Lecture 07: Quarto Document

Author
Affiliation

Jihong Zhang*, Ph.D

Educational Statistics and Research Methods (ESRM) Program*

University of Arkansas

Published

February 5, 2025

Modified

March 18, 2025

    1. What is Quarto?
    2. Installation of Quarto
    3. YouTube Tutorial
    4. One Example of Quarto C.V.
What is Quarto

  • An open-source scientific and technical publishing system

    • Author using Jupyter notebooks or with plain text markdown in your favorite editor.
    • Create dynamic content with Python, R, Julia, and Observable.
    • Publish reproducible, production quality articles, presentations, dashboards, websites, blogs, and books in HTML, PDF, MS Word, ePub, and more.
    • Share knowledge and insights organization-wide by publishing to Posit Connect, Confluence, or other publishing systems.
    • Write using Pandoc markdown, including equations, citations, crossrefs, figure panels, callouts, advanced layout, and more.

Hello Quarto

  • Quarto is a multi-language of R Markdown from Posit (the company of RStudio), with many new features and capabilities.
  • Like R Markdown (.rmd), Quarto uses knitr (the engine translating Markdown text into html/pdf files) to execute R code (.qmd).
  • The following screenshot is a Quarto document with the extension .qmd (on the left), along with its rendered version as HTML (webpage .html on the right).

Installation
  • Quarto is a software that should be downloaded separately. It DOES NOT comes with R or RStudio
  • You can install Quarto here. It is independent from R and RStudio, but it can be used inside RStudio after the installation.

Tutorial

You can follow along with the tutorial via the official video - Get Started with Quarto

If you would like to follow along with this tutorial in your own environment, follow the steps outlined below.

  1. Download and install the latest release of RStudio

  2. Be sure that you have installed the tidyverse and palmerpenguins packages:

    install.packages("tidyverse")
install.packages("palmerpenguins")

  3. Download the Quarto document (.qmd) below, open it in RStudio, and click on Render.

Preview File

  • Once you open up the .qmd file, you can use the Render button in the RStudio IDE to render the file and preview the output with a single click or keyboard shortcut (⇧⌘K).

  • If you prefer to automatically render whenever you save, you can check the Render on Save option on the editor toolbar. The preview will update whenever you re-render the document. Side-by-side preview works for both HTML and PDF outputs.

Creating Content

  • There two modes of the RStudio editor: visual (on the left) and source (on the right).

  • Source and Visual

    • Source mode follows the markdown format.

    • Visual mode is more similar to Word

YAML Header

  • Each Quarto document (.qmd) typically starts with YAML Header t

  • YAML header contains some setup information (metadata), such as title, subtitle, author, date, output file format (html, pdf, or slides)

  • An (optional) YAML header demarcated by three dashes (---) on either end.

---
title: "Hello, Quarto"
format: html
editor: visual
---
  • The basic syntax of YAML uses key-value pairs in the format key: value

Example: YAML Header of today’s lecture

---
title: "Lecture 07: Quarto Document"
subtitle: "quarto"
author: "Jihong Zhang*, Ph.D"
institute: | 
  Educational Statistics and Research Methods (ESRM) Program*
  
  University of Arkansas
date: "2025-02-05"
date-modified: "2025-03-18 11:01:48.792006"
sidebar: false
execute: 
  eval: true
  echo: true
  warning: false
output-location: default
code-annotations: below
highlight-style: "dracula"
format: 
  html:
    code-tools: true
    code-line-numbers: false
    code-fold: false
    number-offset: 0
  uark-revealjs:
    scrollable: true
    chalkboard: true
    embed-resources: false
    code-fold: false
    number-sections: false
    footer: "ESRM 64503 - Lecture 07: Quarto"
    slide-number: c/t
    tbl-colwidths: auto
    output-file: slides-index.html
---

Code Chunks

  • Code chunks contains code that can be output directly into the output file.

  • R code chunks identified with {r} with (optional) chunk options, in YAML style, identified by #| at the beginning of the line.

  • You can also run each code chunk interactively in the RStudio editor by clicking the icon or keyboard shortcut (⇧⌘↩︎).

