Quote indent

[Aworldc]

When converting markdown to pdf via XeLaTeX, my nested blockquotes are indented on the left and right side.

While this is normally ok, it can lead to some quite short lines when the blockquote nesting gets 8+ levels deep. Is there a way to only indent it on the left side, without having to modify the markdown itself?

Pandoc 3.1, XeTeX 3.141592653-2.6-0.999995 (TeX Live 2023)

[jpcirrus]

I customized block quotes by loading the quoting package together with enabling csquotes. For example:

\usepackage{quoting}
\SetBlockEnvironment{quoting}
\ExecuteQuoteOptions{% Use block quote when quote >= 40 words
  threshold=39,
  thresholdtype=words
}
\quotingsetup{%        Block quote formatting
  rightmargin=0pt,   % Don't indent right margin
  vskip=\parskip     % No extra vertical spacing
}

[Aworldc]

It no worky, and google doesn't seem to know why.

deeplists.tex :

\usepackage{enumitem}
\setlistdepth{99}

\usepackage{quoting}
\SetBlockEnvironment{quoting}
\ExecuteQuoteOptions{% Use block quote when quote >= 40 words
  threshold=39,
  thresholdtype=words
}
\quotingsetup{%        Block quote formatting
  rightmargin=0pt,   % Don't indent right margin
  vskip=\parskip     % No extra vertical spacing
}

pdf.sh :

<...some commands> \
    | pandoc\
        -f markdown\
        -o "example.pdf"\
        --pdf-engine=xelatex\
        -H deeplists.tex\
        -V geometry:margin=2cm,top=1.5cm\
        -V csquotes

and the error message :

Error producing PDF.
! Undefined control sequence.
<recently read> \SetBlockEnvironment 

l.61 \SetBlockEnvironment

this looked like some missing package or something, so I tried using tectonic instead of xelatex, but still not work.

[jpcirrus]

\SetBlockEnvironment is defined in csquotes so it would appear that it hasn't been loaded at that point. Instead of outputting to pdf, output to latex and inspect that tex file for the loading order of csquotes and quoting.

[Aworldc]

thanks - that compiles now, after using csquotes in the header. but i'm back at square one because text is still indented on the right as well.

[jpcirrus]

The reason csquotes was not being loaded before any packages in header-includes is that you are using a very old version of pandoc (2023-02-09) and the default template, together with pandoc, has changed considerably since then. Update to pandoc 3.6.3. You probably also need to update your copy of Tex Live and its packages as that too is old. Tex Live 2025 is scheduled for release on 2025-03-08. Be aware also that XeTeX is no longer maintained, and unless you require specific packages such as bidi (LuaTeX support coming soon) or xeCJK you should rather use the lualatex engine.

[Aworldc]

Coming back to the project that needed this, after updating pandoc and resolving the issue that was causing tectonic to not work (just a missing dll), everything works with pandoc 3.8 and tectonic 0.15. The issue indeed seemed to be an outdated tex distribution.

[jgm]

A simpler suggestion would be to redefine the quote environment.