Quarto

Literate programming

Aurélien Ginolhac, DHML

University of Luxembourg

Monday 9 Mar, 2026

Learning objectives

You will learn to:

How to structure files and folders
Use relative paths and RStudio projects
Use the markdown syntax
Create Quarto documents
Render to the output format you want
Use RStudio interface to
- Create your documents
- Insert R code
- Build your final document

Organize your files

Absolute paths are NOT portable

Relative paths are

RStudio projects

Create the practicals RStudio project

Typical flow of data

Source data ➡️

Experimental data
External data sets
Manually collected data and meta data

Intermediate ➡️

Derived data
Computation
Manual curation
Tidy data

Analysis ➡️

Exploratory analysis
Statistical models
Hypothesis testing

Manuscript ➡️

Can you reproduce your work?
- All numbers
- Summaries
- Images

One workflow

No editing of data at any step
All code needed to reproduce from one ingestions to manuscript coded and repeatable

Literate programming is the practice of mixing code and descriptive writing in order to execute and explain a data analysis simultaneously in the same document.

— William Landau Developer of {targets}

For a bioinformatician, pure programming is barely happening, we need reports/websites where content and formatting are disconnected

Even better to separate content and rendering, outsourced to continuous integration/development.

Rmarkdown

Predecessor of Quarto. Files are .Rmd.

Version 1 in 2016, the idea was to have text and code in one document, execute code and let the final markdown converted to different formats by pandoc.

Quarto

Extended Rmarkdown. Languages and IDE agnostic

Why use Quarto ?

Write detailed reports
Ensure reproducibility
Mix programming languages (passing along variables)
Export a single (.qmd) document to various formats (PDF, HTML…)
Keep track of your analyses
Comment/describe each step of your analysis
Quarto extensions
Text file that can (should) be managed by a version control system (like git)

Markdown, lightweight markup language with a simple syntax

Started 2004 by John Gruber
Hyper Text Markup Language=HTML How Markdown took over the world by Anil Dash

If mark up is complicated, then the opposite of that complexity must be… mark down.

HTML

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>

<h1>This is a heading</h1>

<p>This is some text in a <b>paragraph</b></p>

<h2>This is a second level heading</h2>

<ul>
<li><a href="http://exa.com"><code>site</code></a>
<li><img src="https://images.computerhistory.org/revonline/images/500004391-03-01.jpg?w=200">
</ul>
</body>
</html>

Markdown equivalent

# This is a heading

This is some text in a **paragraph**

## This is a second level heading

- [`site`](http://exa.com)
- ![Two Tux and Linus](https://images.computerhistory.org/revonline/images/500004391-03-01.jpg?w=200)

Common text formatting tags

Headers

6 levels are defined using #, ##, ### …
From BIG to small

Links and images

http://example.com is auto-linked
[site](http://example.com)
![](path/to/image.jpg)
![desc](path/to/image.jpg) for alternative description

Text style

bold (**bold**)
italic (*italic*)
Also italic (_Also italic_)
R² (R^2^)
CO₂ (CO~2~)

Bullet points

Use hyphens or stars (- / *)

- first
- second
- third thing

Verbatim code (no computation)

Use the 140 language syntax pandoc knows

code with backticks (`code`)
Triple backticks are delimiting code blocks:

```
This is *verbatim* code
# Even headers are not interpreted
```

rendered as:

This is *verbatim* code
# Even headers are not interpreted

Specify language

``` markdown
This is *verbatim* code
# Even headers are not interpreted
```

This is *verbatim* code
# Even headers are not interpreted

``` r
vec <- c("a", "b")
vec[2]
```

rendered as:

vec <- c("a", "b")
vec[2]

Including code to execute

Computation

In a fresh and clean session
Chunks are evaluated
Sequentially from top to bottom

Example for `knitr`

Extracts chunks
Interpret/Run them
Formats results as markdown
Reinject in the document (MD)

Pandoc

Converts markdown to the desired document
- PDF
- HTML
- Word
- EPUB
- …

Quarto document: Structure

YAML header

Document common variables:
- title, date, author, …
Define format and its specific options
Use Tab for autocompletion

Free text in Markdown

Markdown syntax to write your descriptions, remarks
Literate programming

Code chunks to be interpreted

Outputs (tables/plots) are inserted below each
knitr for
jupyter for
QuartoNotebookRunner.jl package for julia
Native support for Observable

Qmd creation: step 1

Under File, pick Quarto Document

Optionally fill in some header variables
Choose the output format (can be changed later)

