Consider bundling a PDF engine such as tinytex or prompting installation

[juliasilge]

We bundle Quarto itself, but Quarto doesn't come with any TeX PDF engine built in, as we see being run into in #5539. You cannot render to PDF with only the components that we currently provide. We could bundle a PDF engine, such as tinytex.

Quarto does bundle typst, but that is a different format so I don't think solves folks' problem here.

[SuhasSrinivasan]

Hi @juliasilge ,

Is this planned for any upcoming releases?
This would be very helpful since PDF plot generation is a staple for making manuscript figures.

[juliasilge]

We've got two more folks running into this in #9081.

At least one of those folks was using the R package like quarto::quarto_render() and saw that rendering from the command line does work, which means the R package was choosing a different version of Quarto than the command line. 😬

[kylebutts]

@juliasilge I am having reports from students running into the same problem; FYI

[juliasilge]

@kylebutts Oh yeah, I can definitely see that happening.

Are you wanting to have students render from R using quarto::quarto_render()? Or for example, using this button (or the command palette or the terminal):

I think the best workaround for now is to close Positron, install Quarto totally fresh, do quarto install tinytex, and then try again. This means you would be not be using the bundled Quarto inside of Positron, and I do not think using the R package to render will work, based on what we are hearing in quarto-dev/quarto-r#283.

[kylebutts]

@juliasilge Thanks for the reply! The button yeah; I have them using format: typst for now. So not a huge deal, but I might have them try the quarto install tinytex. I don't have my own windows computer to try, though.

[juliasilge]

Originally posted by @CorradoLanera in #9081 (comment):

2. I noticed that the file is missing, but/because it is empty, and in the folder mentioned (C:\Program Files\Positron\resources\app\quarto\share\formats\pdf\pandoc), when compared to what should be its source (https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc), it misses three files (before-bib.tex, after-body.tex, and before-title.tex), all of which are empty. So, it appears to me that it is not an issue of Positron or its Quarto or something involving "Positron/Quarto as they are installed cannot create pdf" but only that when cloning that folder in the installation process, all the empty files have been totally skipped! Moreover, I have manually created them (empty) in my C:\Program Files\Positron\resources\app\quarto\share\formats\pdf\pandoc directory, and everything worked perfectly, i.e., I can compile PDFs without installing/changing anything else. (so that it enforced my guess that it is only a matter of copying all the files during the installation process).

That is a pretty interesting report. 👀

[cderv]

As I shared in #5539 (comment)

the current quarto installation inside Positron is missing some expected files. Those files are empty and size is zero, and somehow they are not there in the version provide by Positron

There are three empty file that should be in share\formats\pdf\pandoc\ and there are not inside the Quarto version bundled in Positron

❯ ls C:\Users\chris\scoop\apps\positron-daily\current\resources\app\quarto\share\formats\pdf\pandoc\

    Directory: C:\Users\chris\scoop\apps\positron-daily\current\resources\app\quarto\share\formats\pdf\pandoc

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            368 after-header-includes.latex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            787 babel-lang.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            140 before-body.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            635 biblio-config.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            338 biblio.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40           1265 citations.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40           1489 common.latex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            261 doc-class.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40           3481 font-settings.latex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            687 fonts.latex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            583 graphics.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            653 hypersetup.latex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40           6482 latex.common
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40           2317 latex.template
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40           1595 pandoc.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            312 passoptions.latex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            653 tables.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40           1083 template.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40             83 tightlist.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            397 title.tex
-a---          03/10/2025    07:40            289 toc.tex

compared to

❯ ls C:\Users\chris\scoop\apps\quarto\current\share\formats\pdf\pandoc\

    Directory: C:\Users\chris\scoop\apps\quarto\current\share\formats\pdf\pandoc

Mode                 LastWriteTime         Length Name
----                 -------------         ------ ----
-----          29/09/2025    23:14              0 after-body.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            368 after-header-includes.latex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            787 babel-lang.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14              0 before-bib.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            140 before-body.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14              0 before-title.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            635 biblio-config.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            338 biblio.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14           1265 citations.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14           1489 common.latex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            261 doc-class.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14           3481 font-settings.latex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            687 fonts.latex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            583 graphics.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            653 hypersetup.latex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14           6482 latex.common
-----          29/09/2025    23:14           2317 latex.template
-----          29/09/2025    23:14           1595 pandoc.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            312 passoptions.latex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            653 tables.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14           1083 template.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14             83 tightlist.tex
-----          29/09/2025    23:14            397 title.tex

See the 3 files with size 0. Those are empty template that are expected to be present.

Without those three files (which are empty Pandoc's template), the rendering to format: pdf can't work as Quarto template will make Pandoc look for those files.

It seems a problem that Positron bundling processing has removed those files. They should be present inside our various installers and they are present in all installations.

If this is a problem for some reason to included those files, then we need to consider this on Quarto side. But it was fine until now to include empty files.

Quarto doesn't come with any TeX PDF engine built in, as we see being run into in #5539.
(...)
We've got two more folks running into this in #9081.

I don't think #5539 nor #9081 is related to the fact that TinyTeX is not bundled. Both of them are hitting the error of missing template file. Adding the template back should solve it.

Quarto does bundle typst,

We do bundle typst by convenience because it lightweight than LaTeX. For LaTeX we do provide quarto install tinytex which install TinyTeX distribution to be used with Quarto. Working with a system installed version of LaTeX should work fine too.

This means you would be not be using the bundled Quarto inside of Positron, and I do not think using the R package to render will work, based on what we are hearing in quarto-dev/quarto-r#283.

quarto::quarto_render() will use a quarto version found on PATH. If inside Positron environment, the bundled Quarto version is not set on PATH, I need to "teach" the R package about finding bundled version within positron maybe... But as users seems to hit the error of missing template, it seems quarto_render() does use positron version already.