"How to preserve multiple spaces in docx output using Quarto?"

[Liu499-create]

Description

Discussion:

I'm using Quarto to generate a docx file, and when I use the Line Block format, multiple spaces are being reduced to a single space. How can I preserve multiple spaces in the output, rather than having them collapsed into one? Here's an example:

---
title: "Untitled"
format: docx
---
| I want to preserve the spaces       Haha
| You  Good

In this example, I want the multiple spaces between "preserve the spaces" and "Haha" to remain, but they are being reduced to a single space. How can I prevent this from happening?

[mcanouil]

That's Pandoc's doing and it's unrelated to the format.

| I want to preserve the spaces       Haha
| You  Good

quarto pandoc --from markdown index.qmd --to native

[ LineBlock
    [ [ Str "I"
      , Space
      , Str "want"
      , Space
      , Str "to"
      , Space
      , Str "preserve"
      , Space
      , Str "the"
      , Space
      , Str "spaces"
      , Space
      , Str "Haha"
      ]
    , [ Str "You" , Space , Str "Good" ]
    ]
]

See:

• Strange behaviour in --preserve-tabs and line_blocks jgm/pandoc#8371

What's the use case of wanting this and using line block?

Documentation on line block: https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#line-blocks

[Liu499-create]

I am using Quarto to write my report, and the report format requires the header to be split into two parts with multiple spaces in one line. I tried using lines blocks or creating a two-column table, but neither worked. Thank you for your reply. Following your instructions, I was able to complete the task. I admire your profound knowledge!

[mcanouil]

Then you have to escape all spaces as described in the comments of the issue I've linked.

[Liu499-create]

Absolutely perfect, translated spaces according to the method in the link, perfectly solved the problem that puzzled me, I used rmarkdown before, and recently I used Quarto, and I have a preliminary feeling of more elegant programming!