Re: Markdown to PDF via TeX: Tyring to change section title color

[John MacFarlane <jgm-TVLZxgkOlNX2fBVCVOL8/A@public.gmane.org>]

Randy Yates <yates-EkmVulN54Sk@public.gmane.org> writes:

> Don't use markdown as your source document format. Latex's capabilities for 
> generating rich output are far, far greater than markdown,

This is true.

> which can't even generate numbered section headers.

It can.  pandoc -f markdown --number-sections

>    1. Elegant mathematics

Also accessible from within pandoc markdown, which allows you
to use tex math and even macros.

>    2. An extensive bibliography/citation system

Pandoc's markdown has one too (see Citations in the user's guide and pandoc --citeproc).

>    3. The ability to natively generate graphics using Tikz/Pgm.

This can be done in pandoc markdown using a filter: https://github.com/pandoc/lua-filters/tree/master/diagram-generator

Although it's true that LaTeX is more expressive and more powerful
than markdown, but many users may find that pandoc's extended
markdown has all the power they need.  In addition, there are
advantages to writing in this more limited format, especially
if you may need to target output formats other than PDF.
I discuss this in my TUG 2020 talk "Pandoc for TeXnicians":
video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9uZJFO54iM
slides: https://johnmacfarlane.net/tug-2020-pandoc-for-texnicians.pdf

> So in general, choose a source document format that's the least "lossy" in 
> terms of typographical capability, then translation to other formats incurs 
> the least loss possible.

Conversions from LaTeX to other formats are notorious for being
lossy -- precisely *because* of the expressiveness of LaTeX.  I
look at a couple examples in the talk.  If translation to other
formats  is an issue, you've got good reason to use a less
expressive source format which can be translated more reliably.