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Templates

When the -s/--standalone option is used, pandoc uses a template to add header and footer material that is needed for a self-standing document. To see the default template that is used, just type

pandoc -D *FORMAT*

where FORMAT is the name of the output format. A custom template can be specified using the --template option. You can also override the system default templates for a given output format FORMAT by putting a file templates/default.*FORMAT* in the user data directory (see --data-dir, above). Exceptions:

  • For odt output, customize the default.opendocument template.
  • For docx output, customize the default.openxml template.
  • For pdf output, customize the default.latex template (or the default.context template, if you use -t context, or the default.ms template, if you use -t ms, or the default.html template, if you use -t html).
  • pptx has no template.

Note that docx, odt, and pptx output can also be customized using --reference-doc. Use a reference doc to adjust the styles in your document; use a template to handle variable interpolation and customize the presentation of metadata, the position of the table of contents, boilerplate text, etc.

Templates contain variables, which allow for the inclusion of arbitrary information at any point in the file. They may be set at the command line using the -V/--variable option. If a variable is not set, pandoc will look for the key in the document’s metadata, which can be set using either YAML metadata blocks or with the -M/--metadata option. In addition, some variables are given default values by pandoc. See Variables below for a list of variables used in pandoc’s default templates.

If you use custom templates, you may need to revise them as pandoc changes. We recommend tracking the changes in the default templates, and modifying your custom templates accordingly. An easy way to do this is to fork the pandoc-templates repository and merge in changes after each pandoc release.

Template syntax​

Comments​

Anything between the sequence $-- and the end of the line will be treated as a comment and omitted from the output.

Delimiters​

To mark variables and control structures in the template, either $…$ or ${…} may be used as delimiters. The styles may also be mixed in the same template, but the opening and closing delimiter must match in each case. The opening delimiter may be followed by one or more spaces or tabs, which will be ignored. The closing delimiter may be preceded by one or more spaces or tabs, which will be ignored.

To include a literal $ in the document, use $$.

Interpolated variables​

A slot for an interpolated variable is a variable name surrounded by matched delimiters. Variable names must begin with a letter and can contain letters, numbers, _, -, and .. The keywords it, if, else, endif, for, sep, and endfor may not be used as variable names. Examples:

$foo$
$foo.bar.baz$
$foo_bar.baz-bim$
$ foo $
${foo}
${foo.bar.baz}
${foo_bar.baz-bim}
${ foo }

Variable names with periods are used to get at structured variable values. So, for example, employee.salary will return the value of the salary field of the object that is the value of the employee field.

  • If the value of the variable is a simple value, it will be rendered verbatim. (Note that no escaping is done; the assumption is that the calling program will escape the strings appropriately for the output format.)
  • If the value is a list, the values will be concatenated.
  • If the value is a map, the string true will be rendered.
  • Every other value will be rendered as the empty string.

Conditionals​

A conditional begins with if(variable) (enclosed in matched delimiters) and ends with endif (enclosed in matched delimiters). It may optionally contain an else (enclosed in matched delimiters). The if section is used if variable has a true value, otherwise the else section is used (if present). The following values count as true:

  • any map
  • any array containing at least one true value
  • any nonempty string
  • boolean True

Note that in YAML metadata (and metadata specified on the command line using -M/--metadata), unquoted true and false will be interpreted as Boolean values. But a variable specified on the command line using -V/--variable will always be given a string value. Hence a conditional if(foo) will be triggered if you use -V foo=false, but not if you use -M foo=false.

Examples:

$if(foo)$bar$endif$

$if(foo)$
  $foo$
$endif$

$if(foo)$
part one
$else$
part two
$endif$

${if(foo)}bar${endif}

${if(foo)}
  ${foo}
${endif}

${if(foo)}
${ foo.bar }
${else}
no foo!
${endif}

The keyword elseif may be used to simplify complex nested conditionals:

$if(foo)$
XXX
$elseif(bar)$
YYY
$else$
ZZZ
$endif$

For loops​

A for loop begins with for(variable) (enclosed in matched delimiters) and ends with endfor (enclosed in matched delimiters).

