`date` keywords and formatting does not work in PDF

[Christophe Dervieux]

---
date: today
date-format: long #"MMMM DD, YYYY" # "`r format(Sys.Date(), '%B %d, %Y')`"
---

Does not seem to work for format: pdf. How does dynamic date work in pdf output?

quarto version: quarto-0.9.228-macos.pkg (Pkg)

Originally posted by @eyayaw in #452 (reply in thread)

[Christophe Dervieux]

I can reproduce that with

---
title: test
author: "me"
date: today
date-format: long
format: pdf
---

# Hello

World 

[Christophe Dervieux]

@dragonstyle is this supposed to be supported in other format than HTML yet ?

It does not seem so as the magic happens in

quarto-cli/src/format/html/format-html-title.ts

Lines 279 to 294 in 6fbd9e5

 if (dateRaw) { 
   const formatted = formattedDate( 
     dateRaw, 
     format.metadata[kDateFormat] as string || "long", 
   ); 
   if (formatted) { 
     dateEl.innerText = formatted; 
   } 
  
   const dateContainer = metadataEl( 
     doc, 
     localizedString(format, kTitleBlockPublished), 
     [dateEl], 
   ); 
   metadataContainerEl.appendChild(dateContainer); 
 } 

so only for HTML

For other formats it seems were are only doing

quarto-cli/src/command/render/render.ts

Lines 907 to 914 in 6fbd9e5

 // Resolve the date if there are any special 
 // date specifiers 
 if (isSpecialDate(allMetadata[kDate])) { 
   allMetadata[kDate] = parseSpecialDate( 
     input, 
     allMetadata[kDate] as string, 
   ); 
 } 

which does not take into accound date-format

but this does not explain why today is shown in the PDF output instead of the resolved date 🤔

[Eyayaw Beze]

Thank you for taking the initiative, Christophe (@cderv).

[Charles Teague]

This is definitely not working as it should - I will take a look! Thanks for reporting it and digging in!

[Patrick Altmeyer]

I also just stumbled across this. Not sure if helpful, but I've noted that date keywords (kind of) work for PDF output inside a quarto project. Only kind of, because the date-format has no effect. Have created a minimum working example here.

[Christophe Dervieux]

Thanks @pat-alt, it means the project structure is directly related. This is not the first case where something works differently on Project vs single file.

@dragonstyle If you want me to have a deeper look, I can do it.

[Charles Teague]

I should have a fix in for this tomorrow AM! I'll post here when its ready...

[Charles Teague]

Jus building a release that should have the changes the make this work seamlessly across any format...