2026-03-16

Markdown to PDF Using Pandoc

markdown, pdf, pandoc

I recently wrote some technical documentation in markdown and wanted to generate a nicely formatted pdf out of it. I used ChatGPT to give me some examples, not all the PDFs came out that nice but I got something useable.

Pandoc uses latex to convert markdown to PDF and so I needed to install various packages as I didn't have latex.

sudo dnf install texlive-scheme-basic texlive-xetex
sudo dnf install texlive-lm texlive-lm-math
sudo dnf install google-noto-serif-fonts google-noto-sans-fonts

I also wanted to have a codeblock background, this required having a tex file.

I have the following in codeblock.tex:

\usepackage{listings}
\usepackage{xcolor}

\definecolor{codegray}{RGB}{248,248,248}

\lstset{
  backgroundcolor=\color{codegray},
  basicstyle=\ttfamily\small,
  frame=single,
  rulecolor=\color{black!10},
  breaklines=true,
  columns=fullflexible
}

I also had to update my markdown with some frontmatter:

---
title: Document Title
author: Author
date: 2026
toc: true
toc-depth: 3
numbersections: true
fontsize: 11pt
geometry: margin=1in
---

...Rest of my document

Finally, the pandoc command:

pandoc doc.md \
	--pdf-engine=xelatex \
	--listings \
	-H codeblock.tex \
	--toc \
	--number-sections \
	-o doc.pdf