Search code examples
latexmarkdownpandoc

Pandoc latex to other formats: is there an out-of-the-box way to preserve selected latex commands? (in particular \ref)


I want to convert old lecture notes from LaTeX to markdown, in order to use them in quarto afterwards. I would like to preserve the raw LaTeX references, \ref{some-label} and possibly also other raw LaTeX commands. Is there a canonical way to do that, or should I write a filter?

Minimal example: pandoc minimal.tex -o minimal.md

with minimal.tex

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Refer to \textbf{example} \ref{example1}, blabla
\end{document}

gives minimal.md

Refer to **example** [\[example1\]](#example1){reference-type="ref"
reference="example1"}, blabla

but I want

Refer to **example** \ref{example1}, blabla

p.s. The reason why I want to preserve references is, that I want to use my own filter to resolve them.


Solution

  • The raw_tex extension will cause all unknown or difficult to convert TeX commands to be passed through as raw elements:

    % pandoc --from=latex+raw_tex minimal.tex
    Refer to **example** `\ref{example1}`{=latex}, blabla
    

    Filtering on RawInline and RawBlock elements then allows to process these elements in whatever way you see fit.