Question/Feature-request: preserve tabs in normal text

Question/Feature-request: preserve tabs in normal text

[Jérémie Wenger]

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Dear all,

I have a slightly unusual request: I have been wondering whether it is 
possible to make Pandoc preserve tabs (meaning, in this case, not simply 
erasing them: it could be a conversion to spaces) for regular text e.g. in 
.odt format. I know this feature exists for code blocks, but in my case I 
have a rather large amount of experimental texts in .odt format using tabs 
to layout text in a specific way, and would like to be able to convert that 
to other formats (plain text, or markdown, would be a good start). So far I 
could not find any such feature.

What I could find is: the libreoffice cli preserves tabs when porting to 
txt, but gets rid of all other information (e.g. the markdown *italic*, 
**bold**), whereas the ideal situation for me would be if I could keep *both 
*this type of information and the tabs (which I could then batch-convert to 
something else, either unbreakable space, or some other thing). I have been 
working on a script that uses both libreoffice for the tabs and pandoc for 
the rest, and automating a merge between the two, but this has proved 
fairly tricky, and is still not working in all cases. 

Does anyone know if there is a way of perserving tabs and multiple 
consecutive spaces using Pandoc?

Many thanks,
Jeremie

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Re: Question/Feature-request: preserve tabs in normal text

[John MacFarlane]

It isn't possible to retain spaces in ODT -> anything
conversions; the ODT reader collapses them into a
Pandoc Space element.

Your best bet I think would be to do a batch
search-and-replace using LibreOffice, replacing
literal tabs with some unicode character that won't duplicate
anything else (like an arrow).  Then you'll get this
as a literal character in the pandoc AST, and you can
run a lua filter to convert arrows in Str elements
into tabs.



Jérémie Wenger <jeremie.wenger-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org> writes:

> Dear all,
>
> I have a slightly unusual request: I have been wondering whether it is 
> possible to make Pandoc preserve tabs (meaning, in this case, not simply 
> erasing them: it could be a conversion to spaces) for regular text e.g. in 
> .odt format. I know this feature exists for code blocks, but in my case I 
> have a rather large amount of experimental texts in .odt format using tabs 
> to layout text in a specific way, and would like to be able to convert that 
> to other formats (plain text, or markdown, would be a good start). So far I 
> could not find any such feature.
>
> What I could find is: the libreoffice cli preserves tabs when porting to 
> txt, but gets rid of all other information (e.g. the markdown *italic*, 
> **bold**), whereas the ideal situation for me would be if I could keep *both 
> *this type of information and the tabs (which I could then batch-convert to 
> something else, either unbreakable space, or some other thing). I have been 
> working on a script that uses both libreoffice for the tabs and pandoc for 
> the rest, and automating a merge between the two, but this has proved 
> fairly tricky, and is still not working in all cases. 
>
> Does anyone know if there is a way of perserving tabs and multiple 
> consecutive spaces using Pandoc?
>
> Many thanks,
> Jeremie
>
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Re: Question/Feature-request: preserve tabs in normal text

[Jérémie Wenger]

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Thanks a lot for this, very helpful, that makes sense! I will try this 
then. Best, J

On Thursday, April 18, 2019 at 6:55:26 PM UTC+2, John MacFarlane wrote:
>
>
> It isn't possible to retain spaces in ODT -> anything 
> conversions; the ODT reader collapses them into a 
> Pandoc Space element. 
>
> Your best bet I think would be to do a batch 
> search-and-replace using LibreOffice, replacing 
> literal tabs with some unicode character that won't duplicate 
> anything else (like an arrow).  Then you'll get this 
> as a literal character in the pandoc AST, and you can 
> run a lua filter to convert arrows in Str elements 
> into tabs. 
>
>
>
> Jérémie Wenger <jeremi...-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org <javascript:>> writes: 
>
> > Dear all, 
> > 
> > I have a slightly unusual request: I have been wondering whether it is 
> > possible to make Pandoc preserve tabs (meaning, in this case, not simply 
> > erasing them: it could be a conversion to spaces) for regular text e.g. 
> in 
> > .odt format. I know this feature exists for code blocks, but in my case 
> I 
> > have a rather large amount of experimental texts in .odt format using 
> tabs 
> > to layout text in a specific way, and would like to be able to convert 
> that 
> > to other formats (plain text, or markdown, would be a good start). So 
> far I 
> > could not find any such feature. 
> > 
> > What I could find is: the libreoffice cli preserves tabs when porting to 
> > txt, but gets rid of all other information (e.g. the markdown *italic*, 
> > **bold**), whereas the ideal situation for me would be if I could keep 
> *both 
> > *this type of information and the tabs (which I could then batch-convert 
> to 
> > something else, either unbreakable space, or some other thing). I have 
> been 
> > working on a script that uses both libreoffice for the tabs and pandoc 
> for 
> > the rest, and automating a merge between the two, but this has proved 
> > fairly tricky, and is still not working in all cases. 
> > 
> > Does anyone know if there is a way of perserving tabs and multiple 
> > consecutive spaces using Pandoc? 
> > 
> > Many thanks, 
> > Jeremie 
> > 
> > -- 
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google 
> Groups "pandoc-discuss" group. 
> > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send 
> an email to pandoc-...-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org <javascript:>. 
> > To post to this group, send email to pandoc-...-/JYPxA39Uh5TLH3MbocFFw@public.gmane.org 
> <javascript:>. 
> > To view this discussion on the web visit 
> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pandoc-discuss/ba9f5cda-a3b3-49b4-9408-e982975a160d%40googlegroups.com. 
>
> > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. 
>

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