Indenting

[eteitelbaum]

How can I control the indentation of paragraphs for an entire document? I see that there is a yaml header option indenting: but the documentation is not very clear about how to use it.

In R Markdown, I would use:

header-includes:
   - \usepackage{indentfirst}
   - \setlength{\parindent}{4em}

Is the indenting: argument in Quarto supposed to supplant that somehow?

[cscheid]

You can include latex snippets in quarto as well: https://quarto.org/docs/output-formats/pdf-basics.html#latex-includes

[eteitelbaum]

Yes I understood that part, but I am wondering if there is a way to do it with a YAML argument. indenting: sounds promising but I could not figure out how to use it.

[cscheid]

The indenting key is only supported in context formats, so I think it's unlikely to be the one you need.

[eteitelbaum]

Just following up on this, if there is a YAML argument for line height (e.g. linestretch) then it would also make sense to have something for paragraph indents. The reason is that once you increase the line height, you immediately lose the ability to differentiate between paras.

[cderv]

Pandoc defines the variables for the template and we use them:
https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#variables-for-latex

It seems there is a indent parameter that can be set to true to avoid default Pandoc adjustment
https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/main/data/templates/default.latex#L204-L216
and we use the same

quarto-cli/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc/template.tex

Lines 179 to 191 in 91fd145

	$if(indent)$
	$else$
	\makeatletter
	\@ifundefined{KOMAClassName}{% if non-KOMA class
	\IfFileExists{parskip.sty}{%
	\usepackage{parskip}
	}{% else
	\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
	\setlength{\parskip}{6pt plus 2pt minus 1pt}}
	}{% if KOMA class
	\KOMAoptions{parskip=half}}
	\makeatother
	$endif$

Pandoc's doc says (https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#layout)

indent
if true, pandoc will use document class settings for indentation (the default LaTeX template otherwise removes indentation and adds space between paragraphs)

If you think the default template could benefit more feature, I would open a feature request in Pandoc directly to make your case.