Is it possible to define LaTeX-style macros/commands?

[jmhimara]

What I mean is, define a command that upon rendering will be replaced by some other markdown or html text, as the newcommand does in latex.

For example I would like to define \macro = [long description....](long url), which enables me to type \macro instead of the longer text.

I know you can use newcommand for mathjax rendering, but what I'm asking is more general. Can it be used for any type of text, including non-latex.

[baptiste]

Two things come to mind:

• shortcodes
• using code chunks or inline code, e.g.

---
title: "URL"
engine: knitr
---


`r my_url = r"([long description....](https://www.omfgdogs.com/)"`

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, `r my_url`.

[ute]

nice hack :-)

[cscheid]

In addition to shortcodes, Lua filters are a great use case for this. For example, if you have markdown like this:

Here is [my special text]{.my-span} that will render differently.

Then your filter can say

Span = function(span)
   if span.classes:includes("my-span") then
      return pandoc.Strong(span)
   end
end

This simple filter will make "my special text" bold. But because you're in a full programming language, you can do pretty much anything you want.

[ute]

Filters is the way to go :-) I have just written a small quarto extension, simple-abbreviations search-replace, that allows you to define text macros in the yaml header. They can also replace urls and include latex formulae and emphasis/bold markdown.

For a url, say Quartos documentation, you would need to add a key to your yaml:

search-replace:
  +myqurl: https://quarto.org/docs/extensions/filters.html

Then you can use it in your md text, e.g.

Read more about creating filters in [Quarto's documentation](+myqurl)

[cscheid]

This is a cool filter, thanks for sharing!

[ute]

Thank you :-)

[mcanouil]

@ute Did you submit to appear in Quarto extensions listing? (https://quarto.org/docs/extensions/)

[ute]

@mcanouil Thank you for the suggestion, I will certainly do :-) !

I have renamed the extension to "search-replace" and made a few improvements.