Error rendering PDF with ∈ symbol in Julia cells

[juliohm]

I have:

• searched the issue tracker for similar issues
• installed the latest version of Quarto CLI
• formatted my issue following the Bug Reports guide

Bug description

Julia allows the use of unicode like in

1 ∈ [1, 2, 3]

If I add a Julia cell with this operator, I get an error message when I attempt to render a PDF:

ERROR: 
compilation failed- error
You can't use `\spacefactor' in math mode.
\@->\spacefactor 
                 \@m {}
l.2920 If you don't know the \(\LaTeX
                                   \) name of a symbol, you can copy/paste it

This might be happening with similar mathematical symbols (e.g., ∈, ⊆).

Steps to reproduce

Create a simple Julia document with the following cell and try to render to PDF:

1 ∈ [1, 2, 3]

Actual behavior

Error message from TeX stack.

Expected behavior

PDF output with Julia cell normally executed.

Your environment

VSCode
Version: 1.117.0
Commit: 10c8e557c8b9f9ed0a87f61f1c9a44bde731c409
Date: 2026-04-21T16:12:14-07:00
Electron: 39.8.7
ElectronBuildId: 13841579
Chromium: 142.0.7444.265
Node.js: 22.22.1
V8: 14.2.231.22-electron.0
OS: Linux x64 5.15.202-1-MANJARO

Quarto check output

Quarto 1.9.37
[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /home/juliohm/.cache/quarto
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.8.3: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.87.0: OK
      Deno version 2.4.5: OK
      Typst version 0.14.2: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.9.37
      Path: /opt/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: v2025.02
      Chromium: (not installed)
      Chrome Headless Shell: (not installed)
      VeraPDF: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: TinyTex
      Path: /home/juliohm/.TinyTeX/bin/x86_64-linux
      Version: 2024

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Using: Chrome from QUARTO_CHROMIUM
      Path: /usr/bin/chromium

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

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.5.3
      Path: /usr/lib64/R
      LibPaths:
        - /usr/lib/R/library
      knitr: (None)
      rmarkdown: (None)

      The knitr package is not available in this R installation.
      Install with install.packages("knitr")
      The rmarkdown package is not available in this R installation.
      Install with install.packages("rmarkdown")

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.14.3
      Path: /usr/bin/python3
      Jupyter: 5.9.1
      Kernels: python3, julia-1.11, julia-1.10, julia-1.9

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

[✓] Checking Julia installation...

[cscheid]

Steps to reproduce

Create a simple Julia document with the following cell and try to render to PDF:

1 ∈ [1, 2, 3]

Sorry, that's not a reproduction. Please provide us with an actual document.

[juliohm]

I can try to produce a MWE when I'm back to my computer. In the meantime, you can check chapter 4 where this error is triggered: https://github.com/JuliaEarth/geospatial-data-science-with-julia/blob/main/04-geoproc.qmd Em qui., 28 de mai. de 2026, 09:14, Carlos Scheidegger < ***@***.***> escreveu:

…

*cscheid* left a comment (quarto-dev/quarto-cli#14553) <#14553 (comment)> Steps to reproduce Create a simple Julia document with the following cell and try to render to PDF: 1 ∈ [1, 2, 3] Sorry, that's not a reproduction. Please provide us with an actual document. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#14553?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAZQW3NJNXNNVXWAUKNVRQL45AURTA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGM4DMNRTGQZ2M4TFMFZW63VGMF2XI2DPOKSWK5TFNZ2KYZTPN52GK4S7MNWGSY3L#issuecomment-4563866343>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZQW3LDERUTA2OJ6QV22KL45AURTAVCNFSM6AAAAACZQTR7VCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHM2DKNRTHA3DMMZUGM> . Triage notifications, keep track of coding agent tasks and review pull requests on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://github.com/notifications/mobile/ios/AAZQW3KZGX6CV4EBZPWXBN345AURTA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGM4DMNRTGQZ2M4TFMFZW63VGMF2XI2DPOKSWK5TFNZ2KUZTPN52GK4S7NFXXG> and Android <https://github.com/notifications/mobile/android/AAZQW3IBRGLTNVOJW4BU4B345AURTA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGM4DMNRTGQZ2M4TFMFZW63VGMF2XI2DPOKSWK5TFNZ2K4ZTPN52GK4S7MFXGI4TPNFSA>. Download it today! You are receiving this because you authored the thread.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[mcanouil]

@juliohm This does not work, your chapter is not a standalone, it's a book, you have a lot of dependencies, a lot of computation, and your chapter is 500+ lines of code.
From what you are saying, none of the above complexity is needed.

