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Eisvogel

A clean pandoc LaTeX template to convert your markdown files to PDF or LaTeX. It is designed for lecture notes and exercises with a focus on computer science. The template is compatible with pandoc 3.

Preview

A custom title page A basic example page
A custom title page A basic example page

Installation

  1. Install pandoc from http://pandoc.org/. You also need to install LaTeX.

  2. Download the latest version of the Eisvogel template from the release page.

  3. Extract the downloaded ZIP archive and open the folder.

  4. Move the template eisvogel.latex to your pandoc templates folder. The location of the templates folder depends on your operating system:

    • Unix, Linux, macOS: /Users/USERNAME/.local/share/pandoc/templates/ or /Users/USERNAME/.pandoc/templates/
    • Windows Vista or later: C:\Users\USERNAME\AppData\Roaming\pandoc\templates\

    If there are no folders called templates or pandoc you need to create them and put the template eisvogel.latex inside. You can find the default user data directory on your system by looking at the output of pandoc --version.

Docker image

Alternatively, if you don't want to install LaTeX, you can use the Docker image named pandoc/extra. The image contains pandoc, LaTeX and a curated selection of components such as the eisvogel template, pandoc filters and open source fonts. A common use of the image looks like this (line breaks for readability):

docker run --rm \
       --volume "$(pwd):/data" \
       --user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
       pandoc/extra example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel --listings

For frequent command line use, you can define the following shell alias:

alias pandock='docker run --rm -v "$(pwd):/data" -u $(id -u):$(id -g) pandoc/extra'

The example invocation with Docker from above now looks like this:

pandock example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel --listings

Usage

  1. Open the terminal and navigate to the folder where your markdown file is located.

  2. Execute the following command

    pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --from markdown --template eisvogel --listings

    where example.md is the markdown file you want to convert to PDF.

In order to have nice headers and footers you need to supply metadata to your document. You can do that with a YAML metadata block at the top of your markdown document (see the example markdown file). Your markdown document may look like the following:

---
title: "The Document Title"
author: [Example Author, Another Author]
date: "2017-02-20"
keywords: [Markdown, Example]
...

Here is the actual document text...

Custom Template Variables

This template defines some new variables to control the appearance of the resulting PDF document. The existing template variables from pandoc are all supported and their documentation can be found in the pandoc manual.

  • titlepage (defaults to false)

    turns on the title page when true

  • titlepage-color

    the background color of the title page. The color value must be given as an HTML hex color like D8DE2C without the leading number sign (#). When specifying the color in YAML, it is advisable to enclose it in quotes like so titlepage-color: "D8DE2C" to avoid the truncation of the color (e.g. 000000 becoming 0).

  • titlepage-text-color (defaults to 5F5F5F)

    the text color of the title page

  • titlepage-rule-color (defaults to 435488)

    the color of the rule on the top of the title page

  • titlepage-rule-height (defaults to 4)

    the height of the rule on the top of the title page (in points)

  • titlepage-logo

    path to an image that will be displayed on the title page. The path is always relative to where pandoc is executed. The option --resource-path has no effect.

  • titlepage-background

    the path to a background image for the title page. The background image is scaled to cover the entire page. In the examples folder under titlepage-background are a few example background images.

  • page-background

    the path to a background image for any page. The background image is scaled to cover the entire page. In the examples folder under page-background are a few example background images.

  • page-background-opacity (defaults to 0.2)

    the background image opacity

  • caption-justification (defaults to raggedright)

    justification setting for captions (uses the justification parameter of the caption package)

  • toc-own-page (defaults to false)

    begin new page after table of contents, when true

  • listings-disable-line-numbers (defaults to false)

    disables line numbers for all listings

  • listings-no-page-break (defaults to false)

    avoid page break inside listings

  • disable-header-and-footer (default to false)

    disables the header and footer completely on all pages

  • header-left (defaults to the title)

    the text on the left side of the header

  • header-center

    the text in the center of the header

  • header-right (defaults to the date)

    the text on the right side of the header

  • footer-left (defaults to the author)

    the text on the left side of the footer

  • footer-center

    the text in the center of the footer

  • footer-right (defaults to the page number)

    the text on the right side of the footer

  • footnotes-pretty (defaults to false)

    prettifies formatting of footnotes (requires package footmisc)

  • footnotes-disable-backlinks (defaults to false)

    disables making the reference from the footnote at the bottom of the page into a link back to the occurrence of the footnote in the main text (enabling requires package footnotebackref).

