Multiple pdf files

[Nenuial]

Is it somehow possible to render two different pdf files from the same document?

I use the LaTeX exam document class to create exercice documents and their solutions at the same time. In rmarkdown I had my own knit function that would iterate over the Rmd, creating the "key" file on the second render.

I tried the following in Quarto, but it only renders the second pdf definition:

---
title: Test

format:
  pdf:
    documentclass: exam
  pdf:
    documentclass: exam
    classoption: answers
---

A small test of a LaTeX examdoc.

```{=latex}
\begin{questions}
\question Sample question
```

::: {.solutionorbox data-latex="[2cm]"}
Solution example
:::

```{=latex}
\end{questions}
```

Is there any way this could be done?

[cscheid]

This should work:

format:
  pdf:
    output-file: test-no-answers.pdf
    documentclass: exam
  pdf+answers:
    output-file: test-answers.pdf
    documentclass: exam
    classoption: answers

[Nenuial]

I took the time to test @DOH-FAA3303's example using v1.5.22. It still fails, and I believe it's exactly the issue I reported at #8367. The second PDF render looks for the image file that has been deleted by the cleanup of the first PDF.

[cderv]

Thank you. So this is currently a limitation as we have several issues related to this. We need bigger work on project context information to solves this. It will come in due time. Sorry about that.

[DOH-FAA3303]

No worries, thank you both!

[andrewheiss]

I just discovered a workaround for the deleting-PDF-images-too-soon issue! If you include keep-md: true in the global options, all the intermediate files hang around in between different output formats (see #8373 (comment)). You have to deal with leftover filename.html.md and filename.pdf.md files, but everything does end up rendering correctly. This works:

---
title: "Testing"

format: 
  html: default
  pdf: default
  pdf+toc:
    toc: true

keep-md: true
---

```{r}
plot(1:10)
```

[cscheid]

Yes, but do note that keep-md will also not delete the image_files folder (which would be redundant in case you have only pdf and pdf+option formats). That's partly the reason this bug is obnoxiously hard to fix: the set of files that needs to exist in one place or another is quite tricky to reason about in general.