John MacFarlane

I guess there are two possible solutions, and I am open to either: - clarify the docs so that it's clear you have to use make when you modify scanners.re...

Thank you for the diagnosis. Do you want to suggest a fix (make a PR)?

What's the ambiguity supposed to be? "You may not take out the trash" seems unambiguously a prohibition. It cannot mean "you are permitted not to take out the trash."

It would be good to know if any of the other via-HTML pdf-engines are subject to the same problem as wkhtmltopdf. That would allow more useful guidance.

That would involve using something based on `writePlain` instead of `stringify` at https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/pr-9168/src/Text/Pandoc/Writers/LaTeX.hs#L678-L679 "based on" because `writePlain` converts Pandoc -> Text, not [Inline] -> Text, but something like ``` hs...

Another disadvantage is that making one writer depend on another makes the code more spaghetti-like. However, I believe there are already some cases like this in the code base.

Precedents for a writer depending on a writer: OPML writer depends on markdown and html writers ODT writer depends on opendocument writer ipynb writer depends on markdown, plain writer chunkedhtml...

If we thought that the markdown writer might some day need to depend on the LaTeX writer, that would be a reason for not establishing a dependency the other way....

Yes, it provides more flexibility, but there is a disadvantage: it's not automatic. So, for example, you wouldn't get the improved treatment of math and subscripts noted above. You're right...

I'm most tempted by the simpler approach of just using the plain writer. If there's a continuing need for more flexibility, we could consider the other later.