Can't compile with quantumarticle.cls

[araujoms]

If I try to compile with the document class quantumarticle, which is the default class for the journal Quantum, I get the cryptic error

! Package biblatex Error: Patching \addtocontents failed.

This is a regression, as it used to work in TeXLive 2020. I upgraded to TeXLive 2023 (together with the arXiv), and now it doesn't.

MWE:

\documentclass[a4paper]{quantumarticle}
\pdfoutput=1
\usepackage{hyperref}
\usepackage{biblatex}

\begin{document}
\title{title}
\maketitle
\end{document}

[moewew]

Should hopefully be fixed in https://github.com/plk/biblatex/commit/ac2456c2492861451547659702ae4a72264e4997.

The class loads bits of RevTeX and thus has a non-standard definition of \addtocontents that we cannot patch. The fix adds code to deal also with RevTeX's definition of \addtocontents.

[araujoms]

This specific problem was fixed, but another appeared: the numbering of references doesn't work (with the style phys), they all get the number 0. I tried with both the bibtex and biber backends.

[moewew]

Hmmm, ... fascinating. Somehow ltxgrid and biblatex clash so that the .aux file is closed before we can write all our data to that file. I'll see if I can isolate the problem more precisely.

[cgogolin]

Am an one of the developers of quantumarticle. Thanks for looking into this! Is there anything we could do on our end to make resolving this easier?

[moewew]

@cgogolin Thanks for getting in touch. I'm not sure there is any immediate relief you could offer (because I assume you need ltxgrid and can't just drop it). But if you want to, you can help us figure out why ltxgrid prematurely closes the .aux for biblatex.

I haven't looked at this in the last weeks, but when I investigated the issue after the initial report it seemed pretty tricky. So I don't think I can promise any progress in the near future.