Pandoc

Pandoc is an extremely useful 'swiss army knife' for converting between different types of markup languages from the command line. For example, it readily builds PDFs with latex, and markdown - both of which are heavily used in academic research.

We do not actively teach how to use Pandoc in the course - but we will utilize it in some lessons where we produce PDF, Word or HTML output from plain text files.

Installation

Go to the Pandoc Homepage and follow the installation instructions for your operating system.

Verify Your Install

Verify your install by typing the following into a command line:

pandoc --version

The expected output starts with the following information:

pandoc 1.17.2

Ensure you have at least version 1.15.1 installed.

Windows PATH Setting redux

If you want R available from the command line (it is by default for Mac and Linux), we again need to update our PATH settings.

Right-click on Computer. Then go to "Properties" and select the tab "Advanced System Settings". Choose "Environment Variables" and select "Path" from the list of system variables.

If you accepted all defaults during your installation, and didn't have any other non-default setting prior to starting this guide, modifying the following string, with your relevant username should work:

    ;C:\Program Files (x86)\Pandoc\

After you have done this, open a new terminal and try and verify your install.