Cfrgtkky

I recently began using Pandoc to generate PDF files, using the LaTeX engine, from MarkDown source.

Presently, using the book class, I find a distracting attribute of the output is that the major headers are in a more prominent typesetting than even the book title, the former being large and bold, the latter being less large and normal weight.

Following the simple principle that whatever is more important is bigger and heavier, I am surprised to find this result from the tools.

Is this effect normal, or, to anyone, desirable? How might I override or correct it?

For illustration, I processed the text from a classic novel, and included a representation of the result.

Note: I had tried using the KOMA-Script book class, which corrected this effect, though at the expense of making the margins much smaller, whereas the standard class limits the amount of text on each page to a much more manageable quantity. I would wish somehow to marry the best features of each layout.

You can add things to the preamble using the header-includes field of the pandoc markdown preamble. Then you could include the titling package to style the title page to your liking.

Full text of “A Tale of Two Cities” by Charles Dickens is available from Project Gutenberg.

---

title:  A Tale of Two Cities

author: Charles Dickens

documentclass: book

header-includes:

  usepackage{titling}

  pretitle{begin{center}Hugebfseries}

  posttitle{end{center}vspace{0.5em}}

--- 



# The Period



It was the best of times,

it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom,

it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of belief,

it was the epoch of incredulity,

it was the season of Light,

it was the season of Darkness,

it was the spring of hope,

it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us,

we had nothing before us,

we were all going direct to Heaven,

we were all going direct the other way--

in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of

its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for

evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.



There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face, on the

throne of England; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with

a fair face, on the throne of France. In both countries it was clearer

than crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes,

that things in general were settled for ever.



It was the year of Our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five.

Spiritual revelations were conceded to England at that favoured period,

as at this. Mrs. Southcott had recently attained her five-and-twentieth

blessed birthday, of whom a prophetic private in the Life Guards had

heralded the sublime appearance by announcing that arrangements were

made for the swallowing up of London and Westminster. Even the Cock-lane

ghost had been laid only a round dozen of years, after rapping out its

messages, as the spirits of this very year last past (supernaturally

deficient in originality) rapped out theirs. Mere messages in the

earthly order of events had lately come to the English Crown and People,

from a congress of British subjects in America: which, strange

to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any

communications yet received through any of the chickens of the Cock-lane

brood.