Book projects don't generate html for linked pages not explicitly included

[richardsprague]

On a website version of my project, all internal links resolve correctly, whether they're explicitly in my contents or not. But the same is not true when rendering the exact same project as a book.

Here's _quarto.yml:

project:
  title: "My Project"
  type: website
  output-dir: docs


book:
  title: "This is a book"
  chapters:
    - index.qmd

website:
  title: "Sample Website"
  sidebar:
    contents:
      - section: "Basics"
        contents:
        - index.qmd

and here's index.qmd:

---
title: index.qmd
---
This is the main index.qmd
and here's a link to [about.md](about.md)

Note the link to the separate about.md, which is not explicitly included in the contents for either book or website format.

When I render this as a website, the about link correctly displays as html. But as a book, I see only the original markdown.

Is this by design? I'd like to switch back and forth between book mode and website mode, but this won't let me do that.

[rgaiacs]

Hi @richardsprague. Thanks for the great question.

A book has a linear navigation and a website has a non-linear navigation. Because of this difference, a quarto website project will render "all" .qmd files to HTML but a quarto book project will only render the .rmd files that you listed in the contents.