How can I use quarto crossrefs in combination with a custom filter that turns a fenced div into a table?

[rschram]

Description

Hello everyone,

I need help using Quarto in combination with my own custom filter.

The problem is using Quarto's crossrefs in combination with this filter, which takes a fenced div and converts each block-level element within it into a row of a table and then applies text-decoration to the contents of spans in the block as a way of highlighting passages. E.g.

---
title: Example
format: html
---

This is a paragraph. 

:::: {.transcript caption="The full text of \"A special example\" [@noauthor_example_2002, 7]. {#tbl-example}"}

This is a paragraph. This sentence has a [key word]{importance="high"}. This sentence has [another key word]{importance="medium"}. 

This paragraph has no notations. 

::::

In this paragraph, I refer to @tbl-example. 

Placing a caption as the last line and then using a Quarto crossref style ID #tbl-example in the fenced div curly braces creates a resolvable crossref for the final build, but also seems to exclude the fenced div from the custom filter---which means no notations are added to the contents. Sneaking the Quarto style crossref id in curly braces in the caption text has worked for me in the past but now leads to "Unable to resolve" warning messages on build.

See below for the response from quarto check

% quarto check
Quarto 1.4.553
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.1.11: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.69.5: OK
      Deno version 1.37.2: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.4.553
      Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: (not installed)
      Chromium: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: Installation From Path
      Path: /Library/TeX/texbin
      Version: 2022

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.9.6
      Path: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3
      Jupyter: (None)

      Jupyter is not available in this Python installation.
      Install with python3 -m pip install jupyter

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.3.3
      Path: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources
      LibPaths:
        - /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.3-x86_64/Resources/library
      knitr: 1.45
      rmarkdown: 2.26

[✓] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

Thanks for your help.

Best wishes,
Ryan

[rschram]

Nested fences is the answer.

It appears that I have solved this problem as follows.

---
title: Example
format: html
---

This is a paragraph. 

::::: {#tbl-example}

:::: {.transcript caption="The full text of \"A special example\" [@noauthor_example_2002, 7]."}

This is a paragraph. This sentence has a [key word]{importance="high"}. This sentence has [another key word]{importance="medium"}. 

This paragraph has no notations. 

::::

:::::

In this paragraph, I refer to @tbl-example. 

This seems to have the effect of labeling the Table on top without a caption but then captioning the actual table produced by my filter appropriately using the caption attribute in the second-order attribute group in curly braces (which is required by my filter, simply because that's how I wrote it and only now see that it's a design flaw lol).

[rschram]

Just to keep this discussion thread interesting for others, here's why I have a filter that converts Markdown text with special spans into a "table" inside of a table that Quarto will cross-ref.

As the class attr suggests this is a transcription of a primary source which I analyze. I am using Quarto for qualdata analysis. (I do use R elsewhere, for map illustrations not analysis, though.) From the perspective of Quarto I am rendering a document of documents. The filter generates a "table" but the contents are not truly tabular data in a strict sense. It's just that was an easy way to create a transcript with line numbers for each block-level element.

If anyone is using Quarto, R, python and pandoc for work in the qualitative social sciences, particularly projects that involve the analysis of text, discourse, or media, I'd love to learn more about your techniques and tools. And if anyone has recs for another approach to displaying "documents within documents" (transcripts, sidebars, etc.) please feel free to reach out.

Best wishes,
Ryan