Hacktoberfest 2026: the issues maintainers tagged for October, open and beginner-friendly. Browse Hacktoberfest issues

Code fence lines are fully hidden in .qmd buffers unless a .md file was opened first

Open
  • Is something wrong?
#205 0 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
56/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Active
Tech stack
lua, neovim

Research direction

Start by reproducing the issue in Neovim with a .qmd file opened before any .md file, then compare the behavior after opening Markdown. The report points to nvim-treesitter’s Markdown highlights.scm conceal rules and notes that setting conceallevel=0 restores the fences. Find the initialization path that differs between those cases; done when fence lines remain visible in the reported .qmd startup sequence without requiring the workaround.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

In a .qmd buffer, the opening and closing lines of a fenced code block (```python / ```) are completely hidden unless the cursor is on them. If I first open any .md file in the same session and then open the .qmd, the fence lines are shown normally (screenshots below).

Findings

  • The hiding seems to come from nvim-treesitter's markdown highlights.scm, which sets conceal and conceal_lines on fenced_code_block_delimiter and the info_string language.
  • With set conceallevel=0 the fences reappear, so it's treesitter conceal, not syntax conceal (syntax is empty, synconcealed() returns 0).
  • The query file used is the same in both states.
  • Manually loading render-markdown.nvim in the broken state (:Lazy load render-markdown.nvim) changes nothing, and its file_types doesn't include quarto. So opening a markdown file triggers something else that affects .qmd buffers.

Workaround

Creating a scratch buffer with filetype=markdown once, on the first quarto FileType event, fixes it:

vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd("FileType", {
  -- When opening a quarto file with quarto-nvim, first trigger a load with render-markdown to ensure its proper initialization.
  -- This works around an issue where loading a quarto file before markdown results in concealed code block fences.
  pattern = "quarto",
  once = true,
  callback = function()
    local scratch = vim.api.nvim_create_buf(false, true)
    vim.bo[scratch].filetype = "markdown"
    vim.schedule(function()
      vim.api.nvim_buf_delete(scratch, { force = true })
    end)
  end,
})

Steps to reproduce

  1. Start Neovim and open a .qmd file containing a Python code block.
  2. Move the cursor off the fence lines: they disappear.
  3. Open any .md file, then delete the .qmd buffer and reopen it: the fences are visible.

Environment

  • Neovim: 0.12.4
  • OS: macOS
  • Distribution: LazyVim
  • quarto-nvim / nvim-treesitter / render-markdown.nvim: v2.1.0 / e289100 / 245956d
  • Config: ft = "quarto", opts = { codeRunner = { enabled = true, default_method = "molten", }, }

Screenshots

.qmd opened first

.qmd opened after .md

Dominant language
Lua
Stars
532
Forks
21
No merged PRs in 30d

Getting set up

This project ships no dev container, Dockerfile or contributing guide, so setting up is up to you: start from its README, and see our first-contribution guide for the general steps.

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

More from quarto-dev/quarto-nvim

All issues in quarto-dev/quarto-nvim

Similar issues

More Lua issues

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.