Hello! 

I'm loving the custom layouts especially to do side-by-side text and images. This is what I'm after (done previously in a Hugo site using a shortcode I wrote to use custom CSS):

<img width="907" alt="Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 4 16 36 PM" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12160301/160946106-27762a6f-c5e3-4fbb-a336-f83214ebea3b.png">


I'm unable to reproduce this output with [Quarto custom layouts](https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/figures.html#complex-layouts), and I desperately want to! I've tried all manner of things to keep the markdown text "clumped" together in a single column:
- using `<br>` as line breaks
- backslash followed by newline as Pandoc allows (I believe this extension is enabled by default?) https://pandoc.org/MANUAL.html#extension-escaped_line_breaks
- inserting low level headings to force the separation (note: these were numbered which made things tough)

This is the best I can do:
<img width="854" alt="Screen Shot 2022-03-30 at 3 50 54 PM" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/12160301/160946467-2cde6a52-b067-4e55-8b7d-dd4fbf2e5d2e.png">

Code used to produce:

```
::: {layout="[50,50]"}
Every Quarto project starts with a Quarto file that has the extension `.qmd`. 
\
This particular one analyzes children's early words, but every `.qmd` includes the same three basic elements inside:
\
-   A block of metadata at the top, between two fences of `---`s. This is written in [YAML](https://learnxinyminutes.com/docs/yaml/).
-   Narrative text, written in [Markdown](https://commonmark.org/help/tutorial/).
-   Code chunks in gray between two fences of ```` ``` ````, written with R or another programming language.
\
You can use all three elements to develop your code and ideas in one reproducible document. 

![](img/01-source.png)
:::
```

Could it be possible to introduce a column "delimiter" to indicate which clumps of markdown text could be treated as a column? Something like is possible with [sub-tables](https://quarto.org/docs/authoring/tables.html#subtables)? Or is there a workaround that would allow me to insert arbitrary markdown text into a column that I can plop into a block layout?
2022-03-30T23:44:18Z
apreshill
closed
Feature request: allow flexible markdown text with line breaks in custom layouts
https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/489