  • If variable is an array, the material inside the loop will be evaluated repeatedly, with variable being set to each value of the array in turn, and concatenated.
  • If variable is a map, the material inside will be set to the map.
  • If the value of the associated variable is not an array or a map, a single iteration will be performed on its value.

Examples:

$for(foo)$$foo$$sep$, $endfor$

$for(foo)$
  - $foo.last$, $foo.first$
$endfor$

${ for(foo.bar) }
  - ${ foo.bar.last }, ${ foo.bar.first }
${ endfor }

$for(mymap)$
$it.name$: $it.office$
$endfor$

You may optionally specify a separator between consecutive values using sep (enclosed in matched delimiters). The material between sep and the endfor is the separator.

${ for(foo) }${ foo }${ sep }, ${ endfor }

Instead of using variable inside the loop, the special anaphoric keyword it may be used.

${ for(foo.bar) }
  - ${ it.last }, ${ it.first }
${ endfor }

Partials​

Partials (subtemplates stored in different files) may be included by using the name of the partial, followed by (), for example:

${ styles() }

Partials will be sought in the directory containing the main template. The file name will be assumed to have the same extension as the main template if it lacks an extension. When calling the partial, the full name including file extension can also be used:

${ styles.html() }

(If a partial is not found in the directory of the template and the template path is given as a relative path, it will also be sought in the templates subdirectory of the user data directory.)

Partials may optionally be applied to variables using a colon:

${ date:fancy() }

${ articles:bibentry() }

If articles is an array, this will iterate over its values, applying the partial bibentry() to each one. So the second example above is equivalent to

${ for(articles) }
${ it:bibentry() }
${ endfor }

Note that the anaphoric keyword it must be used when iterating over partials. In the above examples, the bibentry partial should contain it.title (and so on) instead of articles.title.

Final newlines are omitted from included partials.

Partials may include other partials.

A separator between values of an array may be specified in square brackets, immediately after the variable name or partial:

${months[, ]}

${articles:bibentry()[; ]}

The separator in this case is literal and (unlike with sep in an explicit for loop) cannot contain interpolated variables or other template directives.

Nesting​

To ensure that content is “nested,” that is, subsequent lines indented, use the ^ directive:

$item.number$  $^$$item.description$ ($item.price$)

In this example, if item.description has multiple lines, they will all be indented to line up with the first line:

00123  A fine bottle of 18-year old
       Oban whiskey. ($148)

To nest multiple lines to the same level, align them with the ^ directive in the template. For example:

$item.number$  $^$$item.description$ ($item.price$)
               (Available til $item.sellby$.)

will produce

00123  A fine bottle of 18-year old
       Oban whiskey. ($148)
       (Available til March 30, 2020.)

If a variable occurs by itself on a line, preceded by whitespace and not followed by further text or directives on the same line, and the variable’s value contains multiple lines, it will be nested automatically.

Breakable spaces​

Normally, spaces in the template itself (as opposed to values of the interpolated variables) are not breakable, but they can be made breakable in part of the template by using the ~ keyword (ended with another ~).

$~$This long line may break if the document is rendered
with a short line length.$~$

Pipes​

A pipe transforms the value of a variable or partial. Pipes are specified using a slash (/) between the variable name (or partial) and the pipe name. Example:

$for(name)$
$name/uppercase$
$endfor$

$for(metadata/pairs)$
- $it.key$: $it.value$
$endfor$

$employee:name()/uppercase$

Pipes may be chained:

$for(employees/pairs)$
$it.key/alpha/uppercase$. $it.name$
$endfor$

Some pipes take parameters:

|----------------------|------------|
$for(employee)$
$it.name.first/uppercase/left 20 "| "$$it.name.salary/right 10 " | " " |"$
$endfor$
|----------------------|------------|

Currently the following pipes are predefined:

  • pairs: Converts a map or array to an array of maps, each with key and value fields. If the original value was an array, the key will be the array index, starting with 1.

