pandoc 3.6.1

[jgm]

I'm pleased to announce the release of pandoc 3.6.1,
available in the usual places:

Binary packages & changelog:
https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases/tag/3.6.1

Source & API documentation:
http://hackage.haskell.org/package/pandoc-3.6.1

This release fixes a few regressions introduced in pandoc 3.6 and 3.5:

* Explicit reference links in RST now work properly (regression from 3.6).
* The Word writer now properly styles the title block even when a
  localized version is being run (regression from 3.5).
* Generation of PDFs via wkhtmltopdf now works again (regression from 3.6).

Some other changes of note:

* Fix slow performance for files containing very large data URIs.
* A YAML bibliography passed no longer needs to be a YAML object
  with a 'references' key; it can just be an array of references.
* --template can now be used with files without an extension,
  including bash process substitutions.
* The docx writer now handles chapters better. If
  --top-level-divison=chapter is used, chapters will start on a
  new page and footnote numbering will restart for each chapter.
  (Both these defaults can be overridden in reference.docx.)

See the changelog for full details on what has changed.

Thanks to all who contributed.

Click to expand changelog

• Allow YAML bibliographies to be arrays of references (YAML bibliographies require an object with references and do not accept arrays #10452). Previously, they had to be YAML objects with a references key.

• Change --template to allow use of extensionless templates (Template cannot be set using a Bash process substitution #5270). The intent is to allow bash process substitution: e.g., --template <(echo "foo"). Previously pandoc always added an extension based on the output format, which caused problems with the absolute filenames used by bash process substitution (e.g. /dev/fd/11). Now, if the template has no extension, pandoc will first try to find it without the extension, and then add the extension if it can’t be found. So, in general, extensionless templates can now be used. But this has been implemented in a way that should not cause problems for existing uses, unless you are using a template NAME.FORMAT but happen to have an extensionless file NAME in the template search path.

• Allow --shift-heading-level-by=-1 to work in djot in the same way it works for other formats (with the top-level heading being promoted to metadata title) (--shift-heading-level-by=-1 doesn't promote the first H1 of djot input #10459). This needed special treatment because of the way djot surrounds sections with Divs.

• RST reader:

  • Handle explicit reference links (3.6: RST "Reference not found", used to work in 3.5 #10484, Evan Silberman). This case was missed when changing the reference link strategy for RST to allow a single pass. (It is a regression in pandoc 3.6.)

• Markdown reader:

  • Use T.P.URI’s pBase64DataURI in parsing data URIs (Large inline images use a lot of memory #10075, Evan Silberman and John MacFarlane).
  • More efficient base64 data URI parsing (Large inline images use a lot of memory #10075, Evan Silberman and John MacFarlane). This should yield dramatic performance improvements for markdown documents containing large data URIs in images.

• HTML reader:

  • Don’t canonicalize data: URIs (Large inline images use a lot of memory #10075). It can be very expensive to call network-uri’s URI parser on these.

• LaTeX reader:

  • Handle figure* environment as a figure (Figure captions are not rendered for figure* (figure star) LaTeX environment #10472).

• MediaWiki reader:

  • Allow empty quoted attributes (Mediawiki to GFM: style="" in rowspan/colspan provides error #10490).
  • Allow cells starting with + (Mediawiki to GFM: + in row table results in error #10491).

• Textile reader:

  • Improve parsing of spans (when converting from textile to other formats, percentage period percentage is not converted correctly #9878). The span needs to be separated from its surroundings by spaces. Also, a span can have attributes, which we now attach.
  • Inline constructors shouldn’t trigger if closer is preceded by whitespace (Textile rendering, text converted to html with del tag #10414).

• Docx writer:

  • Put chapters in separate sections, and restart footnotes by section by default (footnotes numbered by chapter in docx writer #2773). The main effect of this change is that when --top-level-division=chapter is used, chapters will start on a new page and footnote numbering will restart for each chapter. Both of these defaults can be overridden in the reference.docx.
  • Use styleIds not styleNames for Title, Subtitle, etc. (Loss of style for titles and/or subtitles in .docx output document #10282). This fixes a regression introduced in pandoc 3.5. This change affects the default openxml template as well as the OpenXML writer.

• Markdown writer:

  • Avoid collapsing of initial/final newline in markdown raw blocks. This makes it easy to write a filter that adds extra blank lines before certain elements (Custom Writer: two blank lines above Markdown headers #10477).

• Mediawiki writer:

  • Escape line-initial characters that would otherwise be interpreted as list starts (Markdown to Mediawiki: escaped asterisk is not escaped #9700).

• LaTeX writer:

  • Properly handle boolean value for csquotes variable (German quotes: csquotes: true in defaults file has no effect  #10403).
  • Use displayquote for block quotes with csquotes (csquotes:true should wrap block quotes in displayquote environments #10456).

• HTML writer:

  • Avoid calling parseURIString for data URIs (Large inline images use a lot of memory #10075). This was done to determine the “media category,” but we can get that directly from the mime component of data: URIs.

• Typst writer:

  • Properly handle data URIs in images (Convert base64 inline image to typst #10460).

• LaTeX/Beamer templates:

  • Fix default.beamer nocite location (Thomas Hodgson). It must be inside a frame or it is ignored (Move nocite #10465).
  • Move nocites from LaTeX preamble to body (\nocite is in the wrong place with natbib #10461, Thomas Hodgson). Putting \nocite in the preamble works only with biblatex.

• Text.Pandoc.Parsing:

  • Correct example in comment on charsInBalanced (Evan Silberman).

• Text.Pandoc.Error:

  • Mention typst in rendering PandocUnknownWriterError for pdf (Evan Silberman).

• Text.Pandoc.MediaBag:

  • insertMedia: fast path for data URIs. Avoid the slow URI parser from network-uri on large data URIs (Large inline images use a lot of memory #10075).

• Text.Pandoc.Class:

  • Add shortcut for base64 data URIs in downloadOrRead (Large inline images use a lot of memory #10075). This avoids calling the slow URI parser from network-uri on data URIs, instead calling our own parser.

• Text.Pandoc.MIME:

  • Fix extensionFromMimeType. We had a few special cases encoded, but as previously written they wouldn’t work properly with modifiers like ;charset=utf-8.

• Text.Pandoc.URI:

  • Export pBase64DataURI. Modify isURI to use this and avoid calling network-uri’s inefficient parseURI for data URIs.

• Text.Pandoc.PDF:

  • Fix temp file extension in toPdfViaTempFile (--pdf-engine=wkhtmltopdf always fails in pandoc 3.6 #10468). This fixes a regression in pandoc 3.6, which changed the extension from html to source. Apparently wkhtmltopdf needs it to be .html. So now we have added a parameter to toPdfViaTempFile that allows the extension to be specified in a way that is appropriate to the PDF engine used.

• Lua (Albert Krewinkel):

  • Support more elements as input to pandoc.utils.stringify (pandoc.utils.stringify() behaviour change in pandoc 3.6 #10450). Elements of type Caption, Cell, TableHead, and TableFoot can now be stringified.
  • Add Caption constructor to pandoc module.

• Miscellaneous code quality improvements (Joseph C. Sible).

• Depend on citeproc 0.8.1.2, skylighting and skylighting-core 0.14.5.

• `doc/lua-filters.md: Fix links to constructors (Albert Krewinkel).

---

This discussion was created from the release pandoc 3.6.1.

[benz0li]

Unofficial and untested Linux/RISC-V 64-bit (linux/riscv64) release assets are available at https://gitlab.b-data.ch/jgm/pandoc/-/releases/3.6.1.