variables defined in _variable.yml do not get passed to pandoc

[kompre]

Description

So, I'm trying do define my custom titlepage for pdf output which will contains some custom variables. In order to do so I want to provide my own partial title.tex where I redefine the \titlepage command.

During my test, I've experienced that yaml values that were defined either in the document meta block or in the _quarto.yml are passed to pandoc for substitution, but values defined in _variables.yml are not.

In the below example I defined three values, one each into meta, _quarto.yml, and _variables.yml respectively, then I modfied the title.tex partial so that I've hijacked the title, subtitle, and author will display also the value defined in the custom yaml field:

• title -> _variable.yml
• subtitile -> _quarto.yml
• author -> meta

Lastly, as a sanity check, I've printed all the value above using the appropriate shortcode, to verify values are rendered by quarto.

---
title: "banane_variables:"
subtitle: "banane_quarto"
author: autore
format:
    pdf:
        template-partials: 
            - title.tex
keep-tex: true
banane_meta: "in pigiama_meta"
---

## use pandoc with value from _variables.yml

This file test whereas the data in `_variables.yml` get picked up by pandoc when exporting to pdf.

- value in `_variables.yml`: **{{< var banane_variables >}}**
- value in `_quarto.yml` **{{< meta banane_quarto >}}**
- value in `meta` **{{< meta banane_meta >}}**

the _variables.yml looks like:

banane_variables: in pigiama_variable.yml

the _quarto.yml looks like:

project:
  title: "variables"

banane_quarto: in pigiama_quarto.yml

the title-tex partial look like:

$if(title)$
\title{title: $title$ $banana_var$}
$endif$
$if(subtitle)$
$if(beamer)$
$else$
\usepackage{etoolbox}
\makeatletter
\providecommand{\subtitle}[1]{% add subtitle to \maketitle
  \apptocmd{\@title}{\par {\large #1 \par}}{}{}
}
\makeatother
$endif$
\subtitle{subtitle: $subtitle$: $banane_quarto$}
$endif$
$if(author)$
\author{author: $banane_meta$}
$endif$

the pdf output looks like this:

Only the value in _variables.yml is not passed to pandoc. Is this intended behaviour?

[dragonstyle]

I would say that this is intended behavior - the _variables.yml file is intended for use with the var shortcode rather than to define variables for Pandoc templates. Those values are not merged into the document metadata visible to Pandoc when processing the document. For that you can use _quarto.yml (project wide), _metadata.yml (folder scoped), or document front matter (document scoped).