  • uppercase: Converts text to uppercase.

  • lowercase: Converts text to lowercase.

  • length: Returns the length of the value: number of characters for a textual value, number of elements for a map or array.

  • reverse: Reverses a textual value or array, and has no effect on other values.

  • first: Returns the first value of an array, if applied to a non-empty array; otherwise returns the original value.

  • last: Returns the last value of an array, if applied to a non-empty array; otherwise returns the original value.

  • rest: Returns all but the first value of an array, if applied to a non-empty array; otherwise returns the original value.

  • allbutlast: Returns all but the last value of an array, if applied to a non-empty array; otherwise returns the original value.

  • chomp: Removes trailing newlines (and breakable space).

  • nowrap: Disables line wrapping on breakable spaces.

  • alpha: Converts textual values that can be read as an integer into lowercase alphabetic characters a..z (mod 26). This can be used to get lettered enumeration from array indices. To get uppercase letters, chain with uppercase.

  • roman: Converts textual values that can be read as an integer into lowercase roman numerals. This can be used to get lettered enumeration from array indices. To get uppercase roman, chain with uppercase.

  • left n "leftborder" "rightborder": Renders a textual value in a block of width n, aligned to the left, with an optional left and right border. Has no effect on other values. This can be used to align material in tables. Widths are positive integers indicating the number of characters. Borders are strings inside double quotes; literal " and \ characters must be backslash-escaped.

  • right n "leftborder" "rightborder": Renders a textual value in a block of width n, aligned to the right, and has no effect on other values.

  • center n "leftborder" "rightborder": Renders a textual value in a block of width n, aligned to the center, and has no effect on other values.

Variables​

Metadata variables​

title, author, date
allow identification of basic aspects of the document. Included in PDF metadata through LaTeX and ConTeXt. These can be set through a pandoc title block, which allows for multiple authors, or through a YAML metadata block:

---
author:
- Aristotle
- Peter Abelard
...

Note that if you just want to set PDF or HTML metadata, without including a title block in the document itself, you can set the title-meta, author-meta, and date-meta variables. (By default these are set automatically, based on title, author, and date.) The page title in HTML is set by pagetitle, which is equal to title by default.

subtitle
document subtitle, included in HTML, EPUB, LaTeX, ConTeXt, and docx documents

abstract
document summary, included in HTML, LaTeX, ConTeXt, AsciiDoc, and docx documents

abstract-title
title of abstract, currently used only in HTML, EPUB, and docx. This will be set automatically to a localized value, depending on lang, but can be manually overridden.

keywords
list of keywords to be included in HTML, PDF, ODT, pptx, docx and AsciiDoc metadata; repeat as for author, above

subject
document subject, included in ODT, PDF, docx, EPUB, and pptx metadata

description
document description, included in ODT, docx and pptx metadata. Some applications show this as Comments metadata.

category
document category, included in docx and pptx metadata

Additionally, any root-level string metadata, not included in ODT, docx or pptx metadata is added as a custom property. The following YAML metadata block for instance:

---
title:  'This is the title'
subtitle: "This is the subtitle"
author:
- Author One
- Author Two
description: |
    This is a long
    description.

    It consists of two paragraphs
...

will include title, author and description as standard document properties and subtitle as a custom property when converting to docx, ODT or pptx.

Language variables​

lang
identifies the main language of the document using IETF language tags (following the BCP 47 standard), such as en or en-GB. The Language subtag lookup tool can look up or verify these tags. This affects most formats, and controls hyphenation in PDF output when using LaTeX (through babel and polyglossia) or ConTeXt.

Use native pandoc Divs and Spans with the lang attribute to switch the language:

---
lang: en-GB
...

Text in the main document language (British English).

::: {lang=fr-CA}
> Cette citation est écrite en français canadien.
:::

More text in English. ['Zitat auf Deutsch.']{lang=de}

dir
the base script direction, either rtl (right-to-left) or ltr (left-to-right).

