Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

pandoc VS Pygments

Compare pandoc VS Pygments and see what are their differences

pandoc logo pandoc

Pandoc is a Haskell library for converting from one markup format to another, and a command-line...

Pygments logo Pygments

Generic syntax highlighter suitable for use in code hosting, forums, wikis or other applications...
  • pandoc Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-04-24
  • Pygments Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-15

pandoc features and specs

  • Flexibility
    Pandoc supports a wide range of input and output formats, allowing users to convert between Markdown, HTML, LaTeX, PDF, DOCX, and more, providing versatile document management.
  • Ease of Use
    With simple command-line instructions, Pandoc makes it easy for users to convert documents without needing extensive programming or formatting knowledge.
  • Open Source
    Being open-source, Pandoc is free to use and benefit from contributions across a broad community, which continuously improves its features and addresses bugs.
  • Customizability
    Pandoc offers template customization for document formatting, allowing users to define specific styles and structures for their outputs.
  • Extensive Documentation
    Pandoc provides comprehensive documentation and tutorials, making it accessible for new users and helpful for troubleshooting and exploring advanced functions.

Possible disadvantages of pandoc

  • Learning Curve
    New users might face a steep learning curve, especially if unfamiliar with command-line tools, as they need to understand the syntax and available options.
  • Performance
    For very large documents with complex formatting, Pandoc's performance might not be as efficient, potentially leading to increased processing time.
  • Limited GUI
    Pandoc primarily operates via the command line and lacks a fully-featured graphical user interface, which might be less convenient for some users accustomed to GUI-based applications.
  • Complexity in Advanced Features
    While powerful, some advanced features and customizations might require a deeper understanding of the tool and its scripting capabilities, which can be intricate.
  • Dependency on External Tools
    Converting documents into certain formats, like PDF, may depend on external tools (e.g., LaTeX), which need to be installed and configured separately.

Pygments features and specs

  • Wide Language Support
    Pygments supports a broad range of programming languages and file formats, making it highly versatile for developers working in diverse environments.
  • High-Quality Output
    The library produces highly readable and aesthetically pleasing highlighted code, which is crucial for documentation and presentation.
  • Easy Integration
    Pygments is designed to integrate easily with a variety of web frameworks, content management systems, and text editors.
  • Customization Options
    Users can customize styles, themes, and output formats to meet specific needs, providing flexibility for different aesthetic requirements.
  • Active Community
    A strong, active community contributes to its continuous development and improvement, ensuring it stays updated with the latest languages and features.

Possible disadvantages of Pygments

  • Performance Overhead
    For large codebases or high-frequency requests, using Pygments can introduce performance overhead, potentially slowing down applications.
  • Dependency Management
    As with any library, integrating Pygments means managing its dependencies and ensuring compatibility with other project components.
  • Complexity in Advanced Use
    While basic usage is straightforward, more advanced features and customizations can introduce complexity, requiring a deeper understanding of the library.
  • Limited Built-In Features
    Pygments primarily focuses on syntax highlighting, so additional functionality (like code execution or detailed analysis) has to be handled by other tools or custom development.

pandoc videos

Who needs pandoc when you have Sphinx? An exploration of the parsers and builders of the Sphinx doc…

More videos:

  • Review - 0006 | Setting Up a Scholarly Writing Environment With Markdown, VSCodium and pandoc

Pygments videos

No Pygments videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to pandoc and Pygments)
Documentation
63 63%
37% 37
Documentation As A Service & Tools
Knowledge Base
100 100%
0% 0
Customer Feedback
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

Share your experience with using pandoc and Pygments. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Pygments should be more popular than pandoc. It has been mentiond 10 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

pandoc mentions (1)

  • Convert plain text to rich text
    If you really want to stop using Markdown to write with, then the best solution will be to use a proper conversion tool to turn these into word processing documents, such as DOCX or ODT, and then import that into Scrivener. I don't think (without plugins anyway) that Obsidian has any way of making this easier, but a good general purpose tool for this is Pandoc. Source: about 3 years ago

Pygments mentions (10)

  • Ask HN: Printing Code to Paper?
    Some starter ideas[0] beyond spacing/line numbers. BNF format is used to describe a programming language. treesitter as a text editor plug in makes use of a language BNF description to be able to know how to parse & format a given lanuage in a text editor (aka pygments[1], gnu source code hightlights, [2] neovim with treesitter[3]). Aka searching google "treesitter work with microsoft notepade" --- [0] :... - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
  • Marcel the Shell
    I suspect Pygments will be to your liking. https://pygments.org/. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Blog in django
    It's not clear exactly what you want, but if you mean syntax highlighting, you could use pygments https://pygments.org/. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • I'm looking for a way to display live changes to a text file with Python
    Https://pygments.org/ - never tried it though. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Markdown, Asciidoc, or reStructuredText - a tale of docs-as-code
    Sphinx is incredibly powerful and can offer a table of contents, automatic links for functions, automatic code highlighting using Pygments, and other capabilities using built-in or third-party extensions. If you'd like to use (a flavor of) Markdown with Sphinx, you can do so using MyST-parser - a Sphinx and Docutils extension to parse MyST. - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing pandoc and Pygments, you can also consider the following products

mdbook - Gitbook alternative in Rust

prism.js - Prism is a lightweight, extensible syntax highlighter, built with modern web standards in mind.

Asciidoctor - In the spirit of free software, everyone is encouraged to help improve this project.

GitBook - Modern Publishing, Simply taking your books from ideas to finished, polished books.

Docutils - Docutils is an open-source text processing system for processing plaintext documentation into...

Doxygen - Generate documentation from source code