Re: How to improve .docx output?

[BP Jonsson <bpjonsson-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

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I'm AFK (on my phone) ATM so that I can't check the things I talk about
below, but hopefully they should be helpful.

Like you I use LibreOffice rather than Word. I'm exclusively on Linux these
days so I couldn't use Word even if I wanted to, since I couldn't afford
neither Mac, Windows or Office even if I wanted to. I use LaTeX — usually
Pandoc+LaTeX — produced PDF whenever I can, but for some reason some people
want me to send them DOCX files! ;-)

I think that the section numbering issue can be fixed, and IIRC I have done
so in the past:

<https://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Outline_Numbering_1>

As for the toc and references headings getting numbered that should be
possible to fix, although perhaps in the output document rather than in the
reference document. Hopefully it will become possible to use a
`custom-style` attribute with headings.

See the discussion at <https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/issues/4697> for
several issues regarding custom-style for different kinds of content. It
doesn't seem like headings have been on the table yet. Perhaps it should be
worthwhile to create a meta-issue (is that a thing?) listing the various
things which can have named styles attached to them where the corresponding
Pandoc element either takes attributes itself or can be meaningfully
wrapped in a Div or Span. (Page styles would probably be out!)

As for default fonts it's hard to find any which everyone can be expected
to have across various Linux distros, Mac and Windows, so sticking to the
DOCX defaults may be the best thing to do ATM. For example fonts called
"Times" and "Helvetica" may or may not exist on a given system, or they may
be 256-character Type1 fonts with different charsets depending on the OS
rather than Unicode OpenType fonts. It's pretty easy to change in a
reference DOCX, but perhaps it could be made easier e.g. by having all
headings inherit their font from the same style, if they don't already.

It should be worthwhile to go through the custom styles defined in a DOCX
produced by Pandoc and inspect where the various styles inherit from, or
make them inherit from where you want them to and use that as your master
reference DOCX so that you easily can make global changes in the future.

As for a more LaTeX like appearance some of the answers to this SX question
seem useful:

<
https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/8308/make-ms-word-document-look-like-it-has-been-typeset-in-latex?rq=1
>

This answer has some links to actual templates:

<https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/8394/93534>

One problem with making Pandoc's default DOCX more like anything other than
the Word defaults is that presumably most people producing DOCX with Pandoc
do so because someone higher up the food chain expects to get DOCX files
rather than PDF or whatever, and if they don't provide their own templates
chances are they want the Word defaults, sadly.

This page on the GitHub wiki (originally written by me) may also be helpful:

<
https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/wiki/Defining-custom-DOCX-styles-in-LibreOffice-(and-Word)
>

Den tors 22 aug. 2019 15:04K4zuki <k.yamamoto.08136891-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> skrev:

> Hello,
>
> I have also been working for docx output.
>
> [...]
> -   With a custom-reference.docx modified to number section headings,
>     `# References {-}` came out numbered, too; i.e., `{-}` was ignored.
>     (A proper fix would probably require pandoc to attach a docx style
>     like "Heading (unnumbered) 1" to such headings.)
> [...]
>
> This Lua filter might help you:
>
> https://github.com/pandocker/pandocker-lua-filters/blob/master/lua/docx-unnumberedheadings.lua
>
> Your guess is correct; you have to prepare unnumbered custom heading
> styles(up to 4th level) in your reference.docx,
> also need to point them in YAML frontmatter (or dedicated extra YAML file).
>
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