#2149·gollum

Pandoc parser produces errors in math expressions rendering

Author: leyrehpalaciosCreated Sep 1, 2025Updated May 19, 2026

I'm building a wiki where I want to use the citations feature as well as long math expressions. I have found some issues with the rendering of the math expressions after installing pandoc and the pandoc-ruby gem (needed for the citations feature). It seems as if some characters inside the math expressions are being skipped or pre-processed, which produces syntax errors in the math expressions and thus they are not rendered (they show as plain text).

I have found some workarounds but it makes the math expressions not work with direct katex, tex, latex or other markdown previewers. These are the workarounds I have to use to see the math expressions correctly in the gollum wiki after using the pandoc parser:

  • First subscript then superscript:
    • [NO] R^{LV}_{ECEF}
    • [YES] R_{ECEF}^LV
  • Leave a space after superscripts:
    • [NO] h^2/h_r^2
    • [YES] h^2 / h_r^2
    • [NO] (u^\psi,u^\gamma)=(\ddot\psi,\dot\gamma)
    • [YES] ( u^\psi , u^\gamma ) = ( \ddot\psi , \dot\gamma )
  • In arrays, double \\ for next row
    • [NO] \begin{array}{l} x \\ y \end{array}
    • [YES] \begin{array}{l} x \\\\ y \end{array}
  • For { and }, double \
    • [NO] a = \left\{ \dfrac{1}{2} \right\}
    • [YES] a = \left\\{ \dfrac{1}{2} \right\\}
  • To use subscripts after }, try \_ instead of _
    • [NO] \vec{V}_{BOD}
    • [YES] \vec{V}\_{BOD}
  • For spacing characters use double \
    • [NO] a,\,b
    • [YES] a,\\,b
    • [YES] a,\quad b

This could be an issue comming from pandoc, but anyway I would like to find a solution without needing to patch the math expressions so that they can be directly transferred from and to katex/tex/latex/etc, but still be able to view them in the wiki.

For the versions, I'm using gollum 6.1.0, ruby 3.2.9, rugged 1.9.0, gollum-rugged_adapter 3.0, gollum-lib 6.0, pandoc 3.7.0.2 and pandoc-ruby 2.1.10.