Generate Thesis pdf with pandoc

[coppertank]

Hi everyone, I apologize in advance for my noobie question but I don't have much experience with pandoc.
Reading the installation section for creating the thesis in PDF, there are two ways: one with docker and the other with pandoc.

Point 4, specifically, says: "Either set an environment variable PANDOC pointing to the location of your pandoc installation or change the line PANDOC ?= docker run --rm -v $(WORKDIR):/pandoc pandoc-thesis pandoc in the Makefile to reflect your settings".

However, I'm not sure how to interpret this point.
Suppose I want to produce the PDF of the thesis with pandoc (Eisvogel template), once I have downloaded the zip containing all the files, what would be the steps and the code to generate it with pandoc?

Thanks in advance

[cagix]

hmm, so are you really going to take the scenic route? in this case:

1. determine the path to the pandoc binary: for linux/macos you could use e.g. which pandoc
2. this returns the path to pandoc, e.g. /usr/local/bin/pandoc
3. use this string to replace the right-hand side of the line in the makefile, i.e. PANDOC ?= /usr/local/bin/pandoc.

please remember that you also need a working latex installation with all the packages mentioned.

[coppertank]

Vscode sees the tabs correctly, i run the command prompt with administrator rights and tried to run the command several times but nothing (I also added the pandoc folder to the environments variable).

However, changing the Pandoc path in C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc gives me the same error 5: access denied, while pointing at the exact file pandoc.exe (C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc.exe) it gives me another error:

C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc --wrap=preserve --template=titlepage.tex --metadata-file=md/metadata.yaml -o __titlepage.filled.tex titlepage.tex
C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc --wrap=preserve --template=frontmatter.tex --metadata-file=md/metadata.yaml -o __frontmatter.filled.tex frontmatter.tex
C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc --wrap=preserve --template=backmatter.tex --metadata-file=md/metadata.yaml -o __backmatter.filled.tex backmatter.tex
C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc -f markdown --pdf-engine=pdflatex --standalone -M lang=de-DE --metadata-file=md/metadata.yaml --include-in-header=__titlepage.filled.tex --include-before-body=__frontmatter.filled.tex --include-after-body=__backmatter.filled.tex --citeproc -M bibliography=references.bib -M link-citations=true --listings -V documentclass=scrbook -V papersize=a4 -V fontsize=11pt -V classoption:open=right -V classoption:twoside=true -V classoption:cleardoublepage=empty -V classoption:clearpage=empty -V geometry:top=30mm -V geometry:left=25mm -V geometry:bottom=30mm -V geometry:width=150mm -V geometry:bindingoffset=6mm --toc --toc-depth=3 --number-sections -V colorlinks=true -V book=true -V titlepage=true -V toc-own-page=true -o thesis.pdf md/introduction.md md/relatedwork.md md/concept.md md/realisation.md md/conclusion.md references.md md/appendix.md
pandoc: C:\Users\caumo\Desktop\pandoc-thesis-master\__titlepage.filled.tex __frontmatter.filled.tex __backmatter.filled.tex\tex2pdf.-17ccb46edec0caa0: CreateDirectory "\\\\?\\C:\\Users\\caumo\\Desktop\\pandoc-thesis-master\\__titlepage.filled.tex __frontmatter.filled.tex __backmatter.filled.tex\\tex2pdf.-17ccb46edec0caa0": does not exist (Impossibile trovare il percorso specificato.)
make: *** [Makefile:191: thesis.pdf] Error 1

In this latter case, i can see in the folder where i have all the files that pandoc could build the temporary files __backmatter.filled.tex, __frontmatter.filled.tex and __titlepage.filled.tex, while in the first case no. However, i think the output suggests that a specific file couldn't be found, I don't know what to do

[cagix]

However, changing the Pandoc path in C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc gives me the same error 5: access denied, while pointing at the exact file pandoc.exe (C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc.exe)

ah. on a unix box /usr/local/bin/pandoc is the executable, so i assumed C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc would be the pandoc binary on your machine. so in this case you would just need to put C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc.exe into the makefile :)