For bidirectional documents, native pandoc spans and divs with the dir attribute (value rtl or ltr) can be used to override the base direction in some output formats. This may not always be necessary if the final renderer (e.g. the browser, when generating HTML) supports the Unicode Bidirectional Algorithm.

When using LaTeX for bidirectional documents, only the xelatex engine is fully supported (use --pdf-engine=xelatex).

Variables for HTML​

document-css
Enables inclusion of most of the CSS in the styles.html partial (have a look with pandoc --print-default-data-file=templates/styles.html). Unless you use --css, this variable is set to true by default. You can disable it with e.g. pandoc -M document-css=false.

mainfont
sets the CSS font-family property on the html element.

fontsize
sets the base CSS font-size, which you’d usually set to e.g. 20px, but it also accepts pt (12pt = 16px in most browsers).

fontcolor
sets the CSS color property on the html element.

linkcolor
sets the CSS color property on all links.

monofont
sets the CSS font-family property on code elements.

monobackgroundcolor
sets the CSS background-color property on code elements and adds extra padding.

linestretch
sets the CSS line-height property on the html element, which is preferred to be unitless.

maxwidth
sets the CSS max-width property (default is 36em).

backgroundcolor
sets the CSS background-color property on the html element.

margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
sets the corresponding CSS padding properties on the body element.

To override or extend some CSS for just one document, include for example:

---
header-includes: |
  <style>
  blockquote {
    font-style: italic;
  }
  tr.even {
    background-color: #f0f0f0;
  }
  td, th {
    padding: 0.5em 2em 0.5em 0.5em;
  }
  tbody {
    border-bottom: none;
  }
  </style>
---

Variables for HTML math​

classoption
when using --katex, you can render display math equations flush left using YAML metadata or with -M classoption=fleqn.

Variables for HTML slides​

These affect HTML output when producing slide shows with pandoc.

institute
author affiliations: can be a list when there are multiple authors

revealjs-url
base URL for reveal.js documents (defaults to https://unpkg.com/reveal.js@^4)

s5-url
base URL for S5 documents (defaults to s5/default)

slidy-url
base URL for Slidy documents (defaults to https://www.w3.org/Talks/Tools/Slidy2)

slideous-url
base URL for Slideous documents (defaults to slideous)

title-slide-attributes
additional attributes for the title slide of reveal.js slide shows. See background in reveal.js, beamer, and pptx for an example.

All reveal.js configuration options are available as variables. To turn off boolean flags that default to true in reveal.js, use 0.

Variables for Beamer slides​

These variables change the appearance of PDF slides using beamer.

aspectratio
slide aspect ratio (43 for 4:3 [default], 169 for 16:9, 1610 for 16:10, 149 for 14:9, 141 for 1.41:1, 54 for 5:4, 32 for 3:2)

beameroption
add extra beamer option with \setbeameroption{}

institute
author affiliations: can be a list when there are multiple authors

logo
logo image for slides

navigation
controls navigation symbols (default is empty for no navigation symbols; other valid values are frame, vertical, and horizontal)

section-titles
enables “title pages” for new sections (default is true)

theme, colortheme, fonttheme, innertheme, outertheme
beamer themes

themeoptions, colorthemeoptions, fontthemeoptions, innerthemeoptions, outerthemeoptions
options for LaTeX beamer themes (lists)

titlegraphic
image for title slide: can be a list

titlegraphicoptions
options for title slide image

shorttitle, shortsubtitle, shortauthor, shortinstitute, shortdate
some beamer themes use short versions of the title, subtitle, author, institute, date

Variables for PowerPoint​

These variables control the visual aspects of a slide show that are not easily controlled via templates.

monofont
font to use for code.

Variables for LaTeX​

Pandoc uses these variables when creating a PDF with a LaTeX engine.

