The IPython Notebook allows Markdown, HTML, and inline LaTeX in Mardown Cells. The inline LaTeX is parsed with MathJax and Markdown is parsed with marked. Any inline HTML is left to the web browser to parse. NBConvert is a utility that allows users to easily convert their notebooks to various formats. Pandoc is used to parse markdown text in NBConvert. Since what the notebook web interface supports is a mix of Markdown, HTML, and LaTeX, Pandoc has trouble converting notebook markdown. This results in incomplete representations of the notebook in nbviewer or a compiled Latex PDF.

This isn't a Pandoc flaw; Pandoc isn't designed to parse and convert a mixed format document. Unfortunately, this means that Pandoc can only support a subset of the markup supported in the notebook web interface. This notebook compares output of Pandoc to the notebook web interface.

Changes:

05102013

heading anchors

note on remote images

06102013