Where in the world is my pandoc directory?

Question

I am trying to add a custom latex template for pandoc

I know that pandoc templates go in ~/.pandoc/templates

and I confirmed the pandoc directory location by typing pandoc --v - it says pandoc is in ~/.pandoc

but when I do cd ~/.pandoc:

-bash: cd: /Users/[Name]/.pandoc: No such file or directory

According the pandoc man page I can set a different path for pandoc data files using --data-dir=DIRECTORY, but when I try build a file this way, e.g.

pandoc file.md -o file.pdf --data-dir=~/Library/texmf/tex/latex --template=mytemplate.latex

it throws the error

pandoc: Could not find data file templates/mytemplate.latex

which I assume means the data directory command is ignored.

Why can't I access my pandoc directory?

Answer 1

You are indeed expected to create the ~/.pandoc directory if it doesn't exist already. For example for a default latex template:

mkdir -p ~/.pandoc/templates
pandoc -D latex > ~/.pandoc/templates/default.latex

The --template option looks for files relative to the current directory (pwd), or "if not found, pandoc will search for it in the templates subdirectory of the user data directory" (~/.pandoc/templates for --data-dir=~/.pandoc, which is the default).

Which is where your error comes from as there's probably no file /Library/texmf/tex/latex/templates/mytemplate.latex.