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indicating page breaks in Markdown

HTML and CSS

Markdown does not have a page break element, but with HTML and CSS a page break can be indicated with the page-break-before or page-break-after CSS properties. These will only work if applied to block-generating block-level elements, so the following example might work:

<div style="page-break-after: always;"></div>

but a better way is to include existing HTML content within the div element, for example:

<div style="page-break-after: always;">
<p>Hello world!</p>
</div>

Note

HTML does not normally display page breaks, except when printing.

pandoc filters and LaTeX

Attention

LaTeX is not natively supported by Markdown, so this method is unlikely to render properly outside pandoc.

The LaTeX command \newpage can be used to indicate a page break in combination with pandoc and a Lua filter. To use pandoc to convert Markdown to DOCX, save the following code to pagebreak.lua:

pagebreak.lua code
--[[
pagebreak – convert raw LaTeX page breaks to other formats

Copyright © 2017-2018 Benct Philip Jonsson, Albert Krewinkel

Permission to use, copy, modify, and/or distribute this software for any
purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND THE AUTHOR DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES
WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
ANY SPECIAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES OR ANY DAMAGES
WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
ACTION OF CONTRACT, NEGLIGENCE OR OTHER TORTIOUS ACTION, ARISING OUT OF
OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.
]]
local stringify_orig = (require 'pandoc.utils').stringify

local function stringify(x)
  return type(x) == 'string' and x or stringify_orig(x)
end

--- configs – these are populated in the Meta filter.
local pagebreak = {
  epub = '<p style="page-break-after: always;"> </p>',
  html = '<div style="page-break-after: always;"></div>',
  latex = '\\newpage{}',
  ooxml = '<w:p><w:r><w:br w:type="page"/></w:r></w:p>',
}

local function pagebreaks_from_config (meta)
  local html_class =
    (meta.newpage_html_class and stringify(meta.newpage_html_class))
    or os.getenv 'PANDOC_NEWPAGE_HTML_CLASS'
  if html_class and html_class ~= '' then
    pagebreak.html = string.format('<div class="%s"></div>', html_class)
  end

  local odt_style =
    (meta.newpage_odt_style and stringify(meta.newpage_odt_style))
    or os.getenv 'PANDOC_NEWPAGE_ODT_STYLE'
  if odt_style and odt_style ~= '' then
    pagebreak.odt = string.format('<text:p text:style-name="%s"/>', odt_style)
  end
end

--- Return a block element causing a page break in the given format.
local function newpage(format)
  if format == 'docx' then
    return pandoc.RawBlock('openxml', pagebreak.ooxml)
  elseif format:match 'latex' then
    return pandoc.RawBlock('tex', pagebreak.latex)
  elseif format:match 'html.*' then
    return pandoc.RawBlock('html', pagebreak.html)
  elseif format:match 'epub' then
    return pandoc.RawBlock('html', pagebreak.epub)
  else
    -- fall back to insert a form feed character
    return pandoc.Para{pandoc.Str '\f'}
  end
end

local function is_newpage_command(command)
  return command:match '^\\newpage%{?%}?$'
    or command:match '^\\pagebreak%{?%}?$'
end

-- Filter function called on each RawBlock element.
function RawBlock (el)
  -- Don't do anything if the output is TeX
  if FORMAT:match 'tex$' then
    return nil
  end
  -- check that the block is TeX or LaTeX and contains only
  -- \newpage or \pagebreak.
  if el.format:match 'tex' and is_newpage_command(el.text) then
    -- use format-specific pagebreak marker. FORMAT is set by pandoc to
    -- the targeted output format.
    return newpage(FORMAT)
  end
  -- otherwise, leave the block unchanged
  return nil
end

-- Turning paragraphs which contain nothing but a form feed
-- characters into line breaks.
function Para (el)
  if #el.content == 1 and el.content[1].text == '\f' then
    return newpage(FORMAT)
  end
end

return {
  {Meta = pagebreaks_from_config},
  {RawBlock = RawBlock, Para = Para}
}

Then use pandoc -f markdown -t docx foo.md --lua-filter=pagebreak.lua -o bar.docx, where foo.md is the Markdown-formatted input file and bar.docx is the output file.

licensing

Some rights reserved: MIT License. Includes significant content from pagebreak.lua on GitHub.

MIT License for pagebreak.lua1

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2017-2018 pandoc

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

prior work

  1. https://github.com/pandoc/lua-filters/blob/master/LICENSE ↩