Add additional xmlns when converting to docx

[ebullient]

I’m working with a process to convert Markdown to DOCX using a reference document, and it’s handling several features well (footers, custom headers, and conditional line number suppression). However, I’ve hit a compatibility issue: documents created from this reference open fine in OnlyOffice, but LibreOffice throws an error:

File format error found at 
SAXParseException: "No namespace defined for mc"
SAXParseException: '[word/document.xml line 161]: Namespace prefix mc on Fallback is not defined
', Stream 'word/document.xml', Line 161, Column 1(row,col).

My reference document includes additional XML namespaces (including one for mc), but these aren’t retained in the converted document, resulting in a corrupted file.

While I could post-process the file (unpacking, using sed to add the missing namespace, and repacking), I wanted to check if there’s a cleaner solution within the document creation process itself. Specifically, is there a way to add extra namespace definitions via a Lua filter? (The include-header option hasn’t worked so far.)

Specifically, my template contains these:

<w:document
  xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main"
  xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships"
  xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office"
  xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"
  xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
  xmlns:wp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawing"
  xmlns:wps="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingShape"
  xmlns:wpg="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingGroup"
  xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
  xmlns:wp14="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordprocessingDrawing"
  xmlns:w14="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2010/wordml"
  xmlns:w15="http://schemas.microsoft.com/office/word/2012/wordml"
  mc:Ignorable="w14 wp14 w15">

When used to produce a document, the resulting output has what I believe is a hard-coded header:

<w:document xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main"
  xmlns:m="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/math"
  xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships"
  xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml"
  xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word"
  xmlns:a="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/main"
  xmlns:pic="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/picture"
  xmlns:wp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawing">

I can see in the code where these are added/set. I am just wondering if there is a way to augment this default set that I missed, or if post-process with something like sed is the only way.

FWIW, if I add the missing definitions to the produced document, everything is grand.

[lifeunleaded]

As of 3.4 (I think) docx has template support. The default template (obtained with pandoc -D docx) starts with the w:document declarations:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<w:document xmlns:w="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/wordprocessingml/2006/main”
xmlns:m="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/math”
xmlns:r="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/officeDocument/2006/relationships”
xmlns:o="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office”
xmlns:v="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:vml”
xmlns:w10="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:word”
xmlns:a="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/main”
xmlns:pic="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/picture”
xmlns:wp="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/drawingml/2006/wordprocessingDrawing”>
<w:body>
[…snip…]

I think you would be able to insert your namespace(s) in a custom template and reference that with —template when processing with pandoc.

[lifeunleaded]

@ebullient so if you try your pandoc run as normal but add —template=docx_template.txt (file attached) it might produce what you need.
docx_template.txt

[ebullient]

will try & report back. This is in addition to the reference doc, right?

[lifeunleaded]

Yes, reference doc (—reference-doc) is a separate option and can be used independently (if memory serves me correctly, the content from the template will take precedence over that in the document XML of the reference doc)

[ebullient]

That worked beautifully. Thank you!