tightlist error using Pandoc with Markdown

Question

I am using pandoc v. 1.18 on Mac OS 10.12 to transform this markdown file to a pdf, using a simple command line:

# A list that does not work
- one
- two
- three

And I get this error:

! Undefined control sequence.
l.53 \tightlist

pandoc: Error producing PDF

How can this be solved?

Answer 1

\tightlist was introduced with pandoc 1.14 (see this commit). The most probable cause for this error is that you are using a template from a previous version and did not update it. This can be fixed by adding a couple of lines to your latex template. They can be found at $DATA-DIR/templates/default.latex for regular latex and $DATA-DIR/templates/default.beamer for beamer. You'll need to add those two lines (before the \begin{document}):

\providecommand{\tightlist}{%
  \setlength{\itemsep}{0pt}\setlength{\parskip}{0pt}}

To make sure this does not happen again with future evolution of the templates, it might be a good idea to fork the pandoc-templates repository.