18 Quarto

Getting set up… 1. Install Quarto - https://quarto.org/docs/get-started/ - I downloaded the Linux deb file, then ran sudo dpkg -i packagename.deb 2. Create environment with necessary requirements (this may not be a necessary step, but this is what I decided to do) - for me, I needed:

ipykernel
pyyaml
nbformat
nbclient

Install Quarto VS Code extension (and then perhaps open and close VS Code)
Within VS Code, Ctrl+Shift+P > Quarto: Create Project
Ctrl+Shift+P > Select Interpreter > choose the environment created

Render full .qmd: Ctrl+Shift+K

Render file: quarto render hello.qmd --to html

Render to alt. output: quarto render hello.qmd --to docx

Run individual cells by selecting the Run Cell button.

You’ll see there’s a few Quarto projects that pop up - * Basic * Book * Blog * Manuscript * Website

A book is actually a special type of website - the most important difference is that it uses chapter numbers and supports cross-references between different chapters. [source]

For a blog, the posts are in seperate pages as the filename has to be index.qmd.

To change preview type when using VSCode to preview, go to Settings > Quarto > Render: Preview Type and set to external

Commands to check/make/preview book:

quarto check - checks if would build successfully
quarto preview - previews as-is
quarto render - rebuilds whole book
quarto preview button in VS code - will render current page, and will render other pages when you click on them, except blog posts

18.1 `stlite`

Sammi mentioned that the stlite quarto extension can be a nice way of including simple interactivity in quarto books to demonstrate concepts.

Using this extension: https://github.com/whitphx/quarto-stlite

Though she flagged that it would say matplotlib was not installed when it was, and the answer was:

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt = bad from matplotlib import pyplot as plt = good

And likewise with other imports (e.g. needing from plotly import express as px).

She used to fix the broken embedded streamlit apps in the streamlit HSMA book (https://webapps.hsma.co.uk/).

From Sammi: There’s basically two subtly different versions of each example in my streamlit book - the standard streamlit code shown to the user, and the one that actually renders the embedded app.

Main changes tend to be:

import micropip
install any packages that aren’t in there by default with await micropip.install(“some_package”)
- there are a few limitations around certain packages not being installable due to not having pure python requirements or wheels available, but that list seems to be getting smaller over time
import (mostly) as normal (today’s issue excluded :joy: )
if you need to reference an external file, I’ve had some issues with it accessing my usual options (files stored in a github repo, dropbox, google drive)
- I’ve ended up resorting to a free site called https://catbox.moe/ as it was the only one that didn’t seem to run into security issues - not ideal and I will eventually get around to checking whether the issue that was previously preventing me using other options are still present

They’re scattered throughout this book but there’s a few on this page, with the last one having a dropdown to properly demonstrate the interactivity: https://webapps.hsma.co.uk/interactive_charts.html

18.1 stlite

18.1 `stlite`