Pandoc is free open-source software that converts documents between dozens of formats including HTML, DOCX, and TeX formats such as LaTeX, and ConTeXt. However, other well-known TeX formats such as plain TeX and OPTeX are not yet supported by Pandoc. Furthermore, conversion functions (further referred to as writers) for the LaTeX and ConTeXt formats do not share code, which increases the technical debt and maintenance costs of Pandoc. Replacing the LaTeX and ConTeXt writers of Pandoc with a single generic TeX writer would increase the number of TeX formats supported by Pandoc and would reduce the technical debt and maintenance costs of Pandoc.

The student will review the architecture of Pandoc and describe how they would create a generic writer that would support both plain TeX and other TeX formats based on plain TeX such as LaTeX, ConTeXt, and OpTeX. Then, the student will implement a proof of concept using the Lua programming language and they will present their implementation to the contributors of Pandoc. Drawing from their research, experience, and discussion with Pandoc contributors, the student will suggest how to best replace the LaTeX and ConTeXt writers of Pandoc with a single generic TeX writer.