Indented grid tables are not converted properly to Word table

[reinaortega]

In markdown, to make an element belong to a list item, indentation needs to be added. When doing that for a grid table, Pandoc does not writes a Word table but just text.

Pandoc treats properly indented pipe tables, so Pandoc writes Word tables as part of a list item.

I would like to know if this is a bug, or it is not supported yet, in order to open either an issue, or a feature request, or something else.

Appreciated any other ideas to get it working.

[junkerderprovinz]

Upgrading to pandoc 3.10 or later fixes this. Before 3.10 a grid table had to start at the very left margin, so any leftover indentation turned it into a plain paragraph, while pipe tables already accepted up to three spaces (see the changelog entry for #11671). Inside a list item pandoc only strips the width of the marker and its space, so with - a table indented by four spaces still has two spaces in front of it. If you can't upgrade, indent the table exactly to the item's text: two spaces after - , three after 1. .

[reinaortega]

Thanks for your prompt reply! I am using Pandoc 3.4.0, so I guess it is time now to upgrade it.

However, I am using 4 spaces to make the table (or any other element, some more text, a note, etc...) belong to the list item. According to what you say, Pandoc will remove only 2 out of those spaces (in the case of - ), so I guess I need to do something else.

[junkerderprovinz]

Sorry, my answer left out the important part: once you're on 3.10 or later, you don't need to change anything. Under - the item's content starts two columns in, so pandoc strips two of your four spaces, and from 3.10 on the two that remain are fine, because a grid table may be indented by up to three spaces. I tried this with 3.4, 3.9.0.2, 3.10 and 3.12.1:

- Item text

    +-----+-----+
    | A   | B   |
    +=====+=====+
    | 1   | 2   |
    +-----+-----+

3.4 and 3.9.0.2 turn the table into a plain paragraph inside the item. 3.10 and 3.12.1 give a real table inside the item, and the docx has a Word table. The same goes for 1. with four spaces.

Until you upgrade, two things work in 3.4 with your four spaces:

• run with -f markdown+four_space_rule, so pandoc uses four spaces as the continuation indent for list items
• write the marker as - Item text (dash plus three spaces), so the item text is indented by four characters, the same as your table

Don't go past four spaces, though: six under - gives a code block in every version I tried. And four_space_rule applies to the whole item, so anything you indent by only two spaces, a table or a nested list, drops out of it.

All of this is about pandoc's own markdown input. gfm and commonmark have no grid tables, so there a grid table stays text in every version.