Tutorial 5 - Introduction to Quarto

Digital Causality Lab

4/19/22

Introduction to Quarto

Introduction

• Quarto is a relatively new framework to generate dynamic content, like
  • (Automated) Reports that involve Python, R, julia or other code
  • Blogposts, websites, pdf files, slideshow, jupyter notebooks, interactive apps, MS office documents
  • Documents including references (e.g. .bib files) and math formula (LaTeX)
  • Thereby, Quarto has a unified syntax that is based on markdown
• In the Digital Causality Lab, we’ll use Quarto as a framework to develop causal data products
  • Notebooks, illustrating causal concepts
  • For examples, see our tutorial notebooks and the data products in the Gallery

Introduction

• The idea of Quarto can be summarized as

Weave together narrative text and code to produce elegantly formatted output (quarto.org)

• Installation guidelines & getting started guide
  • Get Started
  • Go through the Quarto Guide to find out more
  • Topics: Basic syntax, computations, document types, output type (tables, figures, etc.)

Introduction: IDE

• To work with Quarto, we need to use an Interactive Development Environment (IDE), for example
  • RStudio (recommended)
  • VS Code
• Both IDEs come with handy add-ons, features and templates that facilitate your start with Quarto

RStudio

VS Code

Figure 1: IDEs for Quarto.

Introduction: RStudio

• In Digital Causality Lab, we highly recommend to use RStudio with Quarto.
  • Download and install the latest release of R and RStudio
• Like R Markdown, Quarto uses Knitr to execute R code, and is therefore able to render most existing .Rmd files without modification.

Introduction: RStudio

Basic Workflow

1. Use the File -> New File -> Quarto Document… command to create new Quarto documents.

Introduction: RStudio

Basic Workflow

2. Use the Render button to preview documents as you edit them.
   • In the setting, you can freely choose whether you want to preview documents
     • in Window / Browsers or
     • in Viewer Pane of R (more convenient)

Introduction: RStudio

Basic Workflow

3. Generate a basic model for Quarto publishing.
   • Take a source document and render it to a variety of output formats, including HTML, PDF, MS Word, etc.

Introduction: VS Code

• You may also want to use VS Studio
  • Installation guide available on visualstudio.com
  • VS Studio easily integrates with Python
  • Also installed with Anaconda
• After Installation,
  • Open VS Studio and install Quarto extension
  • Install R extension to work with R

Introduction: VS Code

Basic Workflow

1. Open a new quarto document .qmd file and render

   • You can choose what output you want to render, .pdf, .html, .docx, \(\ldots\)

2. Render using the VS Studio features (Ctrl + Shift + k) or command line Quarto Render

3. View preview and/or open rendered file

Introduction: VS Code

• See the example Hello Quarto
  • It contains a combination of markdown and executable code cells.
  • The document on the left is rendered into the HTML version. Its preview could be seen on the right.

Markdown Syntax

Basics of Markdown Syntax

• The Quarto documentation has a chapter on Markdown Basics

• Most importantly, you can use the syntax to format text

  • *italics* and **bold** \(\rightarrow\) italics and bold
  • superscript^2^ / subscript~2~ \(\rightarrow\) superscript² / subscript₂
  • ~~strikethrough~~ \(\rightarrow\) strikethrough
  • Use `verbatim code` \(\rightarrow\) verbatim code

• Use # to format headers / section or slide titles

  • More #’s, the smaller the header

Basics of Markdown Syntax

• Links and images
  • <digitalcausalitylab.github.io> \(\rightarrow\) <digitalcausalitylab.github.io>
  • [DigitalCausalityLab](digitalcausalitylab.github.io) \(\rightarrow\) DigitalCausalityLab
  • ![DCL Logo](logo.png) \(\downarrow\)

DCL Logo

Basics of Markdown Syntax

Lists

* unordered list
    + sub-item 1
    + sub-item 2
        - sub-sub-item 1

• unordered list
  • sub-item 1
  • sub-item 2
    • sub-sub-item 1

Tables

| Right | Left | Default | Center |
|------:|:-----|---------|:------:|
|   12  |  12  |    12   |    12  |
|  123  |  123 |   123   |   123  |
|    1  |    1 |     1   |     1  |

Right	Left	Default	Center
12	12	12	12
123	123	123	123
1	1	1	1

Basics of Markdown Syntax

Code

Include code as

```{r}

1 + 1

```

1 + 1

[1] 2

Basics of Markdown Syntax

Equations / formulae

• Formualae work just the same as in latex

• inline math: $E = mc^{2}$ \(\rightarrow\) inline math: \(E = mc^{2}\)

• $$E = mc^{2}$$ \(\downarrow\)

\[E = mc^{2}\]

• For more information, have a look at the Quarto Introduction to Markdown