Link reference definitions are not supported
[ref]: https://example.com line is not collected; it renders as a visible paragraph.
Q-2-46 — Link reference definitions are not supported
A line of the form
[ref]: https://example.comis a link reference definition, which quarto-markdown does not collect. It renders as a visible paragraph.
What this means
In Pandoc and CommonMark, a line like
[gcc-toolset]: https://docs.redhat.com/...is a link reference definition. It is consumed while parsing and
never appears in the output — its only job is to supply a URL to
[label][gcc-toolset] somewhere else in the document.
quarto-markdown does not collect these. The line is parsed as ordinary paragraph text: a span, a colon, and a URL. So it renders, visibly, at whatever point in the document it appears — usually as a stray block of URLs at the bottom of the page:
<p><span>gcc-toolset</span>: https://docs.redhat.com/...
<span>noexec</span>: https://man7.org/...</p>Why this happens
Reference-style links are a readability convention — they keep long URLs out of the prose and collect them at the end of the file. A document written that way for Pandoc carries its definition block along when it is moved to quarto-markdown.
Note that a definition is only a definition at the start of a line.
A colon after a span mid-sentence — text [label]: more — is ordinary
prose and does not produce this warning.
How to fix
Move each URL into an inline link at its use site, then delete the definition line:
See [the RedHat documentation](https://docs.redhat.com/...).If a definition has no remaining uses, delete it outright. Quarto 1 consumed unused definitions and rendered nothing, so removing them is what restores the output you expect.
qmd-syntax-helper does all of this:
qmd-syntax-helper check -r reference-links "docs/**/*.qmd"
qmd-syntax-helper convert -r reference-links --in-place "docs/**/*.qmd"