New quarto extension--compilation failed error

[eteitelbaum]

I am trying to create a new quarto extension. Here is a link to my repo. I feel like I am close to doing it but when I render my sample .qmd file I get this error:

compilation failed- error
Missing \endcsname inserted.
<to be read again> 
                   \protect 
l.8 

Right now I am just trying to do the .pdf and will return to .html later. Here is the code from my _extension.yml file:

title: APSR Journal Format
author: Emmanuel Teitelbaum
version: 0.1.0
quarto-required: ">=1.2.0"
contributes:
  formats:
    pdf:
      documentclass: apsr_submission
      biblio-style: chicago-apsr
      cite-method: natbib
      format-resources:
        # Add here the resources required for the PDF rendering
        - apsr_submission.cls
        - chicago-apsr.bst
     #html:
          #css: styles.css

I have the apsr_submission.cls file and the chicago-apsr.bst file in the extension folder. Then I try to render it with this template.qmd file:

---
title: APSR Template Test
format:
  apsr-pdf:
    keep-tex: true  
  #apsr-html: default
author:
  - name: Bullwinkle J. Moose
    affiliations:
      - name: Wassamotta U.
        department: Department of Environmental Science
        address: 1501 U.S. Highway 71
        city: Frostbite Falls
        country: USA
        postal-code: 56649
      - second affiliation
    orcid: 0000-0000-0000-0000
    email: [email protected]
    url: https://example.org/
  - name: Kathryn Janeway
    affiliations:
      - name: Starfleet Academy
      - email: [email protected]
abstract: |
  "Convallis a cras semper auctor neque vitae. Id faucibus nisl tincidunt eget nullam non nisi. Eget nunc scelerisque viverra mauris. Risus sed vulputate odio ut enim blandit volutpat maecenas. Quam elementum pulvinar etiam non quam lacus. Ut tortor pretium viverra suspendisse. Id consectetur purus ut faucibus pulvinar elementum."
keywords: [template, demo]
bibliography: bibliography.bib  
---

## Introduction {#sec-intro}

*TODO* Create a template that demonstrates the appearance, formatting, layout, and functionality of your format. Learn more about journal formats at <https://quarto.org/docs/journals/>.

Am I missing something here?

[dragonstyle]

The issue appears to be caused by the underscore in the document class name. I'm not sure why, but Pandoc is escaping that to apsr\_submission. I'm going to chat with @cscheid a little about this to see if we can understand why this would happening - I was expecting that this would pass through verbatim but I haven't seen many document classes with underscores, so it's possible that this has been there a while...

[eteitelbaum]

Thanks. Is there a way to change document class name? I tried changing the name of the .cls file to apsr-submission.cls and then also changing the relevant lines in the YAML header of extension_yml but got: ERROR: Source and destination cannot be the same.

[dragonstyle]

I opened a PR that for me got around the underscore issue here:

https://github.com/eteitelbaum/apsr-quarto-test/pull/1

That said, I then hit some package conflicts which will need to be solved (and which I didn't really dig into).

FYI, for cases where there are a lot of package conflicts, it is sometimes easier to replace the whole quarto template to get better control of the exact LaTeX that is being provided...

[eteitelbaum]

Thanks. This is a lot more complicated than I thought. I created some conflicts when I pushed some changes before viewing your pull request, but I was eventually able to get everything merged in. I got to where you did in terms of seeing those package conflicts. So then I tried replacing the template like you susggested and I got this message:

Error compiling template "C:\Users\emman\AppData\Local\Temp\quarto-session62187c25\32d1fabd\35880b9e\template.patched" (line 215, column 11):
unexpected ","
expecting ".", "/", "(", ":", "[" or "$"

But I can't seem to access that temp file to see what is going on. Do you have any general advice on where this kind of error might come from?

[dragonstyle]

It is hard to debug these things but that error nearly always means that you have something malformed in your template (for example a missing closing $). We end up making a copy of your template to make a couple of patches for Quarto, but I doubt they're meaningfully altering what you have.