quarto::render() ignores the metadata_file argument

[ColinFay]

I have this small test1.qmd

---
title: 'test1'
---

## Quarto

Quarto enables you to weave together content and executable code into a finished presentation. To learn more about Quarto presentations see <https://quarto.org/docs/presentations/>.

and a yaml called 'test.yaml':

format: docx

If I pass this yaml to metadata_file, it's ignored :

> quarto::quarto_render("test1.qmd", metadata_file = "test.yaml")
pandoc 
  to: html
  output-file: test1.html
  standalone: true
  section-divs: true
  html-math-method: mathjax
  wrap: none
  default-image-extension: png
  
metadata
  document-css: false
  link-citations: true
  date-format: long
  lang: en
  title: test1
  
Output created: test1.html

[cderv]

This is happening with Quarto CLI too so this is not a quarto_render() issue

❯ quarto render index.qmd --metadata-file test.yml
pandoc 
  to: html
  output-file: index.html
  standalone: true
  section-divs: true
  html-math-method: mathjax
  wrap: none
  default-image-extension: png

metadata
  document-css: false
  link-citations: true
  date-format: long
  lang: en
  title: test1

Output created: index.html

I believe this is quite specific to format key, or other special configuration

Possibly related to this:

• Defining format in metadata-file does not work to overwrite global config quarto-cli#6932
• metadata override through CLI flags is inconsitent quarto-cli#6123

The issue title is a bit too strong probably 😉 try this in your test.yml

toc: true

and you'll see a TOC in your HTML file

so the R package is working, but this is a problem in Quarto CLI.

[cderv]

To be totally clear, the problem is that you can't use metadata-file to change the default format.

Format are merged in a certain way and format: html is still the default, unless changed directly in document, or in _quarto.yml

Try this for test.yml

format: 
  docx:
    toc: true

and then quarto::quarto_render("index.qmd", metadata_file = "test.yml", output_format = "docx")

You'll see a toc in your output, showing the file is taken into account.

quarto-dev/quarto-cli#6932 is about this, but this is not easy question about the design for format key.

Hope it clarifies