over-escaping in rmarkdown header-includes: YAML field

[conjugateprior]

When building a beamer_presentation it seems that putting

header-includes:
 - \setmathfont(Digits){Avenir} 

in the header field generates inappropriately escaped latex source like

\setmathfont(Digits)\{Avenir\}

which then doesn't compile.

It seems to be the parentheses that trigger the problem because, e.g.

\setmathfont{Avenir}
\setmonofont[Scale = MatchLowercase]{Inconsolata}

come out fine.

[jgm]

All metadata fields are interpreted as pandoc markdown.

Pandoc tries to recognize latex commands, but it doesn't
recognize options in parentheses (as in your case), as this
is a very unusual thing.

You can work around problems like this by defining a macro

\newcommand{\dummy}[1]{#1}

and then doing

\dummy{\setmathfont(Digits){Avenir}}

[conjugateprior]

OK. Thanks!