Plurrrr

Changing margin and paper size

Yesterday I learned how to change the margin of the PDF file Pandoc generates. But I forgot about the paper size. I live in the Netherlands and A4 is the common format here. First, I wanted to know how to check the current paper size. This can be done on the command line as follows:

mdls freecodecamp.pdf |
    grep -i page

This reports the number of pages, the height (792 for US letter) and width (612 for US letter). The values are in PostScript points; 1" equals 72 points or 8.5" × 11" for US letter.

How to change this? Well, it turns out that with one Pandoc variable one can control both the margin and the paper size:

-V geometry="margin=1in,a4paper"

So the command for generating the PDF via Pandoc in a Docker container and viewing the output in the Preview application on macOS becomes:

docker run --rm \
-v "$(pwd):/data" \
-u $(id -u):$(id -g) \
pandoc/latex freecodecamp.md \
-V geometry="margin=1in,a4paper"\
-o freecodecamp.pdf &&
open freecodecamp.pdf

Checking the dimensions with mdls reports 841.89 points × 595.2760009765625 points which matches the dimensions of an A4 page.

• docker
• pdf
• pandoc

History with time stamps

In the evening I wanted to know at which time exactly I had run a specific command on the command line of macOS. Could I get the history of commands entered on the command line with each a time stamp? The answer is yes, with fc (Fix Command):

fc -li 1

This lists (-l) the history from the start (1) with time stamps in ISO8601 format (-i). Note that without the 1 you get the last maximum 16 commands.

Now I could grep the output of this command. But wait, fc comes with a match option (-m):

fc -li -m 'docker*' 1

This lists all events in the history that starts with docker and shows the ISO8601 time stamp.

• command line

Effective Python Third Edition

Today my copy of Effective Python Third Edition arrived. The book by Brett Slatkin has 125 specific ways to write better Python.

I browsed the book a bit and it looks very good! I like how the program listings have colors. After I have finished the Python Certification course on freeCodeCamp I want either start in this book or continue with the 2^nd edition of Fluent Python by Luciano Ramalho. I have reread the first two chapters of the latter.

• book
• python

Changing the margin with Pandoc

Yesterday I learned how to generate a PDF file with the official Pandoc LaTeX image. The resulting PDF looked good, but has a huge margin around the body of text. Today I created a header.tex file with the following contents:

\usepackage{geometry}
\geometry{margin=1in}

Next, I ran the following command:

docker run --rm \
  -v "$(pwd):/data" \
  -u $(id -u):$(id -g) \
  pandoc/latex freecodecamp.md \
  -H header.tex \
  -o freecodecamp.pdf &&
  open freecodecamp.pdf

And with this command the margin was shrunk to 1"; much better.

• docker
• pdf
• pandoc

Generating a PDF file with Pandoc and Docker

Last week I started with the Python Certification course on freeCodeCamp. I keep notes on paper which I transfer later to a Markdown file using vim.

I wanted to convert this Markdown file to a PDF file using Pandoc. Because I have already Docker running on my Mac mini I checked if there was an official Docker image.

I first tried the Pandoc minimal image. I ran into an issue: Permission denied. Adding -v /tmp:/tmp to the command solved this issue, but now it reported 'pdflatex' not found. This version was too minimal!

So, next I tried the aptly named latex image as follows:

docker run --rm \
  -v "$(pwd):/data"\
  -u $(id -u):$(id -g) \
  pandoc/latex freecodecamp.md \
  -o freecodecamp.pdf &&
  open freecodecamp.pdf

This downloaded the image (only the first time), generated the PDF and opened the PDF file in the Preview application on macOS.

• docker
• pdf
• pandoc