The author-line in Powerpoint files is prepended by two newlines

[m-hsieh]

When converting markdown to Powerpoint (.pptx), the author field is prepended by two newlines:

I don't want that, it actually conflicts with my pptx-template.

However, it seems that this has been done deliberately, so I'm hesitant to open a bug issue.
Is this maybe some kind of side effect from #10477?

Could you please explain why this was done, and if there is a way to disable it?

This can be reproduced using the online Pandoc editor (v3.6.3): Link.

Thanks!

[jgm]

I think this is because of
https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/blob/main/src/Text/Pandoc/Writers/Powerpoint/Output.hs#L1754-L1756
When there is no subtitle, subtitleElems is empty, and we get the two Breaks...

[m-hsieh]

I see ... I guess the lists need to be checked for emptiness first and then the breaks only need to be added if both lists are not empty.

Not being a Haskell developer myself I'm afraid I can't offer an elegant PR for this without blindly trusting ChatGPT. I've created an issue for this and closed the discussion. Hope that's alright.

Thanks!