getting pandoc to generate PDF from Markdown on MacOS

Pandoc Markdown to PDF.md

Using Pandoc to generate PDFs from Markdown

on a Mac running macOS 10.13.4

To install the needed components you can use Homebrew

Two Components are needed:

1. Pandoc
2. PDFLaTex

Install instructions:

Use Homebrew to install pandoc:

brew install pandoc

Then use Homebrew to install the PDFLaTex program.

brew install --cask basictex

You should now have all the needed components but it won't work until the pdflatex executable is available in your PATH environment variable. To configure this my technique is to sym link the executable to a directory already in my PATH.

ln -s -v /Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex /usr/local/bin/pdflatex

Now if I enter which pdflatex on the command line the system responds:

/usr/local/bin/pdflatex

And now I'm able to generate a PDF from my Markdown file with this command:

pandoc file.md -s -o file.pdf

Pandoc will take your Markdown file, tranform it to TeX and then run it through the PDFLaTex program to output a PDF file.

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• Date: 2018-05-22

• System info: MacBook Pro, macOS 10.13.4

Written with StackEdit

Should this not be using the --cask arg instead?
Ex: brew install --cask basictex

thank you! @cguethle You're correct. I've updated the gist. I think the homebrew syntax changed since 2018

Thanks, works like a charm!

The generate command is leading to
marvingabler@MacBook-Pro-von-Marvin awesome-meteo % pandoc -s -o README.md awesome-meteo.pdf Unknown input format pdf Pandoc can convert to PDF, but not from PDF

while

pandoc -o out.pdf README.md

works like a charm

The generate command is leading to marvingabler@MacBook-Pro-von-Marvin awesome-meteo % pandoc -s -o README.md awesome-meteo.pdf Unknown input format pdf Pandoc can convert to PDF, but not from PDF

while

pandoc -o out.pdf README.md

works like a charm

You are getting that error because you placed your arguments before your input and output files rather than between your input and output as the example had shown. Pandoc will take the file directly after the -o argument as the output.

Example: pandoc INPUT.md -s -o OUTPUT.pdf
Yours: pandoc -s -o INPUT.md OUTPUT.pdf

Thanks, must have been tired 🤦

Slight update:

Since the instructions use brew and on Apple Silicon Macs, the default location has changed, I recommend linking to pdflatex with the following command instead to get it in the $PATH

ln -s -v /Library/TeX/texbin/pdflatex /opt/homebrew/bin/pdflatex

Trying to link into /usr/local/bin required sudo, at least on my machine.