  • book (defaults to false)

    typeset as book

  • logo-width (defaults to 35mm)

    the width of the logo. One needs to specify the width with a (TeX) unit e.g. 100pt or 35mm. The following units can be used:

    • pt: Point
    • pc: pica (12 pt)
    • in: inch (72.27 pt)
    • bp: Big point (72 bp = 1 in)
    • cm: Centimeter
    • mm: Millimeter
    • dd: Didot point
    • cc: cicero (12 dd)
    • sp: Scaled point (65,536 sp = 1 pt)
    • ex: Nomimal x-height
    • em: Nominal m-width
    • px: Pixel (only for pdfTeX and LuaTeX) The dimension given to the \pdfpxdimen primitive; default value is 1 bp, corresponding to a pixel density of 72 dpi.

    A visual overview of the length units is available at https://github.com/tweh/tex-units.

  • first-chapter (defaults to 1)

    if typesetting a book with chapter numbers, specifies the number that will be assigned to the first chapter

  • float-placement-figure (defaults to H)

    Reset the default placement specifier for figure environments to the supplied value e.g. htbp. The available specifiers are listed below. The first four placement specifiers can be combined.

    1. h: Place the float here, i.e., approximately at the same point it occurs in the source text.
    2. t: Place the float at the top of the page.
    3. b: Place the float at the bottom of the page.
    4. p: Place the float on the next page that will contain only floats like figures and tables.
    5. H: Place the float HERE (exactly where it occurs in the source text). The H specifier is provided by the float package and may not be used in conjunction with any other placement specifiers.

  • table-use-row-colors (defaults to false)

    enables row colors for tables. The default value is false because the coloring extends beyond the edge of the table and there is currently no way to change that.

  • code-block-font-size (defaults to \small)

    LaTeX command to change the font size for code blocks. The available values are \tiny, \scriptsize, \footnotesize, \small, \normalsize, \large, \Large, \LARGE, \huge and \Huge. This option will change the font size for default code blocks using the verbatim environment and for code blocks generated with listings.

Required LaTeX Packages

LaTeX manages addons and additional functionality in so called packages. You might get the following error when compiling a document with the Eisvogel template:

! LaTeX Error: File `footnotebackref.sty' not found.

Type X to quit or <RETURN> to proceed,
or enter new name. (Default extension: sty)

Enter file name:
! Emergency stop.
<read *>

LaTeX informs you that the additional package footnotebackref is required to render the document.

Texlive

Eisvogel requires a full texlive distribution that can be installed by running apt-get install texlive-full in the terminal. Because texlive-full is very large (about 5 Gigabytes) you can also install the smaller texlive bundles and add any missing packages manually.

A smaller texlive bundle is texlive-latex-extra. With texlive-latex-extra you also need to install these packages manually:

adjustbox babel-german background bidi collectbox csquotes everypage filehook
footmisc footnotebackref framed fvextra letltxmacro ly1 mdframed mweights
needspace pagecolor sourcecodepro sourcesanspro titling ucharcat ulem
unicode-math upquote xecjk xurl zref

Install them with the following command:

tlmgr install soul adjustbox babel-german background bidi collectbox csquotes everypage filehook footmisc footnotebackref framed fvextra letltxmacro ly1 mdframed mweights needspace pagecolor sourcecodepro sourcesanspro titling ucharcat ulem unicode-math upquote xecjk xurl zref

Additional information about the different texlive packages can be found at this TeX-StackExchange answer: https://tex.stackexchange.com/a/504566

MiKTeX

If you don't want to install all missing packages manually, MiKTeX might be an alternative.

MiKTeX has the ability to automatically install missing packages. You can turn this feature on or off. And you can let MiKTeX ask you each time a package has to be installed:

  • Click Settings to navigate to the settings page.
  • Click the General tab.
  • Click one of the radio buttons:
    • Ask me
    • Always install missing packages on-the-fly
    • Never install missing packages on-the-fly

Examples

Numbered Sections

For PDFs with numbered sections use the --number-sections or -N option.

pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel --number-sections

Syntax Highlighting with Listings

You can get syntax highlighting of delimited code blocks by using the LaTeX package listings with the option --listings. This example will produce the same syntax highlighting as in the example PDF.

pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel --listings

Syntax Highlighting Without Listings

The following examples show syntax highlighting of delimited code blocks without using listings. To see a list of all the supported highlight styles, type pandoc --list-highlight-styles.

pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel --highlight-style pygments
pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel --highlight-style kate
pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel --highlight-style espresso
pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel --highlight-style tango

Standalone LaTeX Document

To produce a standalone LaTeX document for compiling with any LaTeX editor use .tex as an output file extension.

pandoc example.md -o example.tex --template eisvogel

Changing the Document Language

The default language of this template is American English. The lang variable identifies the main language of the document, using a code according to BCP 47 (e.g. en or en-GB). For an incomplete list of the supported language codes see the documentation for the hyph-utf8 package (Section 2). The following example changes the language to British English:

pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel -V lang=en-GB

The following example changes the language to German:

pandoc example.md -o example.pdf --template eisvogel -V lang=de

Typesetting a Book

To typeset a book supply the template variable -V book from the command line or via book: true in the metadata.

To get the correct chapter headings you need to tell pandoc that it should convert first level headings (indicated by one # in markdown) to chapters with the command line option --top-level-division=chapter. Chapter numbers start at 1. If you need to change that, specify first-chapter in the template variables.

There will be one blank page before each chapter because the template is two-sided per default. So if you plan to publish your book as a PDF and don’t need a blank page you should add the class option onesided which can be done by supplying a template variable -V classoption=oneside.

Example Images

A green title page A background image on the title page
A green title page A background image on the title page
images and tables Code blocks styled without listings
images and tables Code blocks styled without listings
A book Code blocks styled with listings
A book Code blocks styled with listings
A background images on all pages CJK Support (when using XeLaTeX)
A background images on all pages CJK Support (when using XeLaTeX)

Common Errors / Issues

The following section lists common errors and their solutions when using the Eisvogel template.

LaTeX Errors Missing endcsname inserted or File x not found when using titlepage-background, logo, or titlepage-logo.

Error producing PDF.
! Missing endcsname inserted.
<to be read again>
                   protect
Error producing PDF.
! Package pdftex.def Error: File `logo\T1\textunderscoreimage.pdf' not fou
nd: using draft setting.

See the pdftex.def package documentation for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.

These errors occur when one includes a background image on the title page or a logo that has an underscore (_) in the filename.

A quick fix would be to replace all underscores in the filename of the image with a hyphen (-). If the background image is specified in your YAML front matter like so,

titlepage-background: "background_image.pdf"

you can advise pandoc to interpret this as LaTeX and include it in the document without parsing.

titlepage-background: "`background_image.pdf`{=latex}"

The same fix can be used for the logo image as well:

logo: "`logo_image.pdf`{=latex}"

Corresponding issues:

LaTeX Error Missing \begin{document}

! LaTeX Error: Missing \begin{document}.

See the LaTeX manual or LaTeX Companion for explanation.
Type  H <return>  for immediate help.
 ...

l.7 <
     !DOCTYPE html>
!  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!

This error indicates that you try to use some text file for conversion that is not the Eisvogel template. Please download the latest Eisvogel template from the releases page and start the conversion again.

LaTeX Error auto expansion is only possible with scalable fonts

Error producing PDF.
! pdfTeX error (font expansion): auto expansion is only possible with scalable
fonts.
\AtBegShi@Output ...ipout \box \AtBeginShipoutBox
                                                  \fi \fi
l.643 \begin{lstlisting}

This error likely occurs on Windows with MiKTeX installed. StackOverflow user Krebto provided the following fix:

To solve the problem navigate to C:\Program Files\MiKTeX 2.9\miktex\bin\x64 and run updmap.exe. The program may seem as it hangs for a while, but its probably because it tries to update the whole font tree. This solved the problem for me. After re-compiling everything should work fine.

Corresponding issue:

LaTeX Error cannot find image file

Error producing PDF.
! error:  (file "/tmp/tex2pdf.-be734e802ef6d0c3/""fdcfc29edcf252186f1b0a52f18f50
43abaeb2d0".png) (pdf backend): cannot find image file '"/tmp/tex2pdf.-be734e802
ef6d0c3/""fdcfc29edcf252186f1b0a52f18f5043abaeb2d0".png'
!  ==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!

In general this error means that LaTeX is unable to find the included image file. Please check all image references and file names for correctness.

This error also occurs if you use an old version of Eisvogel with the package grffile and have an old LaTeX distribution installed. Please update Eisvogel and your LaTeX distribution.

Corresponding issues:

Credits

License

This project is open source licensed under the BSD 3-Clause License. Please see the LICENSE file for more information.