[mcanouil]

quarto render on the below document leads to no crash/error.
In my environment, ∈ is not displayed in the end PDF because the font needs to support unicode in the first place.

---
format: pdf
engine: julia
---

```{julia}
println("1 ∈ [1, 2, 3]")
```

```{julia}
1 ∈ [1, 2, 3]
```

Now with proper fonts, it works without any issues.

---
format:
  pdf: 
    monofont: "JetBrains Mono"
    mainfont: "Arial Unicode MS"
engine: julia
---

```{julia}
println("1 ∈ [1, 2, 3]")
```

```{julia}
1 ∈ [1, 2, 3]
```

The above is the reason we ask for small but fully reproducible example and steps.

[cderv]

Thanks for the report. I've reproduced the issue and traced it.

Edit: I have seen post above after looking into that locally - so I posted analysis anyway. But yes font thing !

Diagnosis

The error stems from ∈ (U+2208) in your code blocks hitting the active monospace font — Latin Modern Mono by default — which lacks math-operator glyphs. There are two regimes:

• On older TeX Live (yours, TL 2024 from TinyTeX v2025.02), the older unicode-math package raises You can't use \spacefactor in math mode because it treats the text-mode encounter of a math char as math context. The l.2920 If you don't know the \(\LaTeX\) name of a symbol, you can copy/paste it line in your trace is literal text from line 256 of 04-geoproc.qmd — TeX caught up there, but the actual culprits are the ∈/⊆ in earlier code cells.
• On TeX Live 2026 (current main, newer unicode-math), the hard error degrades to a Missing character: There is no ∈ (U+2208) in font [lmroman10-regular] warning. PDF builds, but the glyph is silently dropped (verified: no 0xE2 0x88 0x88 UTF-8 bytes in the extracted PDF text).

It's not a Julia engine issue — a plain julia fenced code block (no execution) reproduces the exact same .tex output as a {julia} cell. The minimal reproduction is just:

---
format: pdf
---

```julia
1 ∈ [1, 2, 3]
```

Pandoc emits the literal Unicode char wrapped in its highlighting macro:

\FloatTok{1} \OperatorTok{∈}\NormalTok{ [...}

\OperatorTok expands to a \textcolor (text-mode). With the default Latin Modern Mono lacking a glyph for ∈, the rest falls on the engine + font setup.

Workaround

Set a monospace font that has the math operator glyphs:

format:
  pdf:
    monofont: "JuliaMono"   # or JetBrains Mono, DejaVu Sans Mono, Fira Code

I verified this with JetBrains Mono on TL 2026 and the 0xE2 0x88 0x88 bytes are back in the rendered PDF.

For lualatex specifically, a font fallback chain also works:

format:
  pdf:
    monofontfallback:
      - "JuliaMono"
      - "DejaVu Sans Mono"

Quarto already wires monofontfallback through to luaotfload.add_fallback:

quarto-cli/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc/font-settings.latex

Lines 29 to 38 in fc0cf88

	$if(monofont)$
	$if(monofontfallback)$
	\ifLuaTeX
	\usepackage{luaotfload}
	\directlua{luaotfload.add_fallback("monofontfallback",{
	$for(monofontfallback)$"$monofontfallback$"$sep$,$endfor$
	})}
	\fi
	$endif$
	\setmonofont[$for(monofontoptions)$$monofontoptions$$sep$,$endfor$$if(monofontfallback)$,RawFeature={fallback=monofontfallback}$endif$]{$monofont$}

Note that an engine switch alone (e.g. to xelatex) won't help here — Quarto already defaults to lualatex since 1.8.10, and xelatex hits the same missing-glyph situation. The active monospace font is the actual bottleneck.

Updating TinyTeX (quarto install tinytex to refresh, or tlmgr update --self --all) would also move you from the hard-error regime to the silent-drop regime, but you'd still need the monofont recipe above for ∈ to actually appear in the PDF.

Next steps

We could look at setting a default monofontfallback chain on Quarto's side for lualatex PDF when the user hasn't set one. I've opened internal tracking for that.

In the meantime, the monofont recipe above should unblock the book build.

[mcanouil]

FYI, JuliaMono is not a default font on macOS, so it triggers TinyTex to try to download it (it failed in my case, I need to look into it, but the message was talking about TinyTex version).

