Markdown, Pandoc & TeXShop

Written by Luka Kerr on April 29, 2019

I write a lot in Markdown and use Pandoc to convert from Markdown -> .pdf.

Following the steps below, we can add a Markdown engine to TeXShop:

• Install Pandoc if you haven’t already

• Change directories into the TeXShop engines directory

cd ~/Library/TeXShop/Engines

• Create a Markdown.engine file

touch Markdown.engine

• Set its permissions

chmod +x Markdown.engine

• Write the engine by adding the following to Markdown.engine

#!/bin/bash

# Ensure required directories are in your PATH
PATH=$PATH:/Library/TeX/texbin:/usr/texbin:/usr/local/bin

# Extract name of file and create a pdf file name from it
file_name=$(basename "$1")
pdf_file="${file_name%.*}.pdf"

# Call pandoc to do the conversion, passing in any options
pandoc "$1" \
  --from markdown+tex_math_dollars \
  -V geometry:margin=1in \
  -V fontsize=12pt \
  -o "$pdf_file"

Now when you open a .md file in TexShop, simply select the Markdown option from the engines dropdown and typeset as per usual.