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| -rw-r--r-- | CONTRIBUTING.md | 26 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | README | 10 |
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 ---------------------------------- @@ -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` -------------- |