-DOCS = index.html index.pdf \
- README.html README.pdf \
- mkws-manual.html mkws-manual.pdf \
- mkws-developer.html mkws-developer.pdf
+# Older versions of pandoc don't do PDF output, but have a companion program
+MARKDOWN2PDF = $(shell if which markdown2pdf > /dev/null; then echo markdown2pdf; else echo pandoc --standalone; fi)
+HAVE_PDFLATEX = $(shell which pdflatex 2>/dev/null)
+
+DOCS = index.html \
+ mkws-manual.html \
+ mkws-developer.html \
+ mkws-doc.css
+
+PDFS = index.pdf \
+ mkws-manual.pdf \
+ mkws-developer.pdf
+
+#
+# skip PDF creation if pdflatex is not installed
+# The debian tex package may download up to 650MB
+#
+ifneq "${HAVE_PDFLATEX}" ""
+DOCS+= ${PDFS}
+endif