Introduction

Pandoc is a document converter supporting a wide range of markup formats including Markdown, HTML, LaTeX, DOCX, and ODT. Pandoc JSON is a JSON serialization of Pandoc's internal document AST (Abstract Syntax Tree).

Stencila uses Pandoc JSON as an intermediate format when converting to and from formats that Pandoc handles natively, such as DOCX, ODT, and PDF (via LaTeX).

Usage

You are unlikely to need Pandoc JSON directly, but it can be useful for debugging conversion issues. Use the .pandoc file extension, or the --to pandoc or --from pandoc options e.g.

stencila convert doc.smd doc.pandoc

Implementation

Stencila supports bi-directional conversion between Stencila documents and the Pandoc AST powered by the pandoc_types Rust crate. When encoding to Pandoc-based formats (DOCX, ODT), Stencila first converts to the Pandoc AST, serializes it to JSON, and then invokes the pandoc binary for final format generation.

Limitations

Pandoc must be installed separately; it is not bundled with Stencila.

The Pandoc AST does not represent all Stencila node types. Conversion is lossy for nodes without Pandoc equivalents (e.g. executable code chunks, styled blocks, parameters).

Changes to Pandoc's AST between versions may affect compatibility, though Stencila tracks the current stable Pandoc types version.