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pandoc cannot change width text

I am using pandoc on Ubuntu to convert a markdown file to pdf:

pandoc -o output.pdf ProjectDescription.md

However I find the text to be too narrow, and I want to use more of the page. For this, I read pandoc manual and it looks like the columns option should be good:

https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html

'' --columns=NUMBER

Specify length of lines in characters. This affects text wrapping in the generated source code (see --wrap). It also affects calculation of column widths for plain text tables (see Tables below). ''

Default is supposed to be columns=72.

But trying:

pandoc --columns=80 -o output.pdf ProjectDescription.md

does not give me a wider text. Do you know why and how to fix this?

Solution

  • This affects text wrapping in the generated source code

    Thus this has no effect on PDF output for which there is only the intermediary LaTeX source.

    You probably want to set the margins like:

    ---
title: my doc
margin-left: 1cm
---

# my content