pandocker

A simple docker image for pandoc with filters, templates, fonts and additional tools.

Install / Upgrade

Download the image with:

docker pull dalibo/pandocker:stable

Whenever a new stable version is released, launch that command again to refresh your image.

How To

Run dalibo/pandocker with regular pandoc args. Mount your files at /pandoc.

docker run --rm -u `id -u`:`id -g` -v `pwd`:/pandoc dalibo/pandocker README.md -o README.pdf

Notes about the docker options:

• The -v ... option will mount the current folder as the /pandoc directory inside the container. If SELinux is enabled on your system, you might need to add the --privileged tag to force access to the mouting points. For more details, read the documentation about docker runtime privileges.

• The --rm option destroys the container once the document is produced. This is not mandatory but it's a good practice.

• The -u option ensures that the output files will belong to you. Again this is not necessary but it's useful.

Tip: You can define a shell alias to use pandocker just like pandoc. Add this to your ~/.bashrc :

alias pandoc="docker run --rm -u `id -u`:`id -g` -v `pwd`:/pandoc dalibo/pandocker:stable"
pandoc README.md -o README.epub

Alternatively, you can use a pipe like this:

cat foo.md | docker run --rm -i dalibo/pandocker -t pdf > foo.pdf

This method will not work if the source document contains images or includes...

Templates

We're shipping a selection of latex templates inside the image so that you can produce nice PDF documents without installing anything.

So far, we provide the 3 templates below:

• eisvogel is designed for lecture notes and exercises with a focus on computer science. It works with pdflatex and xelatex.
• easy templates is a collection of HTML templates

You can use them simply by adding --template=xxx to your compilation lines:

docker run [...] --pdf-engine=xelatex --template=eisvogel foo.md -o foo.pdf

Each template has specific variables that you can use to adapt the document. Please go the project page of each template for more details.

Filters

This docker image embeds a number of usefull pandoc filters. You can simply enable them by adding the option --filter xxx where xxx is the name of one of the following filters below:

• [panda] : Multi-purpose Lua filter
• pandoc-citeproc : manage bibliographies and citations
• pandoc-codeblock-include : insert an external file into a codeblock
• pandoc-cover : Add a PDF cover based on an SVG template
• pandoc-include : insert external markdown files into the main document
• pandoc-latex-admonition : adding admonitions on specific DIVs
• pandoc-latex-barcode : insert barcodes and QRcodes in documents
• pandoc-latex-color : Add colors to your PDF documents !
• pandoc-latex-environment : adding LaTeX environments on specific DIVs
• pandoc-latex-fontsize : Change size of a specific section of the document
• pandoc-latex-margin : Resize the margins of your PDF documents
• pandoc-latex-newpage : Convert horizontal rule to new page in LaTeX
• pandoc-mustache : basic variables substitution
• pandoc-crossref : support for cross-referencing sections, figures, and more
• pandoc-run-postgres : Execute SQL queries inside a markdown document
• pandoc-jinja : Render pandoc metadata inside the document itself

NOTE: By default when using the pandoc-include filter, the path to target files is relative to the /pandoc mountpoint. For instance, the !include [foo/bar.md] statement will look for a /pandoc/foo/bar.md file. You can use the docker arg --workdir="some/place/elsewhere" to specify another location. The same principle applies to the pandoc-codeblock-include and pandoc-mustache filters.

Fonts

The pandocker image includes the following open-source fonts:

• Deja Vu: https://dejavu-fonts.github.io/
• Lato: https://fonts.google.com/specimen/Lato
• Liberation: https://github.com/liberationfonts/liberation-fonts
• Fontawesome: https://fontawesome.com/

The full variant includes

• Noto: https://www.google.com/get/noto/

Supported Tags : Branch + Variant + Parent

The image is available in 4 versions named as follows:

• latest (default): minimal image containing the most recent changes
• stable : minimal image based on the latest stable release
• latest-full (default): complete image containing the most recent changes
• stable-full : complete image based on the latest stable release

You can also the release names for instance

docker pull dalibo/pandocker:24.05

the previous versions add more complex tags such as latest-ubuntu-extra or stable-buster. They are not supported anymore.

Build it

Use make or docker build .

Additional tools

The docker image embeds additional software related to editing and publishing:

• dia a simple tool to design diagrams
• poppler-utils a collection of tools built to manage PDF and extract content
• rsync for deployment

These tools can be called by modifying the entrypoint of the image. For instance, you can convert a dia source file into an SVG image like this:

docker run [..] --entrypoint dia dalibo/pandocker foo.dia -e foo.svg

Frequently Asked Question

ERROR: "filename": openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

When using pandocker, you may encounter the following error message:

$ docker run --rm -u `id -u`:`id -g` -v `pwd`:/pandoc dalibo/pandocker foo.md
pandoc: "filename": openBinaryFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

This means that docker could not mount the local directory as a volume and therefore pandoc cannot see the file foo.md inside the container. There might be several reasons for that, here a few ideas to try:

1. Add --privileged option to the pandocker command line. Read more about this docker privileged mode here : https://docs.docker.com/engine/reference/run/#runtime-privilege-and-linux-capabilities

2. Check if you have SELinux enforced on you system, with the command below:

sestatus

If the SELinux mode is enforced, you can try to lower it to permissive.

More info about SELinux here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SELinux_FAQ