Issue setting a variable of type Dictionary from the command line

[ZoomRmc]

I have a trouble setting up a variable of a type Dictionary from the command line.
From what I see in the docs, there's only one such variable, namely the margin for typst.

There's no problem setting it with the defaults YAML, but I'm not sure if pandoc currently can parse a dictionary from the command line.
The issue is exacerbated by a total lack of any error feedback on incorrectly formatted options from the CLI.

The following syntaxes should be equal:

• CLI: -V margin={left:1cm, right:1cm, bottom:1cm, top:1cm, x:0cm, y:0cm}

• defaults.yaml:

  variables:
    margin:
      left: 1cm
      right: 1cm
      bottom: 1cm
      top: 1cm
      x: 0cm
      y: 0cm

Tested on latest release (3.5).

[jgm]

I'm not sure if pandoc currently can parse a dictionary from the command line.

It can't. Values are treated as literal strings; if no value is specified, the value will be boolean True. This needs to be made clearer in the manual under --variable.

(That's also why there's no error -- this is a legal string; at least, it would be if you put it in single quotes.)

[ZoomRmc]

This needs to be made clearer in the manual under --variable

That's more or less clear from the docs and from the code. But having a variable of a type that cannot be set is a a disconnect between the API as documented and the implementation and requires at least a note "can only be set from the YAML" for the specific variable.