Provide a bibliography partial so fixing biblatex-apa issues doesn't require a template-wide changes

[netique]

Bug description

If I use biblatex with APA citation style and use a language for which biblatex-apa doesn't have a special definition, I get some errors about undefined control sequences. Check the following MWE (.bib file content does not matter as soon as it contains the "citation", entry):

---
format:
  pdf:
    lang: cs-CZ
    cite-method: biblatex
    biblio-style: apa
    bibliography: refs.bib
---

[@citation]

results in

compilation failed- Error compiling latex
Undefined control sequence.
<argument> \datecircaprint \mkbibdateapalongextra 
                                                  {labelyear}{labelyeardivis...
l.167 \autocite{citation}

Note that this is all because biblatex-apa doesn't have any czech-apa format. It's easy to solve using

\DeclareLanguageMapping{czech}{american-apa}

Now I get to the point of my issue – there is no way how to include the line above at the correct place in the .tex document without replacing the whole template.tex. It has to be placed after babel and biblatex, so I cannot use include-in-header, it has to be in the preamble, so before-body isn't an option either.

I think the solution may be to create a new template partial wrapping around this bibliography setup that would be easier to replace, benefiting from the template's other components getting updated along with quarto.

Versions

RStudio 2023.05.0-daily+165 macOS Ventura 13.3

quarto check:
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
Pandoc version 3.1.1: OK
Dart Sass version 1.55.0: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
Version: 1.3.299
Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

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

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
Version: 3.10.9 (Conda)
Path: /Users/netik/.julia/conda/3/bin/python3
Jupyter: 5.3.0
Kernels: julia-1.8, python3

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

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
Version: 4.2.3
Path: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.2-arm64/Resources
LibPaths:
- /Users/netik/Documents/git/diplomka/renv/library/R-4.2/aarch64-apple-darwin20
- /Users/netik/Library/Caches/org.R-project.R/R/renv/sandbox/R-4.2/aarch64-apple-darwin20/fd29d0b8
knitr: 1.42
rmarkdown: 2.21

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

Checklist

• Please include a minimal, fully reproducible example in a single .qmd file? Please provide the whole file rather than the snippet you believe is causing the issue.
• Please format your issue so it is easier for us to read the bug report.
• Please document the RStudio IDE version you're running (if applicable), by providing the value displayed in the "About RStudio" main menu dialog?
• Please document the operating system you're running. If on Linux, please provide the specific distribution.
• Please provide the output of quarto check so we know which version of quarto and its dependencies you're running.

[cderv]

Not a good long term solution as the name is not helpful but a possible current workaround would be to leverage the tilte.tex partials. Did you see this LaTeX partials ?

This is a partial you can replace and that will be the last things put before \begin{document}

quarto-cli/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc/template.tex

Lines 346 to 348 in 45f6955

	$title.tex()$
	\begin{document}

It is the last things in preamble. Content is quite simple, and you could copy and add to it.
See file https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc/title.tex

That is not the perfect solution, but could be helpful to not modify the whole template but just this partial. Adding a new partials is still a better idea.

Hope it helps.

[netique]

Thanks, makes sense! If I set biblio-config: false and initialize biblatex on my own with the "language mapping" line added in the title partial, then it works. I can imagine that the "partialization" of pandoc's LaTeX template can be challenging. I believe this bibliography issue is an edge case, so I'm pretty fine with this solution.

[cderv]

Glad it works for you that way !

I can imagine that the "partialization" of pandoc's LaTeX template can be challenging. I believe this bibliography issue is an edge case, so I'm pretty fine with this solution.

@dragonstyle I let you decide if this is worth adding a new partial at this place in the template. Probably not for next release 1.4 as I don't think we'll work on template tweaking for next release.

[dragonstyle]

I think anothe approach for us to consider would be to directly enable setting bib latex language mappings (pandoc/quarto already has a number of biblatex specific options, so perhaps we should just also support something like that here). I'll leave this target for 1.4 for the time being so we can consider it.