[omnster]

Pandoc is a standalone application that converts between a huge variety of formats, including markdown to pdf, which means that you can write your plain text markdown in the editor of choice and then convert it to pdf using pandoc.

To use citations, the standard way is to use the `pandoc-citeproc` filter.

[ogogmad]

> To use citations, the standard way is to use the `pandoc-citeproc` filter.

I keep using this and finding problems. I actually need to integrate with Latex's existing citation libraries instead of using Pandoc's specific ones. How do I get your thing to invoke Natbib?

Also, what about editor support? There are editor plugins for Latex and for Markdown, but I've never seen one for the hybrid you're suggesting. How do I get a preview of the document I'm working on while I'm writing it? I'd like to hit Ctrl+S and immediately see the changes.

[omnster]

I'd guess you have to first convert markdown to tex with --natbib flag, then compile the tex (assuming the input is input.md and you want input.tex at the output)

`pandoc -f markdown -t latex -o input.tex --natbib input.md`

It is perhaps not unexpected that the capabilities of such a simple thing as markdown are not too overwhelming. Pandoc does not extend markdown as a markup language, it can only convert markdown to pretty much whatever you want. If you have rather precise requirements such as natbib for citations, it may be better to start with latex right away.

I usually use pandoc to produce simple short documents. Occasionally I use it to do the peer review for journals, when from a single markdown source, pandoc builds me a plain text file with latex commands substituted with unicode symbols, and also a pdf.

This all can be simplified with pandocomatic (a thing that automates calls to pandoc) and entr (a thing that invokes a command upon file update).

In the simplest form, `ls input.md | entr pandoc -o output.pdf input.md` will call pandoc each time the file input.md is updated.