Quarto Book - prevent headers and/or text overflow within headers in PDF output

[aspatzier]

Description

I want to create a PDF of a Quarto book (either a book or a scrbook). By default, the rendered PDF includes headers on every page containing the chapter titles and section headings. Unfortunately, they are too long to be rendered appropriately, resulting in considerable text overflow in the headers.

I tried using the geometry and include-in-headers options in the _quarto.yml file to prevent the headers from being rendered, but without success.

I have two questions, preferably to be solved using YAML options (if possible):

1. How can I suppress the headers, or the chapter and section headings respectively, when rendering to PDF?

2. How can text overflow in headers be prevented?

[mcanouil]

Could you share a small self-contained "working" (reproducible) example to work with, i.e., a complete Quarto document or a Git repository? The goal is to make it as easy as possible for us to recreate your problem so that we can fix it: please help us help you! Thanks.

Note that you can investigate the LaTeX code produced and figure out a LaTeX solution using keep-tex: true.

For YAML options, be sure to check the documentation, especially the reference pages: https://quarto.org/docs/reference/

---

You can share a self-contained "working" (reproducible) Quarto document using the following syntax, i.e., using more backticks than you have in your document (usually four ````).
See https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#small-is-beautiful-aim-for-a-single-document-with-10-lines.

If you have multiple files (and if it is absolutely required to have multiple files), please share as a Git repository.

R	Python
````qmd --- title: "Reproducible Quarto Document" format: html engine: knitr --- This is a reproducible Quarto document. {{< lipsum 1 >}} ```{r} x <- c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) y <- c(1, 4, 9, 16, 25) plot(x, y) ``` {#fig-placeholder} {{< lipsum 1 >}} The end after @fig-placeholder. ````	````qmd --- title: "Reproducible Quarto Document" format: html engine: jupyter --- This is a reproducible Quarto document. {{< lipsum 1 >}} ```{python} import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] y = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25] plt.plot(x, y) plt.show() ``` {#fig-placeholder} {{< lipsum 1 >}} The end after @fig-placeholder. ````

Additionally and if not already given, please share the output of quarto check within a code block (i.e., using three backticks ```txt), see https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#check.

[aspatzier]

I created a temporary repository with a sample quarto book: quarto_book_headers.git

This repository also includes a rendered PDF showing the overflow in the headers caused be very long titles and headings of the chapters.

I found this discussion and tried to adapt the following yaml code (and include in my _quarto.yml solve my problem, without success:

format: 
  pdf:
    include-in-header: 
      text: |
        \usepackage{scrlayer-scrpage}
        \rohead{Header text}
        \lofoot{Footer text}

Please let me know if any further information is needed.

[aspatzier]

This the output of quarto check:

Quarto 1.7.32
[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /Users/aspatzier/Library/Caches/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: 1.7.32
      Path: /Applications/Positron.app/Contents/Resources/app/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: v2025.10
      Chromium: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: TinyTex
      Path: /Users/aspatzier/Library/TinyTeX/bin/universal-darwin
      Version: 2025

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Using: Chrome found on system
      Path: /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
      Source: MacOS known location

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

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.9.6
      Path: /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/python3
      Jupyter: (None)

      Jupyter is not available in this Python installation.
      Install with python3 -m pip install jupyter

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.5.1
      Path: /opt/homebrew/Cellar/r/4.5.1/lib/R
      LibPaths:
        - /opt/homebrew/lib/R/4.5/site-library
        - /opt/homebrew/Cellar/r/4.5.1/lib/R/library
      knitr: 1.50
      rmarkdown: 2.29

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

[mcanouil]

This is really a LaTeX question. srcbook uses KOMA-script, so you can do the following (using your Git repository):

format:
  pdf:
    documentclass: scrbook
    toc: true
    mainfont: Arial
    include-in-header:
      - text: |
          \usepackage{scrlayer-scrpage}
          \clearpairofpagestyles
          \ihead{\parbox[t]{0.7\textwidth}{\raggedright\sloppy\headmark}}
          \ohead{\pagemark}
          \cfoot[\pagemark]{}
          \automark[section]{chapter}
          \pagestyle{scrheadings}

or anything along this idea. (the above should be close to what srcbook header/footer is)

Use keep-tex: true to play around directly with the LaTeX document to set whatever you like.

FYI, the discussion from Stack Overflow does not account for page style being defined by the document class: srcbook, so you need to clear, set, apply the new style in order to override what srcbook is doing.