How to use latex equation environment in Pandoc Markdown?

Question

In Pandoc markdown, I can use '$$' to start a display math environment. However, these equations are not numbered in latex so I hope to use the equation environment instead, like this:

\begin{equation} x+1 = 2 \\ y+2 = 3  \end{equation} 

That's fine if I convert markdown to latex. But it does't work when I convert it to HTML with Mathjax because Pandoc treats these lines as raw_latex ignores them in HTML.

I tried to forbid the raw_latex extension

pandoc -f markdown-raw_latex ... 

This time the two equations are displayed in the same line because the backslashes are escaped by Pandoc so the "\" doesn't produce a newline correctly.

Note that the following code works fine when converted to HTML but produces compilation error in latex.

$$     \begin{equation}     x+1 = 2 \\     y+2 = 3  \end{equation} $$ 

Is there any way to handle this problem?

Answer 1

Try the pandoc-eqnos filter. Labels may be attached to equations using attributes:

 $$ y = mx +b $$ {#eq:description} 

... and then referenced like this:

@eq:description 

For tex/pdf output, LaTeX's native equation environment and \label and \ref macros are used; for all others the numbers are hard-coded.

Instructions are given on the pandoc-eqnos page for how to install and apply the filter.