Configure title banner categories

[jcarpi]

Is there any way to hide certain title banner categories? For example, I don't want the full document abstract to show on every page of an HTML book!

[mcanouil]

Do you have an example?
Because I am almost certain you are actually not talking about the actual title banner, i.e., https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/title-blocks.html#title-banners which is the blue part with title and description fields of the picture below.

[jcarpi]

Ah yes, I am talking about the "AUTHOR", "AFFILIATION", and "PUBLISHED" fields below. Is there any way to change which fields are shown?

[dragonstyle]

FWIW if the abstract is appearing on every page of a book, that seems like a bug! It should only appear on the main index.qmd page.

[mcanouil]

Yes, you'll have to redefine the title-block.html partial (see https://quarto.org/docs/journals/templates.html#html-partials).
For example, the default¹ is the following:

<header id="title-block-header">
<h1 class="title">$title$</h1>
$if(subtitle)$
<p class="subtitle">$subtitle$</p>

$endif$
$for(author)$
<p class="author">$author$</p>
$endfor$

$if(date)$
<p class="date">$date$</p>
$endif$
$if(abstract)$
<div class="abstract">
<div class="abstract-title">$abstract-title$</div>
$abstract$
</div>
$endif$
</header>

Then in your YAML header:

format:
  html:
    template-partials:
      - title-block.html

Footnotes

1. https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/src/resources/formats/html/pandoc/title-block.html ↩

[jcarpi]

Thank you! Unfortunately, when I apply this fix, the title-block-banner style goes away. My understanding is the HTML and the style (CSS, SCSS) are completely separate. Is this a bug?

[mcanouil]

Could you clarify what did not work? What did you try?
Without code, it's impossible to explain or fix anything, i.e., it might be a bug, or you made a syntax mistake, or anything.

[Gilquin]

Sorry to bump up this discussion, but I'm facing the same issue as @jcarpi.
Here is a full bug description.

Bug description

The title-block-banner style becomes plain when redefining the title-block.html partial.

Steps to reproduce

• Instantiate a new website project:

  quarto create-project test --type website

• Edit the file test/about.qmd:

  - ---
  - title: "About"
  - ---
  
  - About this site
  + ---
  + author: "John Doe"
  + categories:
  +   - title-block-banner
  +   - style
  + date: "2023-09-04"
  + description: "The title-block-banner style becomes plain when redefining the title-block.html partial."
  + title: "Title-block-banner issue"
  + title-block-banner: true
  + ---
  + 
  + Some lines.

• Change theme: default in _quarto.yml and preview the website

  quarto preview test:

  

• Next, edit the file test/_quarto.yml using the title-block.html file as suggested by @mcanouil :

  project:
  type: website
  
  website:
    title: "test"
    navbar:
      left:
        - href: index.qmd
          text: Home
        - about.qmd
  
  format:
    html:
  +   template-partials:
  +     - title-block.html
      theme: default
      css: styles.css
      toc: true

  The preview becomes:

  

Expected behavior

As indicated in the documentation, one would expect the style of the title-block-banner to stay the same after replacing the partial with the exact same file.

Actual behavior

• the style of the title-block-banner is removed,
• some elements disappear (description, categories)

Your environment

OS: Ubuntu 22.04.3 LTS

Quarto check output

[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.1.1: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.55.0: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.3.433
      Path: /opt/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.10.12
      Path: /usr/bin/python3
      Jupyter: (None)

      Jupyter is not available in this Python installation.
      Install with python3 -m pip install jupyter

      There is an unactivated Python environment in miniconda3. Did you forget to activate it?

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.3.1
      Path: /usr/lib/R
      LibPaths:
        - /home/lgilquin/R/x86_64-pc-linux-gnu-library/4.3
        - /usr/local/lib/R/site-library
        - /usr/lib/R/site-library
        - /usr/lib/R/library
      knitr: 1.41
      rmarkdown: 2.23

[✓] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

[cscheid]

As a hack, would adding a CSS rule that hides author and date work for you?

Yes, it would be great !

Sorry, I should have been clearer. If a CSS rule is enough, then that's something you can do by yourself, by identifying the CSS selectors that pick the author content in a title block (using your browser's dev tools) and adding a display: none style to them in a CSS class of your own.

[Gilquin]

I wonder if a better solution would be a way to control what fields are displayed in the title block metadata (e.g. you can provide a list of fields you'd like displayed). I was thinking about this for extending the metadata with custom values, but could also be useful in this context.

That would be really useful.
I will dig into the LUA filter solution, thanks !

[Gilquin]

@cscheid

Sorry, I should have been clearer. If a CSS rule is enough, then that's something you can do by yourself, by identifying the CSS selectors that pick the author content in a title block (using your browser's dev tools) and adding a display: none style to them in a CSS class of your own.

No, it's my bad, sorry !
Thanks for the pointer !

[Gilquin]

Here is a simple working Lua filter to remove author and date as per @dragonstyle suggested:

-- Purpose: Clean author and date from the front matter
function Meta(m)
  if m.date ~= nil then
    m.date = nil
  end
  if m.author ~= nil then
    m.author = nil
    m["by-author"] = nil
    m["by-affiliation"] = nil
  end
  return m
end

Thanks again for the help!

[the-solipsist]

I wonder if a better solution would be a way to control what fields are displayed in the title block metadata (e.g. you can provide a list of fields you'd like displayed). I was thinking about this for extending the metadata with custom values, but could also be useful in this context

I think having the ability to have custom metadata read by quarto would be very helpful for both title blocks and for listings.

What would be amazing is if I could get Quarto to read a CSL YAML reference inside a document and use that to fill in title, date, author, in addition to generating the BibTeX citation as it currently does. (Currently, I'm duplicating many of the fields in my YAML metadata, at the base level and within 'citation:'.)