[juliohm]

Thank you all for the help and feedback. Will try setting the font manually as a workaround. Out of curiosity, what is the quarto command line to build PDF with Typst instead of TeX? Em qui., 28 de mai. de 2026, 11:10, Christophe Dervieux < ***@***.***> escreveu:

…

*cderv* left a comment (quarto-dev/quarto-cli#14553) <#14553 (comment)> Thanks for the report. I've reproduced the issue and traced it. Diagnosis The error stems from ∈ (U+2208) in your code blocks hitting the active monospace font — Latin Modern Mono by default — which lacks math-operator glyphs. There are two regimes: - On older TeX Live (yours, TL 2024 from TinyTeX v2025.02), the older unicode-math package raises You can't use \spacefactor in math mode because it treats the text-mode encounter of a math char as math context. The l.2920 If you don't know the \(\LaTeX\) name of a symbol, you can copy/paste it line in your trace is literal text from line 256 of 04-geoproc.qmd — TeX caught up there, but the actual culprits are the ∈ /⊆ in earlier code cells. - On TeX Live 2026 (current main, newer unicode-math), the hard error degrades to a Missing character: There is no ∈ (U+2208) in font [lmroman10-regular] warning. PDF builds, but the glyph is silently dropped (verified: no 0xE2 0x88 0x88 UTF-8 bytes in the extracted PDF text). It's not a Julia engine issue — a plain julia fenced code block (no execution) reproduces the exact same .tex output as a {julia} cell. The minimal reproduction is just: --- format: pdf --- ```julia 1 ∈ [1, 2, 3] ``` Pandoc emits the literal Unicode char wrapped in its highlighting macro: \FloatTok{1} \OperatorTok{∈}\NormalTok{ [...} \OperatorTok expands to a \textcolor (text-mode). With the default Latin Modern Mono lacking a glyph for ∈, the rest falls on the engine + font setup. Workaround Set a monospace font that has the math operator glyphs: format: pdf: monofont: "JuliaMono" # or JetBrains Mono, DejaVu Sans Mono, Fira Code I verified this with JetBrains Mono on TL 2026 and the 0xE2 0x88 0x88 bytes are back in the rendered PDF. For lualatex specifically, a font fallback chain also works: format: pdf: monofontfallback: - "JuliaMono" - "DejaVu Sans Mono" Quarto already wires monofontfallback through to luaotfload.add_fallback: https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/fc0cf88dc875245e2ff81f902dc7cae5d5896737/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc/font-settings.latex#L29-L38 Note that an engine switch alone (e.g. to xelatex) won't help here — Quarto already defaults to lualatex since 1.8.10, and xelatex hits the same missing-glyph situation. The active monospace font is the actual bottleneck. Updating TinyTeX (quarto install tinytex to refresh, or tlmgr update --self --all) would also move you from the hard-error regime to the silent-drop regime, but you'd still need the monofont recipe above for ∈ to actually appear in the PDF. Next steps We could look at setting a default monofontfallback chain on Quarto's side for lualatex PDF when the user hasn't set one. I've opened internal tracking for that. In the meantime, the monofont recipe above should unblock the book build. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#14553?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAZQW3M6BUPNQSXVRJ726KT45BCFVA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGQ4DMMZXGQZKM4TFMFZW63VHNVSW45DJN5XKKZLWMVXHJLDGN5XXIZLSL5RWY2LDNM#issuecomment-4564863742>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZQW3K4CWRAMLJVODYOVWL45BCFVAVCNFSM6AAAAACZQTR7VCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHM2DKNRUHA3DGNZUGI> . Triage notifications, keep track of coding agent tasks and review pull requests on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://github.com/notifications/mobile/ios/AAZQW3LKIBBNQ4FILFVX3GD45BCFVA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGQ4DMMZXGQZKM4TFMFZW63VHNVSW45DJN5XKKZLWMVXHJKTGN5XXIZLSL5UW64Y> and Android <https://github.com/notifications/mobile/android/AAZQW3JJKIMKLZBNSAVBLI345BCFVA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGQ4DMMZXGQZKM4TFMFZW63VHNVSW45DJN5XKKZLWMVXHJLTGN5XXIZLSL5QW4ZDSN5UWI>. Download it today! You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[juliohm]

JuliaMono is widely used by the Julia community, but it needs to be downloaded from the official font website (free and open). Em qui., 28 de mai. de 2026, 11:18, Júlio Hoffimann < ***@***.***> escreveu:

