quarto.yml - set options for document types without rendering

[fenke]

Description

I am working on a mixed project, in part nbdev - which uses Quarto website - and part a blog. It all works more or less fine but ...

I would like to be able to only generate pdf files for a select few documents while specifying various options in the main _quarto.yml

However, if I specify a pdf or typst section under format, all documents are rendered to pdf (alongside the html) and If I can't use the main quarto.yml to specify formatting options then I'd have to maintain them in each document I want rendered to pdf - which is a bad idea.

This problem will extend to presentations should I want to add some of those.

Is there a way to specify formatting options for all documents of one type in one place while not at the same time rendering all of them, or is there a method to disable (or enable) rendering for selected documents. I could find anything useful online.

With kind regards,
Fenke

[mcanouil]

See the documentation on metadata (i.e., _matadata.yml) and structure your project accordingly.

https://quarto.org/docs/projects/quarto-projects.html#shared-metadata

[fenke]

I don't think shared metadata provides a way to render only some documents as pdf.

But, with some experimenting it seems I can use some format directives - like 'mainfont' - in the toplevel of the quarto-yml then override it in format/html without specifying format/pdf at all. Then for the files I do want to be rendered I add a format/pdf with something like toc: true and only that particular file will be rendered to pdf using the mainfont from the toplevel.

_quarto.yml:

mainfont: 'Gabriola'

format:
  html:
    theme: lux
    css: styles.css
    mainfont: 'Palatino Linotype'

[mcanouil]

It's still unclear to me what you really want to do and what's your setup.

Note that alternatively, you can use profile and render targets:

• https://quarto.org/docs/projects/profiles.html
• https://quarto.org/docs/projects/quarto-projects.html#render-targets

[fenke]

While html should be generated for all documents, I want only some documents rendered as PDF. If I specify formatting options for typst in _quarto.yml quarto will render pdf files for all documents.

I can't use render targets because that will either render all formats on the targets or no format at all for ignore patterns.

As far as I know quarto clears existing output before rendering so profiles is out too.

[mcanouil]

I can't use render targets because that will either render all formats on the targets or no format at all for ignore patterns.

As far as I know quarto clears existing output before rendering so profiles is out too.

Change output location or disable the cleaning (--no-clean) of the output directory.

You have all the tools that exist, now you need to figure out the right combination of them for your use case.

[cderv]

While html should be generated for all documents, I want only some documents rendered as PDF. If I specify formatting options for typst in _quarto.yml quarto will render pdf files for all documents.

It is a bit hidden in our doc but see about how metadata are merged: https://quarto.org/docs/projects/quarto-projects.html#metadata-merging
Especially the following:

The one exception to metadata merging is format. If the document-level YAML defines a format, it must define the complete list of formats to be rendered.

This means that the list of format that you defined inside document, or as directory metadata will be the list used to determine to which format to render.

So you could either

• Define all format configuration at project level, and then specify what format needs to be rendered in each doc (only HTML or both)
• Define only HTML at project level, and then group all your doc you want to pdf in same directory and use directory shared meta (but that may not be possible).

I suggest you play with format definition in different places to understand.