Layout​

block-headings
make \paragraph and \subparagraph (fourth- and fifth-level headings, or fifth- and sixth-level with book classes) free-standing rather than run-in; requires further formatting to distinguish from \subsubsection (third- or fourth-level headings). Instead of using this option, KOMA-Script can adjust headings more extensively:

---
documentclass: scrartcl
header-includes: |
  \RedeclareSectionCommand[
    beforeskip=-10pt plus -2pt minus -1pt,
    afterskip=1sp plus -1sp minus 1sp,
    font=\normalfont\itshape]{paragraph}
  \RedeclareSectionCommand[
    beforeskip=-10pt plus -2pt minus -1pt,
    afterskip=1sp plus -1sp minus 1sp,
    font=\normalfont\scshape,
    indent=0pt]{subparagraph}
...

classoption
option for document class, e.g. oneside; repeat for multiple options:

---
classoption:
- twocolumn
- landscape
...

documentclass
document class: usually one of the standard classes, article, book, and report; the KOMA-Script equivalents, scrartcl, scrbook, and scrreprt, which default to smaller margins; or memoir

geometry
option for geometry package, e.g. margin=1in; repeat for multiple options:

---
geometry:
- top=30mm
- left=20mm
- heightrounded
...

hyperrefoptions
option for hyperref package, e.g. linktoc=all; repeat for multiple options:

---
hyperrefoptions:
- linktoc=all
- pdfwindowui
- pdfpagemode=FullScreen
...

indent
if true, pandoc will use document class settings for indentation (the default LaTeX template otherwise removes indentation and adds space between paragraphs)

linestretch
adjusts line spacing using the setspace package, e.g. 1.25, 1.5

margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
sets margins if geometry is not used (otherwise geometry overrides these)

pagestyle
control \pagestyle{}: the default article class supports plain (default), empty (no running heads or page numbers), and headings (section titles in running heads)

papersize
paper size, e.g. letter, a4

secnumdepth
numbering depth for sections (with --number-sections option or numbersections variable)

beamerarticle
produce an article from Beamer slides. Note: if you set this variable, you must specify the beamer writer but use the default LaTeX template: for example, pandoc -Vbeamerarticle -t beamer --template default.latex.

handout
produce a handout version of Beamer slides (with overlays condensed into single slides)

csquotes
load csquotes package and use \enquote or \enquote* for quoted text.

csquotesoptions
options to use for csquotes package (repeat for multiple options).

babeloptions
options to pass to the babel package (may be repeated for multiple options). This defaults to provide=* if the main language isn’t a European language written with Latin or Cyrillic script or Vietnamese. Most users will not need to adjust the default setting.

Fonts​

fontenc
allows font encoding to be specified through fontenc package (with pdflatex); default is T1 (see LaTeX font encodings guide)

fontfamily
font package for use with pdflatex: TeX Live includes many options, documented in the LaTeX Font Catalogue. The default is Latin Modern.

fontfamilyoptions
options for package used as fontfamily; repeat for multiple options. For example, to use the Libertine font with proportional lowercase (old-style) figures through the libertinus package:

---
fontfamily: libertinus
fontfamilyoptions:
- osf
- p
...

fontsize
font size for body text. The standard classes allow 10pt, 11pt, and 12pt. To use another size, set documentclass to one of the KOMA-Script classes, such as scrartcl or scrbook.

mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont, CJKmainfont, CJKsansfont, CJKmonofont
font families for use with xelatex or lualatex: take the name of any system font, using the fontspec package. CJKmainfont uses the xecjk package if xelatex is used, or the luatexja package if lualatex is used.

mainfontoptions, sansfontoptions, monofontoptions, mathfontoptions, CJKoptions, luatexjapresetoptions
options to use with mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont, CJKmainfont in xelatex and lualatex. Allow for any choices available through fontspec; repeat for multiple options. For example, to use the TeX Gyre version of Palatino with lowercase figures:

---
mainfont: TeX Gyre Pagella
mainfontoptions:
- Numbers=Lowercase
- Numbers=Proportional
...

mainfontfallback, sansfontfallback, monofontfallback
fonts to try if a glyph isn’t found in mainfont, sansfont, or monofont respectively. These are lists. The font name must be followed by a colon and optionally a set of options, for example:

---
mainfontfallback:
  - "FreeSans:"
  - "NotoColorEmoji:mode=harf"
...