Render Quarto documents

Save the file, Untitled.qmd* cannot be rendered
Click the Render

A new session is created
Chunks are evaluated top -> bottom
Outputs are injected in the MD
Final MD is converted by pandoc to chosen format: pdf

Example:

---
title: "Cereviase"
format: pdf
---

Default output is HTML

code chunks

Insert a chunk

```{r}
#| label: readin-csv
#| code-line-numbers: false
#| eval: false

# regular comment, not a hash pipe
wine <- read_csv("wine.tsv")
```

Basic Markup

Delimited by triple backticks tags (```)
Engine evaluating the code in curly braces
Options in hash pipe: #|
- Label of chunk (optional)
- Show/hide code #| echo: true
- Evaluate or not #| eval: true
- Figure size (inches) #| fig-width: 9
- …

Inline R code

Integrate small pieces of code

Use backticks (`) followed by the keyword {r}:

`{r} some code`

Example

1 + 1 = `{r} 1 + 1`

=> renders as 1 + 1 = 2 .

More useful:

swiss dataset:`{r} nrow(swiss)` rows

=> renders as swiss dataset: 47 rows.

Popular output formats

HTML

Fast rendering
No need for extra install

Default is NOT standalone

Use format option to obtain a self contained HTML

---
format:
  html:
    embed-resources: true
---

PDF

Single file
Requires $\LaTeX$, have a look at the TinyTeX package for minimal install

Typst

New format for
Fast!
No need for $\LaTeX$

Word (`docx`)

Widely used
Editable
Collaborate with people not using Quarto

Output examples 1/2

HTML

Word

Output examples 2/2

Typst

PDF (LaTex)

Basic tables

Created from scratch

Dataset   | # rows            | Description
----------|------------------:|-------------------
swiss     | `{r} nrow(swiss)` | Swiss  Indicators
datasaurus| 1846              | 13 datasets of same mean

Dataset	# rows	Description
swiss	47	Swiss Indicators
datasaurus	1842	13 dataset of same mean

Tables with `knitr::kable()`

as_tibble(swiss, rownames = "Province") |>
  select(Province:Agriculture) |>
  slice_head(n = 5) |>
  knitr::kable(caption = "Swiss Socioeconomic Indicators (1888)")

Swiss Socioeconomic Indicators (1888)
Province	Fertility	Agriculture
Courtelary	80.2	17.0
Delemont	83.1	45.1
Franches-Mnt	92.5	39.7
Moutier	85.8	36.5
Neuveville	76.9	43.5

Equations using $\LaTeX$ syntax

How to add equations

Enclose in $ for in-line equations
$a^2+b^2=c^2$ renders as $a^2+b^2=c^2$.
Double ($$) for separate equations.

$$G_{\mu v}=8 \pi G (T_{\mu v} + \rho _\Lambda \ g_{\mu v}) $$

renders as:

\[G_{\mu v}=8 \pi G (T_{\mu v} + \rho _\Lambda \ g_{\mu v})\]

Potential pitfalls

MathJax needs to load, unstable internet connections can intervene

Solution embed libraries (but larger file size):

format:
  html:
    self-contained-math: true

Before we stop

You learned to:

Use relative paths in RStudio projects
What is Quarto (qmd)
Basic syntax of Markdown
Separate content from rendering
render to different output formats

Further reading 📚

Acknowledgments 🙏 👏

Roland Krause
Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel
Xie Yihuie
Alison Horst
Hadley Wickham
Christophe Dervieux
William Landau
Artwork by Allison Horst
Jenny Bryan

Thank you for your attention!

Quarto

Learning objectives

Organize your files

RStudio projects

Typical flow of data

Rmarkdown

Quarto

Why use Quarto ?

Markdown, lightweight markup language with a simple syntax

HTML

Markdown equivalent

Common text formatting tags

Headers

Links and images

Text style

Bullet points

Verbatim code (no computation)

Specify language

Including code to execute

Computation

Example for knitr

Pandoc

Quarto document: Structure

Qmd creation: step 1

Render Quarto documents

code chunks

Insert a chunk

Basic Markup

Inline R code

Integrate small pieces of code

Example

Popular output formats

HTML

PDF

Word (docx)

Output examples 1/2

HTML

Word

Output examples 2/2

Typst

PDF (LaTex)

Basic tables

Created from scratch

Tables with knitr::kable()

Equations using \(\LaTeX\) syntax

Before we stop

Example for `knitr`

Word (`docx`)

Tables with `knitr::kable()`