…

Thank you all for the help and feedback. Will try setting the font manually as a workaround. Out of curiosity, what is the quarto command line to build PDF with Typst instead of TeX? Em qui., 28 de mai. de 2026, 11:10, Christophe Dervieux < ***@***.***> escreveu: > *cderv* left a comment (quarto-dev/quarto-cli#14553) > <#14553 (comment)> > > Thanks for the report. I've reproduced the issue and traced it. > Diagnosis > > The error stems from ∈ (U+2208) in your code blocks hitting the active > monospace font — Latin Modern Mono by default — which lacks math-operator > glyphs. There are two regimes: > > - On older TeX Live (yours, TL 2024 from TinyTeX v2025.02), the older > unicode-math package raises You can't use \spacefactor in math mode > because it treats the text-mode encounter of a math char as math context. > The l.2920 If you don't know the \(\LaTeX\) name of a symbol, you can > copy/paste it line in your trace is literal text from line 256 of > 04-geoproc.qmd — TeX caught up there, but the actual culprits are the > ∈/⊆ in earlier code cells. > - On TeX Live 2026 (current main, newer unicode-math), the hard error > degrades to a Missing character: There is no ∈ (U+2208) in font > [lmroman10-regular] warning. PDF builds, but the glyph is silently > dropped (verified: no 0xE2 0x88 0x88 UTF-8 bytes in the extracted PDF > text). > > It's not a Julia engine issue — a plain julia fenced code block (no > execution) reproduces the exact same .tex output as a {julia} cell. The > minimal reproduction is just: > > --- > format: pdf > --- > > ```julia > 1 ∈ [1, 2, 3] > ``` > > Pandoc emits the literal Unicode char wrapped in its highlighting macro: > > \FloatTok{1} \OperatorTok{∈}\NormalTok{ [...} > > \OperatorTok expands to a \textcolor (text-mode). With the default Latin > Modern Mono lacking a glyph for ∈, the rest falls on the engine + font > setup. > Workaround > > Set a monospace font that has the math operator glyphs: > > format: > pdf: > monofont: "JuliaMono" # or JetBrains Mono, DejaVu Sans Mono, Fira Code > > I verified this with JetBrains Mono on TL 2026 and the 0xE2 0x88 0x88 > bytes are back in the rendered PDF. > > For lualatex specifically, a font fallback chain also works: > > format: > pdf: > monofontfallback: > - "JuliaMono" > - "DejaVu Sans Mono" > > Quarto already wires monofontfallback through to luaotfload.add_fallback: > > > https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/fc0cf88dc875245e2ff81f902dc7cae5d5896737/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc/font-settings.latex#L29-L38 > > Note that an engine switch alone (e.g. to xelatex) won't help here — > Quarto already defaults to lualatex since 1.8.10, and xelatex hits the same > missing-glyph situation. The active monospace font is the actual bottleneck. > > Updating TinyTeX (quarto install tinytex to refresh, or tlmgr update > --self --all) would also move you from the hard-error regime to the > silent-drop regime, but you'd still need the monofont recipe above for ∈ > to actually appear in the PDF. > Next steps > > We could look at setting a default monofontfallback chain on Quarto's > side for lualatex PDF when the user hasn't set one. I've opened internal > tracking for that. > > In the meantime, the monofont recipe above should unblock the book build. > > — > Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub > <#14553?email_source=notifications&email_token=AAZQW3M6BUPNQSXVRJ726KT45BCFVA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGQ4DMMZXGQZKM4TFMFZW63VHNVSW45DJN5XKKZLWMVXHJLDGN5XXIZLSL5RWY2LDNM#issuecomment-4564863742>, > or unsubscribe > <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZQW3K4CWRAMLJVODYOVWL45BCFVAVCNFSM6AAAAACZQTR7VCVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43OSLTON2WKQ3PNVWWK3TUHM2DKNRUHA3DGNZUGI> > . > Triage notifications, keep track of coding agent tasks and review pull > requests on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS > <https://github.com/notifications/mobile/ios/AAZQW3LKIBBNQ4FILFVX3GD45BCFVA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGQ4DMMZXGQZKM4TFMFZW63VHNVSW45DJN5XKKZLWMVXHJKTGN5XXIZLSL5UW64Y> > and Android > <https://github.com/notifications/mobile/android/AAZQW3JJKIMKLZBNSAVBLI345BCFVA5CNFSNUABFM5UWIORPF5TWS5BNNB2WEL2JONZXKZKDN5WW2ZLOOQXTINJWGQ4DMMZXGQZKM4TFMFZW63VHNVSW45DJN5XKKZLWMVXHJLTGN5XXIZLSL5QW4ZDSN5UWI>. > Download it today! > You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: > ***@***.***> >