WH

Nodejs - Executing Pandoc Command for LaTeX

Ensuring Consistent Execution Path

In this example, a script might refer to a file, index.tex, which is referenced by Pandoc to convert a file located within a folder:

/contents
  index.tex

spawn('pandoc', [
  '/the/full/path/to/contents/index.tex',
  '-o',
  '/the/full/path/to/output/index.html',
  '-s'
]);

When you wish to have a more maintainable writing experience, one can break up the contents of the 'index.tex' into multiple .tex files and place them into a different folder.

The index.tex file will reference the 'chapter-01.tex' file inside the new 'chapters' folder:

/contents
  /chapters
    chapter-01.tex
  index.tex

% chapter-01.tex

\chapter{Chapter 1}

\section{section}
Some section content.

% index.tex

\documentclass{article}

\title{Tex}

\begin{document}

\input{chapters/chapter-01}

\end{document}

However, when you refer to Pandoc inside a script to perform the execution, the reference path might not have been what you have expected. If you refer to the file, index.tex, from a directory outside from where the index.tex is located, Pandoc will not render the \input command (the command to include content from other files) properly.

There will be a need to change to location to where the index.tex file is situated for Pandoc to recognize the proper path for execution.

// Before executing the pandoc command, change into the index.tex directory.

process.chdir('/the/full/path/to/content');