Adding a width option to pandoc-bash-blog

2025-04-12

Giving each post a width option in the yaml metadata to select between narrow for single-column English to wide for two-column translation posts.

Save Pandoc’s default template

pandoc --print-default-template=html5 > custom-template.html

Make one single change in custom-template.html:

- <body>
+ <body class="$if(width)$$width$$else$narrow-width$endif$">

Update your md2html function to use this template:

md2html() {
    local args=(
        # ... your existing args ...
        "--template=custom-template.html"  # Add this line
    )
    # ... rest of your function ...
}

Usage in markdown files:

---
title: My Post
width: wide-width  # narrow-width (default) | medium-width | wide-width | full-width
---

Key Benefits:

Zero Lua required - Pure template solution
Non-invasive - Only modifies the <body> tag
Maintainable - All width control happens through YAML
Preserves all features - TOC, includes, etc. work normally

Maintenance

Keep your custom-template.html under version control so it stays with your project. If you ever need to update it (e.g., when upgrading Pandoc), just regenerate it and reapply your single-line change.