$
>   substitution, and so on as usual.
>   ___
>   ¹ or .dotx too, I suppose? My knowledge of Word templates is at least
>   15 years old.

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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

[BP Jonsson]

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I haven't used Word in over a decade, so I don't know what builtin
scripting capabilities it has nowadays, but my thought is that you might
have a filter insert certain metadata values as custom styled paragraphs at
the end of the document body and then use python-docx to pull out the
(contents of) those paragraphs and insert them into the header/footer (of
each section seemingly to judge by <
http://python-docx.readthedocs.io/en/latest/dev/analysis/features/header.html
>).

Just my two worthless coins.

Den 5 nov 2017 18:40 skrev "John MacFarlane" <jgm-TVLZxgkOlNX2fBVCVOL8/A@public.gmane.org>:

> The simplest idea would be to run the template resolver
> on word/document.xml from the reference.docx, to produce
> the new word/document.xml from the document body and
> metadata values.
>
> This could work, I think.  However, except in simple cases
> you'd have to edit word/document.xml with a text editor,
> rather than using Word, in order to get the template control
> commands in the right place.  If you edit with Word, you'll
> get things like
>
> <w:p>
>  <w:r>
>    <w:t>$for(author)$</w:t>
>  </w:r>
> </w:p>
> <w:p>
>  <w:r>
>    <w:t>$author.name$ ($author.institute$)</w:t>
>  </w:r>
> </w:p>
> <w:p>
>  <w:r>
>    <w:t>$endfor$</w:t>
>  </w:r>
> </w:p>
>
> which (for two authors) would resolve to:
>
> <w:p>
>  <w:r>
>    <w:t>
>
> </w:t>
>  </w:r>
> </w:p>
> <w:p>
>  <w:r>
>    <w:t>Author 1 (Institute 1)</w:t>
>  </w:r>
> </w:p>
> <w:p>
>  <w:r>
>    <w:t>
> </w:t>
>  </w:r>
> </w:p>
> <w:p>
>  <w:r>
>    <w:t>Author 2 (Institute 2)</w:t>
>  </w:r>
> </w:p>
> <w:p>
>  <w:r>
>    <w:t>
> </w:t>
>  </w:r>
> </w:p>
>
> This is valid (though I don't know if we can guarantee that
> in all cases), but contains a number of empty paragraphs.
>
>
> +++ Ophir Lifshitz [Nov 01 17 22:17 ]:
>
>>   It might be useful to replace the limited "reference-doc" system with a
>>   full-fledged template system. Users could then naturally create a
>>   template as a .docx file¹ that could include $for$ loops, $variable$
>>   substitution, and so on as usual.
>>   ___
>>   ¹ or .dotx too, I suppose? My knowledge of Word templates is at least
>>   15 years old.
>>
>
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Re: Using YAML variables in docx

[Ophir Lifshitz]

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I like this idea as a first iteration of the feature. Will it be difficult 
to merge the current "reference docx" system into the full-fledged template 
system?

I expect most people do not want to manually unzip and edit XML and would 
rather edit a template document within Word. It should be possible to trim 
the opening and closing empty paragraphs (i.e. detect when a paragraph only 
contains a control statement like $for$), or actually manipulate the XML 
tree.

On Sunday, November 5, 2017 at 12:40:27 PM UTC-5, John MacFarlane wrote:
>
> The simplest idea would be to run the template resolver 
> on word/document.xml from the reference.docx, to produce 
> the new word/document.xml from the document body and 
> metadata values. 
>
> This could work, I think.  However, except in simple cases 
> you'd have to edit word/document.xml with a text editor, 
> rather than using Word, in order to get the template control 
> commands in the right place.  If you edit with Word, you'll 
> get things like 
>
> <w:p> 
>   <w:r> 
>     <w:t>$for(author)$</w:t> 
>   </w:r> 
> </w:p> 
> <w:p> 
>   <w:r> 
>     <w:t>$author.name$ ($author.institute$)</w:t> 
>   </w:r> 
> </w:p> 
> <w:p> 
>   <w:r> 
>     <w:t>$endfor$</w:t> 
>   </w:r> 
> </w:p> 
>
> which (for two authors) would resolve to: 
>
> <w:p> 
>   <w:r> 
>     <w:t> 
>
> </w:t> 
>   </w:r> 
> </w:p> 
> <w:p> 
>   <w:r> 
>     <w:t>Author 1 (Institute 1)</w:t> 
>   </w:r> 
> </w:p> 
> <w:p> 
>   <w:r> 
>     <w:t> 
> </w:t> 
>   </w:r> 
> </w:p> 
> <w:p> 
>   <w:r> 
>     <w:t>Author 2 (Institute 2)</w:t> 
>   </w:r> 
> </w:p> 
> <w:p> 
>   <w:r> 
>     <w:t> 
> </w:t> 
>   </w:r> 
> </w:p> 
>
> This is valid (though I don't know if we can guarantee that 
> in all cases), but contains a number of empty paragraphs. 
>
>
> +++ Ophir Lifshitz [Nov 01 17 22:17 ]: 
> >   It might be useful to replace the limited "reference-doc" system with 
> a 
> >   full-fledged template system. Users could then naturally create a 
> >   template as a .docx file¹ that could include $for$ loops, $variable$ 
> >   substitution, and so on as usual. 
> >   ___ 
> >   ¹ or .dotx too, I suppose? My knowledge of Word templates is at least 
> >   15 years old. 
>

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