Clarified what is "out of scope" in README and CONTRIBUTING.md.

2 files changed, 36 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/CONTRIBUTING.md b/CONTRIBUTING.md
index 7b321f868..75f412df0 100644
--- a/CONTRIBUTING.md
+++ b/CONTRIBUTING.md
@@ -25,6 +25,32 @@ including
 A small test case (just a few lines) is ideal.  If your input is large,
 try to whittle it down to the minimum necessary to illustrate the problem.
 
+Out of scope?
+-------------
+
+A less than perfect conversion does not necessarily mean there's
+a bug in pandoc.  Quoting from the README:
+
+> Because Pandoc's intermediate representation of a document is less
+> expressive than many of the formats it converts between, one should
+> not expect perfect conversions between every format and every other.
+> Pandoc attempts to preserve the structural elements of a document, but
+> not formatting details such as margin size.  And some document elements,
+> such as complex tables, may not fit into Pandoc's simple document
+> model.  While conversions from Pandoc's Markdown to all formats aspire
+> to be perfect, conversions from formats more expressive than Pandoc's
+> Markdown can be expected to be lossy.
+
+For example, both docx and odt can represent margin size, but because
+pandoc's internal document model does not contain a representation of
+margin size, this information will be lost on converting from docx
+to odt.  (You can, however, customize margin size using `--reference-odt`.)
+
+So before submitting a bug report, consider whether it might be
+"out of scope."  If it concerns a feature of documents that isn't
+representable in pandoc's Markdown, then it very likely is.
+(If in doubt, you can always ask on pandoc-discuss.)
+
 Fixing bugs from the issue tracker
 ----------------------------------
 
diff --git a/README b/README
index 6164693b9..cf662ffd0 100644
--- a/README
+++ b/README
@@ -40,6 +40,16 @@ representation of the document, and a set of writers, which convert
 this native representation into a target format. Thus, adding an input
 or output format requires only adding a reader or writer.
 
+Because Pandoc's intermediate representation of a document is less
+expressive than many of the formats it converts between, one should
+not expect perfect conversions between every format and every other.
+Pandoc attempts to preserve the structural elements of a document, but
+not formatting details such as margin size.  And some document elements,
+such as complex tables, may not fit into Pandoc's simple document
+model.  While conversions from Pandoc's Markdown to all formats aspire
+to be perfect, conversions from formats more expressive than Pandoc's
+Markdown can be expected to be lossy.
+
 Using `pandoc`
 --------------