1.7 Quarto and Beyond

R Markdown has been the standard tool for reproducible documents in R for over a decade. In recent years, Quarto has emerged as the next generation of scientific and technical publishing, developed by the same team at Posit (formerly RStudio).

1.7.1 What is Quarto?

Quarto is an open-source publishing system that builds on the ideas of R Markdown but extends them in several important ways:

  • Multi-language support: Quarto natively supports R, Python, Julia, and Observable JavaScript in the same document.
  • Unified format: Quarto uses .qmd files with a syntax very similar to .Rmd files, so the transition is smooth.
  • Rich output formats: Quarto can produce HTML pages, PDFs, Word documents, presentations (RevealJS), books, websites, and blogs.
  • No R required: Unlike R Markdown (which depends on the knitr and rmarkdown R packages), Quarto can run independently of R.

1.7.2 From R Markdown to Quarto

If you know R Markdown, you already know most of Quarto. Here is a side-by-side comparison:

Feature R Markdown (.Rmd) Quarto (.qmd)
YAML header output: html_document format: html
Code chunks ```{r} ```{r} (same!)
Chunk options Inside {r, echo=FALSE} #| echo: false (YAML-style)
Cross-references \@ref(fig:label) @fig-label
Rendering rmarkdown::render() quarto render (CLI)

A simple Quarto document looks like this:

---
title: "My First Quarto Document"
format: html
---

## Introduction

This is a Quarto document. Here is some R code:


``` r
plot(1:10, (1:10)^2)
```

<div class="figure">
<img src="r02pro_files/figure-html/unnamed-chunk-36-1.png" alt="A simple plot" width="576" />
<p class="caption">(\#fig:unnamed-chunk-36)A simple plot</p>
</div>

1.7.3 Installing Quarto

Quarto is a standalone application. You can download it from https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/. Once installed, you can render .qmd files from the terminal:

quarto render my_document.qmd

RStudio (version 2022.07 and later) has built-in support for Quarto, so you can also use the Render button just like you would use the Knit button for R Markdown.

1.7.4 Should You Switch?

For the purposes of this book and most course work, R Markdown remains an excellent choice. However, if you are starting a new project, especially one that involves multiple programming languages or requires a modern website or book format, Quarto is worth exploring.

The good news is that your R Markdown skills transfer directly. Learning Quarto is not starting over; it is building on what you already know.

1.7.5 Further Resources

1.7.6 Exercises

  1. Visit https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/ and install Quarto on your computer. Create a simple .qmd file that includes a title, a paragraph of text, and one R code chunk that prints "Hello, Quarto!". Render it to HTML.

  2. Convert one of the R Markdown documents you created earlier in this chapter into a Quarto .qmd file. What changes did you need to make to the YAML header?

  3. In a Quarto document, use the YAML-style chunk option #| echo: false to hide the code but show the output of a plot. Compare this with the R Markdown approach of using echo = FALSE inside the chunk header.

Buy Me A Coffee