YAML Metadata blocks: passing CSS variables to HTML without switching off the smart extension?

[PlainMartin]

I am using metadata fields in Markdown files to pass CSS attributes (e.g. colors) to an HTML template.

This will work with color names or hex values, but CSS custom properties / variables such as var(--color-red) will be converted to var(–color-red) (two hyphens converted to an n-dash) and not recognized anymore by the browser.

With --from=markdown-smart, the variable names are left untouched.

On the other hand, it would be nice to keep the smart extension on for, well, everything else.

So: Is there a way to pass variables such as var(--color-red) to an HTML template without switching off Pandoc’s smart extension?

Thank you.

[jgm]

Anything in YAML metadata gets parsed as Markdown, so yes, -- will be turned into an en-dash.
What you can do is mark this out as raw HTML, using the raw_attribute extension (enabled by default for pandoc's markdown).
e.g. `var(--color-red)`{=html}