Quarto journal extension - how to reference the local .cls file?

[pat-alt]

I've recently started working on some Custom Format extensions (e.g. this simple one here for Julia-themed HTML). Now I was trying to step it up a notch and create a Journal Article Extension (this repo) for JuliaCon Proceedings derived off the existing template repository. From there I've lifted the relevant what I think should be the relevant .tex, .cls, ... files and then tried to follow the guide for creating Journal Articles.

I'm trying to use an article template that uses the local class file juliacon.cls like so:

% JuliaCon proceedings template
\documentclass{juliacon}
\setcounter{page}{1}
\begin{document}
$body$
\end{document}

When I then try to render the template.qmd file, I get the following error:

updating tlmgr

updating existing packages
finding package for juliacon.cls

compilation failed- no matching packages
LaTeX Error: File `juliacon.cls' not found.

What am I doing wrong? Any help would be much appreciated 🙏🏽

[dragonstyle]

I'd recommend that you copy the cls file to the input directory as a part of rendering (the latex compilers will generally look in the document directory to resolve such dependencies). A good example of this is here:

https://github.com/quarto-journals/elsevier/tree/main/_extensions/elsevier

You can see that the class file is included in the extension and is listed in format-resources, which means that it be copied to the input directory as a part of rendering.

Appreciate your effort here and hope this helps!

[pat-alt]

Thanks very much @dragonstyle , that did it!

[fpatz]

Looking into the same issue, I've found this in _extension.yml to work:

title: A LaTeX format extension
contributes:
  format:
    pdf:
      latex-input-paths:
        - _extensions/path-to-my-extension

No idea, whether this is a robust solution, though ...

[cderv]

@dragonstyle what is your insight about setting this in the extension ?

[fpatz]

It works for my case, but I have no idea whether it will work when you have latex-input-paths in multiple extensions or in the document file. I'd expect quarto to merge the path lists, but haven't checked.

[dragonstyle]

I expect that will work just fine.

We recommend using the format-resources to copy the cls file to the input's working directory mostly because this simplifies debugging LaTeX errors that you may encounter as you work. By copying the cls to the input directory, you can use options like keep-tex to preserve the LaTeX output and then just use normal commands like xelatex or pdflatex to compile the LaTeX to a pdf manually. If you use latex-input-paths, you'll need to provide that path to the xelatex or pdflatex command as well, which makes debugging a little more annoying.