C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc --wrap=preserve --template=titlepage.tex --metadata-file=md/metadata.yaml -o __titlepage.filled.tex titlepage.tex

C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc --wrap=preserve --template=frontmatter.tex --metadata-file=md/metadata.yaml -o __frontmatter.filled.tex frontmatter.tex

C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc --wrap=preserve --template=backmatter.tex --metadata-file=md/metadata.yaml -o __backmatter.filled.tex backmatter.tex

C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc -f markdown --pdf-engine=pdflatex --standalone -M lang=de-DE --metadata-file=md/metadata.yaml --include-in-header=__titlepage.filled.tex --include-before-body=__frontmatter.filled.tex --include-after-body=__backmatter.filled.tex --citeproc -M bibliography=references.bib -M link-citations=true --listings -V documentclass=scrbook -V papersize=a4 -V fontsize=11pt -V classoption:open=right -V classoption:twoside=true -V classoption:cleardoublepage=empty -V classoption:clearpage=empty -V geometry:top=30mm -V geometry:left=25mm -V geometry:bottom=30mm -V geometry:width=150mm -V geometry:bindingoffset=6mm --toc --toc-depth=3 --number-sections -V colorlinks=true -V book=true -V titlepage=true -V toc-own-page=true -o thesis.pdf md/introduction.md md/relatedwork.md md/concept.md md/realisation.md md/conclusion.md references.md md/appendix.md

pandoc: C:\Users\caumo\Desktop\pandoc-thesis-master__titlepage.filled.tex __frontmatter.filled.tex __backmatter.filled.tex\tex2pdf.-17ccb46edec0caa0: CreateDirectory "\\?\C:\Users\caumo\Desktop\pandoc-thesis-master\__titlepage.filled.tex __frontmatter.filled.tex __backmatter.filled.tex\tex2pdf.-17ccb46edec0caa0": does not exist (Impossibile trovare il percorso specificato.)

so, all the temporary files (starting with "__" are created, but the last step goes wild?

i noticed in the output that the path to the first auxiliary file is repeated using the full path, but the others are apparently not being recognised is individual files but concatenated to form a sort of massive filename? somehow pandoc seems to not recognise the options?

you are using "/" as path separator. iirc in windows your are required to use "" instead? could you copy the last cmd to your terminal but replace every "/" with ""?

sadly i can't test this as i have no access to a windows machine.

[coppertank]

Ok I was able to knit in pdf the simple example, now i will try the other methods and I will report if there are any other problems.

I was able to generate the pdf in this way:

• first, after changing the line in the makefile with my pandoc directory (pointing at the exe file) i run make simple to generate the temporary filled tex files. The procedure still give me error, though.
• i then copied the whole code before the error message (from C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc.exe -f markdown... to references.md md/appendix.md) and pasted it another time in the command prompt, changing the line C:/Users/caumo/AppData/Local/Pandoc/pandoc.exe with only pandoc.

This was the output:

pdflatex: security risk: running with elevated privileges
pdflatex: security risk: running with elevated privileges
[WARNING] [makePDF] LaTeX Warning: Unused global option(s): [clearpage].

In the folder i found then the thesis.pdf file, the temporary files were not automatically deleted but for me this was not a big issue

Thank you so much for the patience

Edit: the same procedure works also changing the right side of the Makefile with only pandoc. However, i need all the times to run the procedure twice (first make simple and then to copy/paste the last part of the code), so i think there is some trouble with automated actions

[cagix]

glad it worked! in general you can either use the complete path (including the executable) or just the name itself. the latter will only work, if the executable is on your search path. so in your case it should definitely work using "c:\...\pandoc.exe" or just "pandoc" (assuming the path is set up correctly).

i'm planning on using pandoc default files. this would make things a bit easier ...

[cagix]

the temporary files were not automatically deleted

@coppertank make clean should remove all temporary artefacts :)