    • RStudio executes the code and displays the results either inline within your file or in the Console, depending on your preference.
```{r}
#| label: load-packages
#| eval: true
#| warning: false
#| message: false

library(tidyverse)
library(palmerpenguins)
```
```{r}
#| label: show-table
#| eval: true

head(penguins)
```
# A tibble: 6 × 8
  species island    bill_length_mm bill_depth_mm flipper_length_mm body_mass_g
  <fct>   <fct>              <dbl>         <dbl>             <int>       <int>
1 Adelie  Torgersen           39.1          18.7               181        3750
2 Adelie  Torgersen           39.5          17.4               186        3800
3 Adelie  Torgersen           40.3          18                 195        3250
4 Adelie  Torgersen           NA            NA                  NA          NA
5 Adelie  Torgersen           36.7          19.3               193        3450
6 Adelie  Torgersen           39.3          20.6               190        3650
# ℹ 2 more variables: sex <fct>, year <int>

Markdown Text

  • Except YAML Header and Code Chunks, other text contents are displayed with the format of Markdown language

    • You can check markdown basics here

  • There are two ways of editing quarto file: (1) markdown in Source mode (2) clicking in Visual mode

  • Quarto uses markdown syntax for text. If using the visual editor, you won’t need to learn much markdown syntax for authoring your document, as you can use the menus and shortcuts to add a header, bold text, insert a table, etc.

    • If using the source editor, you can achieve these with markdown expressions like ##, **bold**, etc.

  • Math text

    $\mathcal{N}(\mu, \sigma^2)$

Quarto PDF

Example: Quarto PDF

  • Create a new file called quarto_pdf.qmd

  • Use the pdf format to create PDF output. For example:

quarto_pdf.qmd
---
title: "My document"
format:
  pdf:
    toc: true
    number-sections: true
    colorlinks: true
---
  • In order to create PDFs you will need to install a recent distribution of TeX. We recommend the use of TinyTeX (which is based on TexLive), which you can install with the following command:
quarto install tinytex
  • Change to Source Mode, copy and paste the following code into your quarto document
library(ggplot2)
ggplot(airquality, aes(Temp, Ozone)) + 
  geom_point() + 
  geom_smooth(method = "loess", se = FALSE)
  • Render the quarto file using botton

Quarto PDF Template - Extension

  • What: Quarto Extensions are a powerful way to modify or extend the behavior of Quarto, and can be created and distributed by anyone. There are several types of extensions available:

    Extension Type Description
    Shortcodes Special markdown directives that generate various types of content. For example, you could create shortcodes to embed tweets or videos in a document.
    Filters A flexible and powerful tool for introducing new global behaviors and/or new markdown rendering behaviors. For example, you could create filters to implement output folding, an image carousel, or just about anything you can imagine!
    Journal Articles Enable authoring of professional Journal articles using markdown, and produce both LaTeX (PDF) and HTML versions of the articles.
    Custom Formats Create new output formats by bundling together document options, templates, style sheets, and other content.
    Revealjs Plugins Extend the capabilities of HTML presentations created with Revealjs.
    Project Types Create new project project types that bundle together standard content and options, or make it easy to create a website for a custom HTML format.
    Starter Templates Help users get started with new projects by providing a template and example content. Starter templates aren’t strictly extensions (i.e. they aren’t installed in the _extensions directory) but they are often used with custom formats and project types.
    Metadata Provide YAML configuration that can be merged into existing Quarto projects.

Where to download extension

  • The Quarto Extensions GitHub organization provides a set of extensions developed by the core Quarto team. Many of these extensions implement frequently requested features, and all of them provide sound examples of how to implement extensions.

  • The Quarto Journals GitHub organization contains a set of Journal Article formats developed by the core Quarto team or contributed by third parties.

    • No APA-7 format unfortunately. But there is a community-version APA-7 Quarto Template, which can be used for creating APA7 documents in .docx, .html, and .pdf formats

  • Finally, most published extensions are hosted on GitHub and therefore have source code available that you can learn from.

