diff --git a/doc/Makefile b/doc/Makefile
index 7affbb0bb51..a208ce02f0c 100644
--- a/doc/Makefile
+++ b/doc/Makefile
@@ -1,5 +1,14 @@
 MD_TARGETS=$(addsuffix .xml, $(basename $(shell find . -type f -regex '.*\.md$$' -not -name README.md)))
 
+PANDOC ?= pandoc
+
+pandoc_media_dir = media
+# TODO: Remove raw-attribute when we can get rid of DocBook altogether.
+pandoc_commonmark_enabled_extensions = +attributes+fenced_divs+footnotes+bracketed_spans+definition_lists+pipe_tables+raw_attribute
+pandoc_flags = --extract-media=$(pandoc_media_dir) \
+	--lua-filter=$(PANDOC_LUA_FILTERS_DIR)/diagram-generator.lua \
+	-f commonmark$(pandoc_commonmark_enabled_extensions)+smart
+
 .PHONY: all
 all: validate format out/html/index.html out/epub/manual.epub
 
@@ -39,7 +48,7 @@ out/html/index.html: doc-support/result manual-full.xml style.css highlightjs
 	mkdir -p out/html/highlightjs/
 	cp -r highlightjs out/html/
 
-	cp -r media out/html/
+	cp -r $(pandoc_media_dir) out/html/
 	cp ./overrides.css out/html/
 	cp ./style.css out/html/style.css
 
@@ -54,7 +63,7 @@ out/epub/manual.epub: manual-full.xml
 		doc-support/result/epub.xsl \
 		./manual-full.xml
 
-	cp -r media out/epub/scratch/OEBPS
+	cp -r $(pandoc_media_dir) out/epub/scratch/OEBPS
 	cp ./overrides.css out/epub/scratch/OEBPS
 	cp ./style.css out/epub/scratch/OEBPS
 	mkdir -p out/epub/scratch/OEBPS/images/callouts/
@@ -89,16 +98,12 @@ functions/library/generated: doc-support/result
 	ln -rfs ./doc-support/result/function-docs functions/library/generated
 
 %.section.xml: %.section.md
-	pandoc $^ -t docbook \
-		--extract-media=media \
-		--lua-filter=$(PANDOC_LUA_FILTERS_DIR)/diagram-generator.lua \
-		-f markdown+smart \
+	$(PANDOC) $^ -t docbook \
+		$(pandoc_flags) \
 	| cat  > $@
 
 %.chapter.xml: %.chapter.md
-	pandoc $^ -t docbook \
+	$(PANDOC) $^ -t docbook \
 		--top-level-division=chapter \
-		--extract-media=media \
-		--lua-filter=$(PANDOC_LUA_FILTERS_DIR)/diagram-generator.lua \
-		-f markdown+smart \
+		$(pandoc_flags) \
 	| cat  > $@