In a website-project, how can I additionally render specific dirs/files to additional output formats when calling quarto render?

[Gewerd-Strauss]

Description

Hello,

assume I have a website-project with principal structure:

report/
    manuscript.qmd
preproject/
    manuscript.qmd
documentation/
    meta/
        docs.qmd
        package_citations.qmd
    methods/
        pls.md
        pca.qmd
    ....
...

Files and structure are defined for the website in a root-level _quarto.yaml-file. Format-Options are defined in root-level _quarto-{format}.yaml-files, e.g. _quarto-html.yaml. Execution is kicked off by running quarto render --to html --to pdf --profile default,html ,pdf in a terminal.

I now want to render all files documents to html. However, files in subfolders report and preproject should also be converted to pdf. Documents in other places should only get compiled to HTML. Obviously I cannot just chuck the pdf-yaml file at the project-root, that should result in all files being rendered as pdf as well.

Instead, you can add a directory-specific metadata-file, however this seems to have no effect on what files are converted to pdf when running quarto render --to html --to pdf --profile default,html ,pdf. Additionally it seems that I am unable to disable pdf-rendering at will unless I remove the directory-level pdf options again.

Am I just missunderstanding how this should be done?

Thank you.
Sincerely,
~Gw

---

Edit 2024-01-24 11:17:

quarto check returns:

[>] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.1.1: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.55.0: OK
[>] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[>] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.3.450
      Path: D:\CLI\quarto\bin
      CodePage: 1252

[>] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[>] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.11.6
      Path: C:/Users/Claudius Main/AppData/Local/Programs/Python/Python311/python.exe
      Jupyter: (None)

      Jupyter is not available in this Python installation.
      Install with py -m pip install jupyter

[>] Checking R installation...........OK
      Version: 4.3.2
      Path: D:/CLI/r/R-4.3.2
      LibPaths:
        - D:/CLI/r/R-4.3.2/library
      knitr: 1.45
      rmarkdown: 2.25

[>] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

[mcanouil]

Could you provide a small reproducible example of your setup? (Way more easier to work with a concrete example than to "assume" 😉)

[Gewerd-Strauss]

I can do so a bit later today, I am in the process of leaving - but yes.

[Gewerd-Strauss]

I've just provided a reprex in the other thread.

[cderv]

Format-Options are defined in root-level _quarto-{format}.yaml-files, e.g. _quarto-html.yaml.

That is interesting. What do you feel you need to use profile to render to a format ? Is this because you are switching for a website project to a default project and you want every .qmd to be a pdf file ?

Instead, you can add a directory-specific metadata-file, however this seems to have no effect on what files are converted to pdf when running quarto render --to html --to pdf --profile default,html ,pdf.

Did you try without resorting to your profile usage for format ? Look at metadata merging (https://quarto.org/docs/projects/quarto-projects.html#metadata-merging) to understand how format key in _quarto.yml will be merged with others.

Maybe we have an issue in merging (and your reproducible example will help), but if you need to have some subfolder to have a specific format, the shared _metadata.yml should be the way.

[cderv]

Couldn't I just pull the dev version via git and run the config-script, as outlined in the README?

Oh you could yes. You'll get the version on main in that case, so could be a bit different than the pre-release build available in Github release. (more unstable as main could be broken more often that pre-release). You'll just need to run configure script to build the binary. It will also put the dev version in PATH, so you'll need to switch PATH if you want back the release one. And updating will require git pull

Personally, I find better control in testing pre-release version to use the build installer that going with git checkout in the tree, and running configuration to build binary. downloading the pre-release build seems easier to me 😄

But this is just about workflow preference. So using dev version is also fine!

[Gewerd-Strauss]

So the takeaway is that as of right now, this is not doable at-all for now, and for the forseeable future - if I read the other issue you've linked to properly?
No clue when v1.5. is started/this is getting addressed (and I want to make clear that I am not assuming you drop everything to fix this for me lol.), so if we require 2+ format outputs we just got to suck up and render them all project-wide. Compile all files to all formats.

I'd probably just call via absolute link; I do so on a bunch of other software I run in combination with quarto as well, as I need to have stable and modded releases for various reasons. So git it is probably.

[cderv]

The --to html,pdf problem is an issue we'll fix in 1.5 (1.4 is closed for now as in release candidate state - we are really picky on what to fix)

Regarding the workflow to render only a subset of documents in only one format in the project, format which would be not shared throughout the whole project: This seems like a feature request. This is a workflow we may not have considered yet, and we probably need to do some ground based change so that this is possible.

One thing you can do is open a new clean feature request that would sum up and share your workflow. Explaining clearly and easily so that it can be considered in the future.

Currently, project profile and maybe render targets, coupled with project organisation can help.

but it seems the workflow you are using, conflicts with some Quarto project limitations & behavior.

[Gewerd-Strauss]

workflow to render only a subset of documents in only one format in the project, format which would be not shared throughout the whole project:

I realise this is effectively the same as saying "render project-wide to format X and a specific subset additionally to format Y", but I never thought about it like that.

---

I'll then be prepping a hopefully as clean-as-possible FR over the coming days. Thank you.

[Gewerd-Strauss]

I somehow missed linking to it here; so just for completeness' sake:

#8455