I'm beating my brains out trying to get Pandoc to work on Windows

[seatrout]

Using powershell core, I am trying to write a shell command to reproduce this, which works in the terminal:

pandoc.exe C:\Users\Andrew\Vaults\inbox\QuickNote.md -o C:\Users\Andrew\Vaults\inbox\QuickNote.docx  
--resource-path=C:\Users\Andrew\AppData\Roaming\Pandoc 
--reference-doc=mycustom.docx

(reformatted for clarity, but all on one line in the original.)

Turned into a shell command, it becomes

start 'C:\Program Files\Pandoc\pandoc.exe' "{{file_path:absolute}}
-o {{folder_path:absolute}}/{{title}}.docx
--resource-path=C:\Users\Andrew\AppData\Roaming\Pandoc
--reference-doc=mycustom.docx
{{file_path:absolute}}"

And when I run this, nothing happens — at least, nothing is written to disk by pandoc. I have tried every possible combination of quotes, single and double, of running it with and without "start" at the beginning, passing the arguments through stdin ...

Has anyone any working examples of pandoc running under powershell in windows?

[seatrout]

Ah. The absolute simplest version does work:
start 'C:\Program Files\Pandoc\pandoc.exe' "{{file_path:absolute}} -o {{folder_path:absolute}}/{{title}}.docx"
But all the parameters I want to pass in don't work, and result in a silent failure to write to disk. I will have a look at the pandoc documentation

[Edit] No, no it doesn't work (again) when the file to be converted has spaces in the name. Again, a silent failure. Nothing is written to disk.

[seatrout]

It turns out that easiest(!?) way to do this is to drop the whole problem into wsl. Everything there works the way that it ought to do from the documentation. But there are obviously huge problems in passing parameters to commands in powershell when these commands will only work using "start" as a prefix.

[seatrout]

OK. In the hope this will be useful to others, here is the answer I have found that works. You need to de-escape the file and folder names, and pass them as literal strings, like this:

start pandoc.exe '"{{!file_path:absolute}}" -o "{{!folder_path:absolute}}\{{!title}}.docx"'

so: Single Quotes round the whole string of parameters but within those single quotes, double quotes round the unescaped parameter values (not the keys). The command itself remains unquoted.

[Taitava]

Without those quotes, it is start which processes the parameters for pandoc, and it barfs on the -o.

Ah, I see. But I'm just wondering, why is start even needed on Windows?

[Taitava]

To be clear — your suggestions ought to work, but Powershell does not seem to like or understand escaped Windows paths reliably.

Does this test work in PowerShell:

type {{file_path:absolute}}

It should output the currently open file's content to stdout. If you hit Ctrl + Execute now icon in SC settings, you should see the output (i.e. the file's content) in a modal. If it can output the file's content, then PowerShell understands escaped paths at least in this kind of simple shell command.

'$singlespace = get-content "{{!file_path:absolute}}" -Raw'

I tried to execute that single line on my environment (Obsidian + SC + PowerShell) and it didn't assign content to the variable, it just echoed the statement back, but without the wrapping single quotes:

$singlespace = get-content "V:\Lajitellut\Obsidian-tietokannat\Shell commands test\Sandbox\TestResults.md" -Raw

I wonder how it works in your environment? When you use PowerShell Core, do you use the one that is built-in to the Shell commands plugin, or have you defined a custom shell for PowerShell?

[seatrout]

Your test works perfectly well in Powershell Core, which is what I am using.

[seatrout]

"Start" is needed with the pandoc command because pandoc doesn't work without it :-)

[Taitava]

But is there a specific reason, why pandoc does not work without start? 🙂

[seatrout]

Ah!!! I am using Powershell 7.3

It never occurred to me that there might be a powershell version built into SC.

There must be some difference in quoting behaviour between the two. This is going to need a little thought. I can't be the only person to have been misled.

[Taitava]

If you want, you can post your SC settings file (.obsidian/plugins/obsidian-shellcommands/data.json) here, so I can have a better look on how you've configured PowerShell 🙂 . You can remove any possible private information from it first, if there's something you don't want to share publicly.

[seatrout]

data.json zipped for Taitava.zip

No secrets here! and you can see a couple of experimental commands in there just to check other things are working — which they are.

[Taitava]

I tried your settings file now on my Windows 10 machine, with PowerShell 7.3.6.

For me, this didn't work:

'$singlespace = get-content "{{!file_path:absolute}}" -Raw'
'$doublespace = $singlespace -replace "`n","`n`n"'
'Set-Content -Path doublespaced.md -Value $doublespace'
start pandoc 'doublespaced.md -o "{{!folder_path:absolute}}\{{!title}}.docx"'
'Remove-Item doublespaced.md'

It just outputted the text that was in single quotes:

$singlespace = get-content "V:\Lajitellut\Obsidian-tietokannat\Shell commands test\Sandbox\TestResults.md" -Raw
$doublespace = $singlespace -replace "`n","`n`n"
Set-Content -Path doublespaced.md -Value $doublespace
Remove-Item doublespaced.md

I changed the command to this, and it works perfectly fine for me:

$singlespace = get-content "{{!file_path:absolute}}" -Raw
$doublespace = $singlespace -replace "`n","`n`n"
Set-Content -Path doublespaced.md -Value $doublespace
pandoc doublespaced.md -o "{{!folder_path:absolute}}\{{!title}}.docx"
Remove-Item doublespaced.md

It never occurred to me that there might be a powershell version built into SC.

What I actually meant about a "builtin shell" was a ready-made configuration, so that users don't have to define a custom shell when they want to use PowerShell. I might have been confusing with my words 🙂. Anyway, you seem to be using the "builtin" PowerShell Core. 👍

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So, for a conclusion: I wasn't able to find out why the single quotes are needed around PowerShell commands in your case, nor why is start needed. For me, pandoc worked and was able to produce a docx file. So, unfortunately I can't seem to be able to solve the issues you are having with PowerShell. I hope you can deal with doing stuff mostly on WSL, if it works better for you than PowerShell. 🙂