How-tos

Recipes for complete, real-world documents. Each one walks through a runnable example from the examples repository, so you can clone it and follow along: every file shown here is checked in there, together with a reference result.pdf.

Write a DIN 5008 letter

Address window, fold marks and date placed with CSS, the body in plain Markdown

Create a ZUGFeRD e-invoice

PDF/A-3b with embedded Factur-X XML, driven by a companion Lua script

Generate a table of contents

Dot leaders and automatic page numbers with target-counter() and leader()

Put a letterhead behind every page

Page backgrounds from a stationery PDF, with page 1 different from the rest

Add page headers and footers

Page numbers via margin boxes, rich footers via CSS running elements

Render a chart from data

A Lua block turns a data table into an SVG bar chart, no browser involved

Generate barcodes

EAN-13, Code 128, and QR codes as vector graphics via the barcode element

Typeset TeX math

Dollar-syntax formulas set by the OpenType-MATH engine, no Pandoc needed

Produce an accessible report

One frontmatter line turns Markdown into a tagged PDF/UA document

Control table column widths

Percentages and lengths on cells, nth-child rules for Markdown pipe tables

Put notes in the outer margin

float: outside follows the wide margin from page to page, no page-side bookkeeping

Line up text with tab stops

Contents lines, forms and decimal columns from plain Markdown with tabs

Wrap text around an image

float: left and right for figures, images in a paragraph and boxes that fit their content

Highlight and mark up text

A highlighter with background-color, a red pen with text-decoration, all from plain Markdown

Set a scientific paper

Two columns under a title block, numbered equations, figures and cross references from Markdown

Looking for more? The example collection covers many other topics: presentation slides, color emoji, font fallback, mixed left-to-right and right-to-left scripts, floats, and more.