How to use LaTeX section numbers in Pandoc cross-reference

Question

The Pandoc documentation says that cross references can be made to section headers in a number of ways. For example, you can create your own ID and reference that ID. For example:

# This is my header {#header}

Will create an ID with value '#header' that can be refenced in the text, as such:

[Link to header](#header)

Which will display the text 'Link to header' with a link to the header.

I couldn't find anywhere how to make the text of the link be the section number when compiled as a LaTeX document.

For example, if my header is compiled to '1.2.3 Section Header', I want my cross-reference to text to display as '1.2.3'.

Answer 1

This can be achieved by defining the ID as done previously. eg:

# This is my header {#header}

Then in the text, the cross reference can be written as:

\ref{header}

When this compiles to LaTeX, the cross-reference text will be the section number of the referenced heading.

Answer 2

You can use the pandoc-secnos filter, which is part of the pandoc-xnos filter suite.

The header

# This is my header {#sec:header}

is referenced using @sec:header. Alternatively, you can reference

# This is my header

using @sec:this-is-my-header.

Markdown documents coded in this way can be processed by adding --filter pandoc-secnos to the pandoc call. The --number-sections option should be used as well. The output uses LaTeX's native commands (i.e., \label and \ref or \cref).

The benefit to this approach is that output in other formats (html, epub, docx, ...) is also possible.