Pandoc & Markdown: Colored links in PDF output

[peter_b]

I've become a big fan of using Markdown in combination with Pandoc for writing stuff of all sorts: documentation, articles, etc.

But when rendering to PDF output, the default for HTML-links is not optically distinguishable from regular text. So links are practically invisible in the resulting PDF

Here are different options for making the links visible (=formatting them):

1) Underline links
Add the following to the Pandoc YAML-header block in your Markdown file:

Code: Select all

header-includes:
  - \hypersetup{colorlinks=false,
      allbordercolors={0 0 0},
      pdfborderstyle={/S/U/W 1}}

This will give you black-colored, but underlined hyperlink references.
Change the "colorlinks=false" to "true" and you'll get the links colored in pink

2) Color links
If you don't want/need your links underlined, but simply want the visible - in a different color, just add the following option to the YAML-header block:

Code: Select all

linkcolor: blue

Better!

Links:
Why are my hyper references pink?
Pandoc Manual: Metadata Blocks