Font fallbacks currently only work with lualatex.

babelfonts
a map of Babel language names (e.g. chinese) to the font to be used with the language:

---
babelfonts:
  chinese-hant: "Noto Serif CJK TC"
  russian: "Noto Serif"
...

microtypeoptions
options to pass to the microtype package

colorlinks
add color to link text; automatically enabled if any of linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor, or toccolor are set

boxlinks
add visible box around links (has no effect if colorlinks is set)

linkcolor, filecolor, citecolor, urlcolor, toccolor
color for internal links, external links, citation links, linked URLs, and links in table of contents, respectively: uses options allowed by xcolor, including the dvipsnames, svgnames, and x11names lists

links-as-notes
causes links to be printed as footnotes

urlstyle
style for URLs (e.g., tt, rm, sf, and, the default, same)

Front matter​

lof, lot
include list of figures, list of tables (can also be set using --lof/--list-of-figures, --lot/--list-of-tables)

thanks
contents of acknowledgments footnote after document title

toc
include table of contents (can also be set using --toc/--table-of-contents)

toc-depth
level of section to include in table of contents

BibLaTeX Bibliographies​

These variables function when using BibLaTeX for citation rendering.

biblatexoptions
list of options for biblatex

biblio-style
bibliography style, when used with --natbib and --biblatex

biblio-title
bibliography title, when used with --natbib and --biblatex

bibliography
bibliography to use for resolving references

natbiboptions
list of options for natbib

Variables for ConTeXt​

Pandoc uses these variables when creating a PDF with ConTeXt.

fontsize
font size for body text (e.g. 10pt, 12pt)

headertext, footertext
text to be placed in running header or footer (see ConTeXt Headers and Footers); repeat up to four times for different placement

indenting
controls indentation of paragraphs, e.g. yes,small,next (see ConTeXt Indentation); repeat for multiple options

interlinespace
adjusts line spacing, e.g. 4ex (using setupinterlinespace); repeat for multiple options

layout
options for page margins and text arrangement (see ConTeXt Layout); repeat for multiple options

linkcolor, contrastcolor
color for links outside and inside a page, e.g. red, blue (see ConTeXt Color)

linkstyle
typeface style for links, e.g. normal, bold, slanted, boldslanted, type, cap, small

lof, lot
include list of figures, list of tables

mainfont, sansfont, monofont, mathfont
font families: take the name of any system font (see ConTeXt Font Switching)

mainfontfallback, sansfontfallback, monofontfallback
list of fonts to try, in order, if a glyph is not found in the main font. Use \definefallbackfamily-compatible font name syntax. Emoji fonts are unsupported.

margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
sets margins, if layout is not used (otherwise layout overrides these)

pagenumbering
page number style and location (using setuppagenumbering); repeat for multiple options

papersize
paper size, e.g. letter, A4, landscape (see ConTeXt Paper Setup); repeat for multiple options

pdfa
adds to the preamble the setup necessary to generate PDF/A of the type specified, e.g. 1a:2005, 2a. If no type is specified (i.e. the value is set to True, by e.g. --metadata=pdfa or pdfa: true in a YAML metadata block), 1b:2005 will be used as default, for reasons of backwards compatibility. Using --variable=pdfa without specified value is not supported. To successfully generate PDF/A the required ICC color profiles have to be available and the content and all included files (such as images) have to be standard-conforming. The ICC profiles and output intent may be specified using the variables pdfaiccprofile and pdfaintent. See also ConTeXt PDFA for more details.

pdfaiccprofile
when used in conjunction with pdfa, specifies the ICC profile to use in the PDF, e.g. default.cmyk. If left unspecified, sRGB.icc is used as default. May be repeated to include multiple profiles. Note that the profiles have to be available on the system. They can be obtained from ConTeXt ICC Profiles.

