Slides with Columns in Pandoc

Question

I would like to have code and an image side-by-side in a Beamer slide.

In LaTeX I would do this with columns. I would like to use markdown within the column structure.

\begin{columns} \column{.5\textwidth}  ~~~~~~~~Python >>> some python code ~~~~~~~  \column{.5\textwidth}  ![](A_generated_image.pdf)  \end{columns} 

Unfortunately Pandoc doesn't process the markdown within the \begin{columns} and \end{columns} statements. Is there a way around this?

• Is there a way to use markdown within inlined LaTeX?
• Is there a pure markdown solution?

Answer 1

Current versions of pandoc (i.e., pandoc 2.0 and later) supports fenced divs. Specially named divs are transformed into columns when targeting a slides format:

# This slide has columns  ::: columns  :::: column left ::::  :::: column right ::::  ::: 

Pandoc translates this into the following LaTeX beamer code:

\begin{frame}{This slide has columns} \protect\hypertarget{this-slide-has-columns}{}  \begin{columns}[T] \begin{column}{0.48\textwidth} left \end{column}  \begin{column}{0.48\textwidth} right \end{column} \end{columns}  \end{frame} 

This is simple and has the additional advantage of giving similar results when targeting other presentational formats like reveal.js.

More than two columns work out of the box for Beamer output. Powerpoint, however, only supports two columns. For reveal.js, the widths of three or more columns must be given explicitly:

::: columns  :::: {.column width=30%} left ::::  :::: {.column width=30%} middle ::::  :::: {.column width=30%} right ::::  ::: 

Answer 2

The problem is that pandoc ignores markdown if it finds a \begin{}. An alternative is to edit the beamer template and add the following:

\newcommand{\columnsbegin}{\begin{columns}} \newcommand{\columnsend}{\end{columns}} 

And write it like this:

\columnsbegin \column{.5\textwidth}  ~~~~~~~~Python >>> some python code ~~~~~~~  \column{.5\textwidth}  ![](A_generated_image.pdf)  \columnsend