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Unresolved Note Reference

writer
A note reference was not converted to a Span during postprocessing. This is a bug in the postprocessor.

Q-3-12 — Unresolved Note Reference

A note reference was not converted to a Span during postprocessing. This is a bug in the postprocessor.

What this means

Quarto’s render pipeline runs a postprocessing pass before the writer that, among other things, resolves footnote references to their final form. If the writer encounters a raw note-reference node, the postprocessor missed it — the reference reached the writer in a shape the writer is not prepared to handle.

This is an internal-consistency error, not something the document author wrote incorrectly. The page exists so the catalog stays self-contained, but a user reading this is almost certainly looking at a bug, not at a fixable document mistake.

Why this happens

Two known triggers:

  • A bug in the postprocessing pass that misses a particular shape of note reference.
  • A Lua filter that bypassed postprocessing, or that re-introduced a NoteReference node after postprocessing ran.

How to fix

Report the document and the exact command that triggered the error at the Quarto issue tracker. If a Lua filter is involved, verify it does not produce NoteReference AST nodes after postprocessing.