Quarto — Open-Source Scientific and Technical Publishing System

Introduction

Quarto is a next-generation scientific publishing system from Posit (formerly RStudio). It unifies the creation of articles, reports, presentations, dashboards, websites, and books into a single tool that combines narrative text with live code execution across multiple programming languages.

What Quarto Does

• Renders Markdown documents with embedded code in Python, R, Julia, or Observable JS
• Outputs to HTML, PDF, Word, EPUB, PowerPoint, and Reveal.js presentations
• Generates multi-page websites and books with navigation and cross-references
• Supports academic features like citations, footnotes, equations, and figure numbering
• Provides interactive features through Observable JS and Shiny integration

Architecture Overview

Quarto extends Pandoc with a preprocessing layer that executes code cells via Jupyter (Python/Julia) or knitr (R), captures outputs, and injects them into the Pandoc AST before final rendering. Custom Lua filters provide additional transformations. The CLI orchestrates the pipeline and manages project-level configuration.

Self-Hosting & Configuration

• Install the CLI from quarto.org or via package managers (Homebrew, Chocolatey)
• Requires a language runtime (Python/R/Julia) for code execution
• Project configuration via _quarto.yml at the project root
• Publish to GitHub Pages, Netlify, Quarto Pub, or any static host
• Integrates with VS Code, RStudio, and JupyterLab via official extensions

Key Features

• Single source documents that render to multiple output formats
• Cross-language code execution within the same document
• Built-in citation management via BibTeX and CSL
• Parameterized reports for generating variations from templates
• Live preview with hot-reload during authoring

Comparison with Similar Tools

• R Markdown — Predecessor focused on R; Quarto is its multi-language evolution
• Jupyter Book — Python-focused book publishing, less format flexibility
• Pandoc — The underlying engine but without code execution or project management
• LaTeX — Powerful typesetting but steep learning curve and no code execution
• MkDocs — Static site generator for documentation, not computational documents

FAQ

Q: Do I need R to use Quarto? A: No. Quarto works with Python, Julia, and Observable JS. R is optional.

Q: Can I convert existing Jupyter notebooks to Quarto? A: Yes. Quarto natively renders .ipynb files and can also convert them to .qmd format.

Q: Is Quarto suitable for non-scientific documentation? A: Yes. It works well for technical blogs, project documentation, and business reports that benefit from embedded code or data visualizations.

Q: How does Quarto handle version control? A: Quarto source files (.qmd) are plain text Markdown, making them ideal for Git-based workflows and code review.

Sources

• https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli
• https://quarto.org