Pandoc - changing the layout when compiling markdown

Question

I use pandoc to simply compile pdf files from markdown files:

pandoc markdown.md -o output.pdf

however this renders the PDF with lots of white space. Is there a way to change the layout of the output or do I have to go the way through a tex file?

like:

pandoc markdown.md -o output.tex

# edit margins of the output.tex;
# then:

pandoc markdown.tex -o output.pdf

Answer 1

As documented in the pandoc manual, you can either specify the margin in the YAML header of your markdown file:

---
geometry: margin=30mm
...

Or you can pass the value as a variable on the command line:

pandoc markdown.md -V geometry:margin=1in -o output.tex