Docx writer: Multiple initial list levels not rendered

[martinlester]

I am writing a document with nested lists, like this:

1. (a) foo

   (b) bar

---

1. asdf

   (a) foo

   (b) bar

When I render to a PDF, it looks as I would like. The first line contains "1. (a) foo".

When I render to HTML, there is a line break after "1.". However, the HTML appears semantically to match what I wrote, so I suppose this is just a quirk of HTML rendering.

When I render to docx, the first line is "(a) foo" and the number has disappeared. I am not sure if the effect can be easily achieved in Word, while still using its list facilities. If it can, that would be my preference. If not, maybe something closer to the HTML rendering, which can be achieved at the cost of a line break, would be better?

I am using pandoc 2.8.0.1:

pandoc -o number.docx number.md

number.docx
number.pdf

[agusmba]

I don't think word supports that.

Would

1.  

   (a) foo

   (b) bar

yield an acceptable result?

[martinlester]

I think that your example produces an acceptable rendering in Word of my original example. (Or at least, as good as one might hope for, given Word's apparent limitation here.) To clarify: I'd like to get that rendering from my original input, so that I can get the "right" output where supported (PDF) and the best fallback where not supported (HTML, docx). I'm not sure if that would upset anyone who might be relying on the existing behaviour, although I'd be surprised if it was what they really wanted.

[jgm]

You could use a filter or lua filter to add the nonbreaking space when output is docx.

--- fixlist.lua
function OrderedList(el)
  if FORMAT=='docx' then
    if el.content[1] and el.content[1][1].t == 'OrderedList' then
      table.insert(el.content[1], 1, pandoc.Plain{pandoc.Str""})
    end
    return el
  end
end

[jgm]

I think it would be reasonable to change the docx writer so it does this automatically.