Looking for examples/ideas: multipage HTML documents with global index and search function

[mrestelli]

Hi all,
I am looking for examples on building multiple page HTML documents
from markdown input. The key requirement would be having a convenient
way to define links across different documents and having an index
linking all the pages.

Nice to have would be a global search function and a navigation bar,
similar to what mdbook does.

Thank you,
Marco

[jgm]

Have you explored pandoc's chunkedhtml output?

[jgm]

1. Not at this point. See Add table of contents to every chunk when using chunkedhtml #10130.
2. No, because the whole thing will be regenerated any time anything in the input changes.

[mrestelli]

OK, thank you. For 1., I have a working hack as follows: I use --toc to generate the general TOC, and I use a filter to include a page specific TOC after each H1 header (I am happy to share the filter if anybody is interested).

As for 2.: the "last modified" date was probably a bad example. I am looking for a general way to customize the footer for each HTML page. Ideally I would use a macro in some_footer.html like LAST_MODIFIED_BY and then define it on a per HTML page basis either from the command line or inside the markdown input. Is there any mechanism for doing this?

[jgm]

For including this in the footer, I don't see a good way. The only template variable that is set differently depending on the chunk is going to be pagetitle.

[mrestelli]

I see. Maybe I can preprocess the md files and add the footer directly in the source.

This is probably not relevant any more for my question, but where is pagetitle set and how could I use it? More in general, I am confused about variables in pandoc: where are they set and where are they used?

[jgm]

Yes, you could add it in the source.
pagetitle in this case is computed from the section title and set automatically.
On variables in general, see the manual s.v. Variables. --variable can set them on the command line, but they are also set from template variables, and some are set automatically by the writers.