Export options

The following export keywords are supported. (Because they populate metadata fields, they will not generally affect the output unless you use the -s/--standalone option to generate a standalone document with metadata.)

• AUTHOR: comma-separated list of author(s); fully supported.

• CREATOR: output generator; passed as plain-text metadata entry creator, but not used by any default templates.

• DATE: creation or publication date; well supported by pandoc.

• EMAIL: author email address; passed as plain-text metadata field email, but not used by any default templates.

• LANGUAGE: document language; included as plain-text metadata field lang. The value should be a BCP47 language tag.

• SELECT_TAGS: tags which select a tree for export.

• EXCLUDE_TAGS: tags which prevent a subtree from being exported. Fully supported.

• TITLE: document title; fully supported.

• EXPORT_FILE_NAME: target filename; unsupported, the output defaults to stdout unless a target has to be given as a command line option.

-- intermediate store for variables and their values
local variables = {}

--- Function called for each raw block element.
function RawBlock (raw)
  -- Don't do anything unless the block contains *org* markup.
  if raw.format ~= 'org' then return nil end

  -- extract variable name and value
  local name, value = raw.text:match '#%+(%w+):%s*(.+)$'
  if name and value then
    variables[name] = value
  end
end

-- Add the extracted variables to the document's metadata.
function Meta (meta)
  for name, value in pairs(variables) do
    meta[name] = value
  end
  return meta
end

Tables

Pandoc supports normal org tables (sometimes called “pipe tables”) and grid tables (tables created by table.el).

Emphasis rules

Org-mode uses complex rules to decide whether a string represents emphasized text. In Emacs, this can be customized via the variable org-emphasis-regexp-components. A variable like this doesn’t fit well with pandoc’s model. Instead, it is possible to use special lines to change these values:

#+pandoc-emphasis-pre: "-\t ('\"{\x200B"
#+pandoc-emphasis-post: "-\t\n .,:!?;'\")}[\x200B"

The above describes the default values of these variables. The arguments must be valid (Haskell) strings. If interpretation of the argument as string fails, the default is restored.

Changing emphasis rules only affect the part of the document following the special lines. They must be some of the first lines to alter parsing behavior for the whole document. It is also possible to change the values temporarily for selected sections only. The string test in the following snippet will be read as emphasized text, while the rest of the document will be parsed using default emphasis rules:

#+pandoc-emphasis-pre: "["
#+pandoc-emphasis-post: "]"
[/test/]
#+pandoc-emphasis-pre:
#+pandoc-emphasis-post:

smart extension

Org-mode allows to insert certain characters via special character sequences. For example, instead of typing the Unicode /HORIZONTAL ELLISPIS/ character … by hand, one can instead type tree dots .... En dashes and em dashes can be written as -- and --- respectively. Furthermore, quotation marks (") and apostrophe-quotes (') can be treated in a “smart” way, potentially replacing them with proper, language specific unicode quotation characters.

Like in Markdown, these behaviors can be turned on all-at-once by enabling the smart extension. However, disabling smart (the default) will not necessarily disable smart quotes and special strings. Instead, it will just result in the default Org mode behavior.

The special string feature can be turned off via the #+OPTIONS: -:nil export setting. There are currently no command line flags which control these features. As a workaround, one can use process substitution, a feature supported by most shells. It allows to provide the options line on the command line:

pandoc -f org <(printf "#+OPTIONS: -:nil\n") …

fancy_lists extension

Org-mode has a variable org-list-allow-alphabetical that when set to t, allows ordered lists with single-character alphabetical markers. Since this variable is nil by default, alphabetical markers can be optionally enabled in Pandoc by enabling the fancy_lists extension.

When fancy_lists is enabled, Pandoc will also parse list markers starting with one lowercase or uppercase alphabetical character, like a. and D). Contrary to the use of this extension in markdown, roman numerals or the # placeholder can’t be used as markers as they are not allowed in Org-mode.

One additional behavior that is enabled by the fancy_lists extension is that the . and ) delimiters for list markers will be distinguished by Pandoc. In essence, this means that when converting Org into formats like LaTeX, Pandoc will respect the type of delimiter that you used in your Org file, instead of always using the default delimiter for the exported format.

Currently unsupported features