Allow remote files to be included via include-before-*

[jbullock35]

Description

Quarto 1.3.450 can't handle a YAML header like this:

---
title: "My Quarto document"
format:
  html:
    include-before-body: https://example.com/myMathjax.js
---

The problem is that the argument to include-before-body is remote. My understanding is that pandoc itself can't handle remote files as arguments to the include-before options, and that this is why Quarto chokes in such cases.

But R Markdown can handle remote includes. For example, this YAML header poses no problems to R Markdown:

---
title: "My R Markdown document"
output:
  html_document:
    includes:
      before_body: https://example.com/myMathjax.js
---

I gather that the remote include works for R Markdown because knitr downloads the remote file before passing it to pandoc. Can something similar be done for Quarto, so that Quarto can handle remote files?

[mcanouil]

The idea with Quarto is really focused on making the file/project reproducible and self-contained.
There are already few discussions about this kind of feature request.
If you have resources like this, the way to go is to create your extension format which has the proper include.

[mcanouil]

By the way, you can leverage the projects script to retrieve remote content yourself, see https://quarto.org/docs/projects/scripts.html#pre-and-post-render.
This is the responsibility of reproducibility falls on you and depending on your goal it might be enough.

[jbullock35]

Yes, I take your point. But how does limiting the include-before-body option (or any other include option) to local files do any better? After all, there's no check that the local file has changed, either. If you want someone else to render your QMD file and get the same results, you'll need to share both your QMD file and your include file with him. This process gets a little easier if your include file is remote—in that case, you need to share only the QMD file.

Of course, if you use the self-contained option, your rendered HTML file can be shared and displayed by anyone. It won't change even if the include file changes. But that's true whether the include file is local or remote.

[mcanouil]

You don't have to worry about file changes if you share Git repository.

Sharing only part of the source code is not sharing the source code.

Also note that the self-contained option was deprecated a year ago, the correct option is embed-resources, but don't make your source code reproducible. It just make the rendered document more portable which has nothing to do with reproducibility.

[jbullock35]

You don't have to worry about file changes if you share Git repository.

Yes. I've been bearing in mind the case—sadly common in academia—in which collaborators don't know how to use version control and aren't going to learn.

Thanks again for all of your help.

[mcanouil]

in which collaborators don't know how to use version control and aren't going to learn.

Coming from academia, even before that, to contribute to a Quarto document they are going to learn Markdown or use an IDE compatible with Quarto Visual Editor, so the issue is less about remote files, etc. than teach collaborators to work with Quarto itself.

[jimjam-slam]

@jbullock35 I believe the Includes options can all take either file key or a text key. So could you try something like the following?

---
title: "My Quarto document"
format:
  html:
    include-before-body:
      text: |
        <script src="https://example.com/myMathjax.js"></script>
---