`::: {.landscape}` div overrides footer content in `reference-doc`

[marktodisco]

Bug description

I'm using Quarto to render a MS Word document (DOCX) and have modified the reference document to include page numbers in the footer (no other changes). When I use the {.landscape} class within a div (documented here), the newly added section overrides the footer content, and only displays in the very last section of the document. Below are screenshots for the actual and expected DOCX outputs.

Unfortunately, this behavior makes Quarto unusable for my requirements. I really hope I'm just doing something wrong or there is a simple fix, because I would love to use Quarto if possible.

Steps to reproduce

1. Follow the instruction here to create a custom DOCX reference doc.

2. Add page numbers to the reference doc, save, and close.

3. Create a QMD file from the code below.

---
format: 
    docx: 
        reference-doc: custom-reference.docx
jupyter: python3
---

Portrait

::: { .landscape }

Landscape

:::

4. Run the following command.

quarto render x.qmd

Actual behavior

Footer page number only appear in the last section.

Expected behavior

Footer page numbers appear in all sections, not just the last one.

Your environment

• IDE: vscode 1.92.2
• OS: WSL Ubuntu-22.04 (on Windows 11)

Quarto check output

quarto check

Quarto 1.7.29
[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /home/todima01/.cache/quarto
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.6.3: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.85.1: OK
      Deno version 1.46.3: OK
      Typst version 0.13.0: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.7.29
      Path: /opt/quarto/bin

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

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Tex:  (not detected)

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Chrome:  (not detected)

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

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.10.15
      Path: /home/todima01/projects/dsbsvc-governance-govdocs/main/.venv/bin/python3
      Jupyter: 5.7.2
      Kernels: python3

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

[✓] Checking R installation...........(None)

      Unable to locate an installed version of R.
      Install R from https://cloud.r-project.org/

[mcanouil]

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[mcanouil]

The issue is that OpenXML is not very flexible.
For instance, here is what the community contributed landscapes shortcode does for Word:

• quarto-cli/src/resources/filters/quarto-post/landscape.lua

  Lines 11 to 23 in d4125e4

  	-- Define the end of a portrait section for DOCX
  	local end_portrait_section = ooxml '<w:p><w:pPr><w:sectPr></w:sectPr></w:pPr></w:p>'
  	-- Define the end of a landscape section for DOCX
  	local end_landscape_section = ooxml [[
  	<w:p>
  	<w:pPr>
  	<w:sectPr>
  	<w:pgSz w:h="11906" w:w="16838" w:orient="landscape" />
  	</w:sectPr>
  	</w:pPr>
  	</w:p>
  	]]

In OpenXML, a new section has to contains height, width, etc. and as far as I know don't inherits elements, thus since footer is not defined in the section, it's not there in the end.

Using the landscape shortcode for Word document will also have another issue: the page/section dimension might me different to the portrait page/section because the dimension is hardcoded in the shortcode.

This being said, are you sure you have set footer for the whole document and not for the section?

[marktodisco]

Hi @mcanouil thanks for the reply!

This being said, are you sure you have set footer for the whole document and not for the section?

Assuming your question above is asking whether I set the footer in the reference doc, yes I'm sure I set the footer. When quarto/pandoc generates the example reference doc, there is only one section. That is where I set the footer.

Is this the correct approach?

[mcanouil]

Footer/header are section dependent in OpenXML.
They have to be added back in any new section.
Word can easily do that because it uses an API to generate the OpenXML code, but Quarto and Pandoc does not. They write raw OpenXML.

For instance, when you create an header or footer, they get a unique ID and you need that ID to reinsert the footer/header in the sections.

<w:headerReference r:id="rId9" w:type="default" />
<w:footerReference r:id="rId10" w:type="default" />

It's the same issue with the page size, currently for the landscape: w:h="11906" w:w="16838" which translates to 21 centimetres by 29.7 centimetres (A4 format).
Note that the default reference document does not even use A4 format: w:h="15840" w:w="12240" which the "US letter" format (21.6 x 27.9 cm).
If you change the format in the reference document, it won't change the landscape format as there is no API calls.

I'm not sure that the "landscape" div is actually a good idea at all for Word.

The only way I see to ensure the proper format and that elements are kept across sections would be to post-process the docx file to fix the OpenXML code.

It might even be easier to manually post-process the document, rather than doing it programmatically (a docx is an archive, so you can "unzip" it).