TITLE: Using the LaTeX 'float' package with Pandoc
DATE: 2019-01-29
AUTHOR: John L. Godlee
====================================================================


When I convert markdown documents to pdf files using LaTeX and
Pandoc, LaTeX is very helpful at placing images optimally to
minimise whitespace. a basic pandoc command might look like this:

    pandoc -f markdown -t latex  -o output.pdf input.md

The issue is, when I’m using pandoc with markdown, I often don’t
care about the placement of images. I’m normally making short
documents for note-taking or something like that. As a result, I
normally place images in the text in the place I want them to appear
in the pdf output.

After a bit of googling for inspiration, I found two methods of
doing this. The first, is very simple and tells pandoc not to create
figures, but instead just to include images inline.

    pandoc -f markdown-implicit_figures -t pdf -o output.pdf input.md

This is fine, but it removes centering on the images, and removes
the option for me to include a caption with
![CAPTION HERE](img/diagram.png).

A better option I think, is to allow LaTeX to use the float package
in order to place images using attributes such as [H] to force
images to appear where they appear in the source.

I already have a LaTeX template that I use for pandoc, called
simple_doc.latex. It lives in ~/.pandoc/templates/ so it can be
linked to easily in pandoc commands.

The relevant piece of simple_doc.latex is:

    $if(graphics)$
    \usepackage{graphics} 
    \usepackage{graphicx}
    \usepackage{float}
    \makeatletter

    % Define max width and max height arguments to be conditional on img size
    \def\maxwidth{\ifdim\Gin@nat@width>\linewidth\linewidth\else\Gin@nat@width\fi}
    \def\maxheight{\ifdim\Gin@nat@height>\textheight\textheight\else\Gin@nat@height\fi}
    \makeatother

    % Scale images if necessary, so that they will not overflow the page
    % margins by default, and it is still possible to overwrite the defaults
    % using explicit options in \includegraphics[width, height, ...]{}
    \setkeys{Gin}{width=0.5\maxwidth,height=0.5\maxheight,keepaspectratio}

    \let\origfigure\figure
    \let\endorigfigure\endfigure
    \renewenvironment{figure}[1][2] {
        \expandafter\origfigure\expandafter[H]
    } {
        \endorigfigure
    }

    $endif$

I got the inspiration for this from this [Stack Overflow
question].

  [Stack Overflow question]: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/101725/latex-figures-appear-before-text-in-pandoc-markdown