Hello Debian Haskell Group!
Thanks a lot for maintaining this really nice markup converter in
Debian! The package is very useful and having it in Debian is greatly
appreciated.

While using it, I found that YAML metadata fields are useful for
keeping some metadata about a markdown document in a compact
block between a pair of "---" lines.

So far so good.

But, after reading the documentation, I seem to understand that
(at least for the LaTeX, and hence PDF, output and for the HTML5
output) there is no YAML field suitable for inserting a notice
(with customizable style) at the beginning (between title and TOC)
or at the end of a document.
This notice may possibly be useful to state the copyright and license
terms for the document; it may also be used to state other pieces of
information that should be displayed in a special area at the beginning
or at the end of the document.

Well, I found out that adding support for this feature is really
easy: one just needs to modify the templates used for LaTeX and HTML5
outputs.

I prepared a patch for these two templates, supporting two new
YAML fields named "front-notice" and "back-notice".

Since I think this feature may be useful for other users, I would
like to see my patch applied to the official default templates.

The patch is attached to this bug report: as you can see, it's almost
trivial. Maybe it's so trivial that it is not even copyrighted.
At any rate, in case it should turn out to be copyrighted by me,
I hereby release it under the same terms as pandoc (that is to say,
under the terms of the GNU GPL, version 2 or later).

Please apply my patch to the Debian package and forward my wishlist
bug report upstream.

Thanks for your time and dedication!
Bye.

Excerpts from Francesco Poli (wintermute)'s message of januar 26, 2018 12:28 am:

Thanks for the proposed patch (and the nice words!).

I agree it is a small patch, but disagree to diverge from upstream for
this: Please propose upstream to adopt the change (or simply lean back
and wait: Upstream follows these bugreports so may decide to cherry-pick
on his own).

Until (if ever) upstream decides to adopt the patch, please use the
Pandoc feature to feed it custom templates.


Thanks again,

 - Jonas

Thanks for following up on my bug report...
Debian package and forward my wishlist bug report upstream.

If you don't want the Debian package to diverge from the upstream
behavior, please, at least, forward my wishlist bug report (with my
patch) upstream!
This could speed up the upstream patch adoption process, I guess...

This is indeed what I am doing, but it is a bit inconvenient, since my
modifications will have to be re-adapted each time the default
templates change (if ever).
That's why I thought that such a harmless modification should be
integrated into the Debian package and even more importantly into the
upstream project.

Thanks to you!

Francesco Poli <invernomuto@paranoici.org> writes:

As upstream maintainer, I agree with Jonas's decision not to diverge
from upstream.  And I think Jonas is already doing enough work
packaging pandoc; it's not his job to forward this to upstream.

If you care about the feature, you may propose it upstream on the
pandoc-discuss mailing list or the jgm/pandoc issue tracker on GitHub.
That is the way it will be most convenient for upstream developers
to consider it.

Excerpts from John MacFarlane's message of juni 1, 2018 9:28 pm:

What I meant to imply by my (recent) response was that no, I choose to
not act as proxy for this bug specifically: One thing is copy-pasting
your patch as-is, but another is refining it in dialogue with upstream
and others that might chime in with helpful (or not) suggestions for
improvements (or not).

Simple copy-pasting I consider unneeded thanks to upstream following
along here, and promoting it more actively is more work than I am
willing to invest in this.
is the contrary: Those passionately contributing "interactively" by also
discussing and evolving their patches get attention over plain "fixated"
patches, I suspect.

@John: Arguably it _is_ part of my job as package maintainer to pass
bugreports upstream.  But I get to decide how I prioritize my work, and
since this is a wishlist issue I choose to no priority at all.

Thanks for clarifying, John.


 - Jonas

[...]

I created that little patch and I sent it to the Debian package
maintainers, since I thought it could be useful for other people.

But I am currently not intending to get more heavily involved in pandoc
upstream development.
And I cannot register an account or subscribe to a mailing list for
each and every upstream project I intend to make a little contribution
to. Sorry about that.

I am open to constructive criticism about my patch (via e-mail,
please), if you, as pandoc upstream developer(s), are interested in
taking a look at it and, possibly, in adopting (a refined version of)
it.
But I do not have the time to jump through bureaucratic hoops, in order
to have the patch accepted upstream...

Quoting Francesco Poli (2018-06-17 19:50:22)

Perfectly understandable.

I will leave this bugreport open for a while, to see if John or others
decide to drive your proposal further.


Kind regards,

 - Jonas