Introduction to Quarto
Quarto is a complete tool for scientific writing. It works similarly as a Jupyter Notebook, except it can transform the content into any format you want—from PDFs and Word documents to slideshows and websites. The best part is, all you have to do is write Markdown. Write once, produce anything. You can find information on the basics of Markdown below.
Quarto is fantastically documented, and you can find enormous amounts of information on the website
Here is another great resource for learning Quart from the Center for Cancer Research
Creating Your Environment
The environment you choose is dependent largely on the language you plan to work in: R or Python:
- If you work in R, you should probably use R-studio.
- For information on working with Quarto in R-Studio go here.
- If you work in Python, you have a variety of choices. The most frequently used are Jupyter and VSCode.
- For more information on working with Quarto in Python, go here.
Working in Python
In order to work with Quarto in Python, you will need to download Python on your computer. So far, in Python, the CDA program has you to work in the Google Colab environment, but Google Colab only supports Jupyter Notebooks, and Jupyter Notebooks don’t work with Quarto. We will use Anaconda to manage your Python environment (Python version, libraries, etc.) and VSCode as the IDE (integrated development environment). Anaconda comes with a useful graphical user interface (GUI) to help you manage your environments, and VSCode will automatically recognize those environments (and let you choose from them) when running Python, Jupyter Notebooks, or Quarto files.
Software to Download.
Markdown Basics
For more details on the Quarto Flavor of Markdown, go here.
Headers
# This is a main header
## This is a second header
### Third header
#### Fourth header