pdfaintent
when used in conjunction with pdfa, specifies the output intent for the colors, e.g. ISO coated v2 300\letterpercent\space (ECI) If left unspecified, sRGB IEC61966-2.1 is used as default.

toc
include table of contents (can also be set using --toc/--table-of-contents)

urlstyle
typeface style for links without link text, e.g. normal, bold, slanted, boldslanted, type, cap, small

whitespace
spacing between paragraphs, e.g. none, small (using setupwhitespace)

includesource
include all source documents as file attachments in the PDF file

Variables for wkhtmltopdf​

Pandoc uses these variables when creating a PDF with wkhtmltopdf. The --css option also affects the output.

footer-html, header-html
add information to the header and footer

margin-left, margin-right, margin-top, margin-bottom
set the page margins

papersize
sets the PDF paper size

Variables for man pages​

adjusting
adjusts text to left (l), right (r), center (c), or both (b) margins

footer
footer in man pages

header
header in man pages

section
section number in man pages

Variables for Texinfo​

version
version of software (used in title and title page)

filename
name of info file to be generated (defaults to a name based on the texi filename)

Variables for Typst​

template
Typst template to use.

margin
A dictionary with the fields defined in the Typst documentation: x, y, top, bottom, left, right.

papersize
Paper size: a4, us-letter, etc.

mainfont
Name of system font to use for the main font.

fontsize
Font size (e.g., 12pt).

section-numbering
Schema to use for numbering sections, e.g. 1.A.1.

page-numbering
Schema to use for numbering pages, e.g. 1 or i, or an empty string to omit page numbering.

columns
Number of columns for body text.

Variables for ms​

fontfamily
A (Avant Garde), B (Bookman), C (Helvetica), HN (Helvetica Narrow), P (Palatino), or T (Times New Roman). This setting does not affect source code, which is always displayed using monospace Courier. These built-in fonts are limited in their coverage of characters. Additional fonts may be installed using the script install-font.sh provided by Peter Schaffter and documented in detail on his web site.

indent
paragraph indent (e.g. 2m)

lineheight
line height (e.g. 12p)

pointsize
point size (e.g. 10p)

Variables set automatically​

Pandoc sets these variables automatically in response to options or document contents; users can also modify them. These vary depending on the output format, and include the following:

body
body of document

date-meta
the date variable converted to ISO 8601 YYYY-MM-DD, included in all HTML based formats (dzslides, epub, html, html4, html5, revealjs, s5, slideous, slidy). The recognized formats for date are: mm/dd/yyyy, mm/dd/yy, yyyy-mm-dd (ISO 8601), dd MM yyyy (e.g. either 02 Apr 2018 or 02 April 2018), MM dd, yyyy (e.g. Apr. 02, 2018 or April 02, 2018),yyyy[mm[dd]](e.g.20180402, 201804 or 2018).

header-includes
contents specified by -H/--include-in-header (may have multiple values)

include-before
contents specified by -B/--include-before-body (may have multiple values)

include-after
contents specified by -A/--include-after-body (may have multiple values)

meta-json
JSON representation of all of the document’s metadata. Field values are transformed to the selected output format.

numbersections
non-null value if -N/--number-sections was specified

sourcefile, outputfile
source and destination filenames, as given on the command line. sourcefile can also be a list if input comes from multiple files, or empty if input is from stdin. You can use the following snippet in your template to distinguish them:

$if(sourcefile)$
$for(sourcefile)$
$sourcefile$
$endfor$
$else$
(stdin)
$endif$

Similarly, outputfile can be - if output goes to the terminal.

If you need absolute paths, use e.g. $curdir$/$sourcefile$.

curdir
working directory from which pandoc is run.

pandoc-version
pandoc version.

toc
non-null value if --toc/--table-of-contents was specified

toc-title
title of table of contents (works only with EPUB, HTML, revealjs, opendocument, odt, docx, pptx, beamer, LaTeX). Note that in docx and pptx a custom toc-title will be picked up from metadata, but cannot be set as a variable.