Digital Causality Lab
Lab Session 5: Introduction to Quarto
Philipp Bach
University of Hamburg
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
- Both IDEs come with handy add-ons, features and templates that facilitate your start with 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
.Rmdfiles without modification.
Introduction: RStudio
Basic Workflow
- Use the File -> New File -> Quarto Document… command to create new Quarto documents.
Introduction: RStudio
Basic Workflow
- 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)
- In the setting, you can freely choose whether you want to preview documents
Introduction: RStudio
Basic Workflow
- Generate a basic model for Quarto publishing.
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
-
Open a new quarto document .qmd file and render
- You can choose what output you want to render,
.pdf,.html,.docx, \(\ldots\)
- You can choose what output you want to render,
Render using the VS Studio features (Ctrl + Shift + k) or command line Quarto Render
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
- More
Basics of Markdown Syntax
- Links and images
-
<digitalcausalitylab.github.io>\(\rightarrow\) <digitalcausalitylab.github.io> -
[DigitalCausalityLab](digitalcausalitylab.github.io)\(\rightarrow\) DigitalCausalityLab -
\(\downarrow\)
-
DCL Logo
Basics of Markdown Syntax
Lists
- unordered list
- sub-item 1
- sub-item 2
- sub-sub-item 1
Tables
Basics of Markdown Syntax
Code
Include code as
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
Causal Inference & DCL
Digital Causality Lab Lab Session 5: Introduction to Quarto Philipp Bach University of Hamburg