Example: Create C.V. Using Quarto

  1. We use the the quarto extension (Github Page) for awesomecv for illustration
    • Prerequisite: successfully installed quarto
    • type in the following my-cv in the Directory name question
terminal
quarto use template kazuyanagimoto/quarto-awesomecv-typst
Quarto templates may execute code when documents are rendered. If you do not
trust the authors of the template, we recommend that you do not install or
use the template.
? Do you trust the authors of this template (Y/n) › Yes
? Create a subdirectory for template? (Y/n) › Yes
? Directory name: › my-cv
[✓] Downloading
[✓] Unzipping

The template requires the following changes to extensions:
Quarto-awesomecv-typst   [Install]   0.1.0 (format)
? Would you like to continue (Y/n) › Yes
  1. Open my-cv.qmd in Source Mode with Rstudio. Type in the following command in Console panel
install.packages("typstcv", repos = "https://kazuyanagimoto.r-universe.dev")
  1. Replace the YAML header with the following
---
title: "Jihong Zhang's CV"
author:
  firstname: Jihong
  lastname: Zhang
  address: "Rämistrasse 101, CH-8092 Zürich, Switzerland, Zürich"
  position: "Research Physicist ・ Professor"
  contacts:
    - icon: fa envelope
      text: ae@example.com
      url: "mailto:ae@example.com"
    - icon: assets/icon/bi-house-fill.svg
      text: example.com
      url: https://example.com
    - icon: fa brands orcid
      text: 0000-0000-0000-0000
      url: https://orcid.org/0000-0000-0000-0000
    - icon: fa brands github
      text: GitHub
      url: https://github.com/example
    - icon: fa brands linkedin
      text: LinkedIn
      url: https://linkedin.com/in/example
    - icon: fa brands x-twitter
      text: twitter
      url: https://twitter.com/example
execute: 
  echo: false
  eval: true
  warning: false
  output: asis
format: awesomecv-typst
---
  1. Copy-and-paste the following code chunks under the ## Education section
```{r}
library(typstcv)

educ <- data.frame(
 title = c("Ph.D. in Education", 
           "Master of Science"),
 location = c("Iowa, U.S.", 
              "Kansas, U.S."),
 date = c("2019", "2015"),
 description = c("University of Arkansas", "Fayetteville")
)

resume_entry(educ)
```
  1. Render the file

Quarto Website

Overview

  • Quarto Websites are a convenient way to publish groups of documents. Documents published as part of a website share navigational elements, rendering options, and visual style.

  • Website navigation can be provided through a global navbar, a sidebar with links, or a combination of both for sites that have multiple levels of content. You can also enable full text search for websites.

  • Quarto websites can be published to a wide variety of destinations including GitHub Pages, Netlify, Posit Connect, or any other static hosting service or intranet web server. See the documentation on Publishing Websites for additional details.

Quick Start

  • To create a new website project within RStudio, use the New Project command and select Quarto Website:

  • Then, provide a directory name and other relevant options for the website:

  • Click the Render button to preview the website:

Config File

  • Every website has a _quarto.yml config file that provides website options as well as defaults for HTML documents created within the site.
  • For example, here is the default config file for the simple site created above:
    • You can change theme: cosmo to theme: materia to see how website differ
    • You can check the full list of website themes in HTML Theming
_quarto.yml
project:
  type: website

website:
  title: "today"
  navbar:
    left:
      - href: index.qmd
        text: Home
      - about.qmd

format:
  html:
    theme: cosmo
    css: styles.css
    toc: true

See the documentation on Website Navigation and Website Tools for additional details on website configuration. See HTML Documents for details on customizing HTML format options.

Website Preview

  • If you are using RStudio, Render button (RStudio), automatically preview the website in an embedded window.

  • As you preview your site, pages will be rendered and updated. However, if you make changes to global options (e.g. _quarto.yml or included files) you need to fully re-render your site to have all of the changes reflected.

Background Jobs when I render the quarto of today’s lecture

Background Jobs when I render the quarto of today’s lecture

Publish the Website?

  • What to publish your website to the Internet?

    • Check this YouTube video - How to publish a website FOR FREE in under 60 seconds using Quarto
Summary
  1. Today, we learnt the basic information of Quarto Document (.qmd)
  2. Quarto can be rendered into different formats: html/pdf
  3. We can install Quarto extension to use the template of PDF
  4. Settings can be manipulated in YAML header of each quarto document

General Suggestions

  1. Use Quarto document to report you data analysis results.
  2. Use Quarto document to write notes

LLM + Quarto Auto-Generation

Other Resources about Quarto

Back to top