Quarto 1.4

Quarto 1.4 is out! Over the last few weeks, they have been pushing quite few updates, and finally they have released version 1.4.

What is quite interesting to me is that this version includes a new feature that I have been waiting for a while: Multi source cross-referencing!

I have been using Quarto for some time now, and one of the things I noticed is that it was very easy to add titles and cross-references to tables as long as they were formated as markdown tables.

However, as you may now, markdown tables are not very flexible. Better options include HTML tables, and even better, LaTeX tables. Unfortunately, there was no easy way to reference those kinds of tables using the @ref syntax. Looking at other people’s questions and solutions, they all seemed a bit complicated to me. (specially those that involved using LaTeX commands).

But now, with version 1.4, it seems very easy to reference tables that are not markdown tables!

Let’s see how it works!

Setup

To do this, I will produce a simple regression using Stata, and export it as markdown, HTML, and LaTeX tables using esttab¹.

*| code-fold: false
*| echo: true
frause oaxaca, clear
qui:reg  lnwage educ exper tenure female
est sto m1
qui:reg  lnwage educ exper tenure female age agesq married divorced
est sto m2

esttab m1 m2 using "reg_md", wide se replace md
esttab m1 m2 using "reg_html", wide se replace htm
esttab m1 m2 using "reg_tex", wide se replace tex

The output of the code is not usable right away, as it has some minor issues. For example, the markdown table has an extra line that needs to be removed.

Markdown table

For the next I will make it simple, using what I think is the easiest cross reference the tables:

::: {#tbl-table1}
{{< include reg_md.md >}}
Table made with markdown
:::

General syntax:

• line 1 indicates we will be creating table that could be referenced using @tbl-table1 code.
• line 2 request to “include” the markdown table file.
• line 3 is the title of this table

The result is the following table:

Table 1: Table made with markdown

	(1)		(2)
educ	0.0848***	(0.00519)	0.0644***	(0.00508)
exper	0.0111***	(0.00154)	-0.000311	(0.00181)
tenure	0.00771***	(0.00188)	0.00672***	(0.00190)
female	-0.0841***	(0.0251)	-0.160***	(0.0243)
age			0.113***	(0.00814)
agesq			-0.00126***	(0.0000976)
married			-0.0224	(0.0294)
divorced			0.0719	(0.0412)
_cons	2.213***	(0.0683)	0.311*	(0.149)
N	1434		1434

Standard errors in parentheses
^* p < 0.05, ^** p < 0.01, ^*** p < 0.001

This one was already feasible before however.

HTML table

Now, let’s try with an HTML table. The syntax is very similar:

    ::: {#tbl-table2}
    ````{=html}
    {{< include reg_html.html >}}
    ````
    Table made with markdown
    :::

with the following result:

Table 2: Table made with HTML

	(1)		(2)
	lnwage		lnwage
educ	0.0848***	(0.00519)	0.0644***	(0.00508)
exper	0.0111***	(0.00154)	-0.000311	(0.00181)
tenure	0.00771***	(0.00188)	0.00672***	(0.00190)
female	-0.0841***	(0.0251)	-0.160***	(0.0243)
age			0.113***	(0.00814)
agesq			-0.00126***	(0.0000976)
married			-0.0224	(0.0294)
divorced			0.0719	(0.0412)
_cons	2.213***	(0.0683)	0.311*	(0.149)
N	1434		1434
Standard errors in parentheses * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.001

Now, there is a small difference in the produced table because how esttab produces the HTML table. Neverthless, the table creation and naming works!

Also, notice that I’m adding a code chunk =html, so the information can be read correctly.

LaTeX table

Finally, let’s try with a LaTeX table. The syntax is very similar:

::: {#tbl-table3}
{{< include reg_tex.tex >}}
Table made with Latex
:::

with the following result:

Table 3: Table made with Latex

Ahh! seems this is not working as HTML! The reason is that Latex tables do not render in html. However if you look into the pdf version, you will see that the table is there, and it is correctly named!

Cross-referencing

As you can see Table 1 was done with md, Table 2 with html and Table 3 with LaTeX.

Footnotes

1. esttab is part of estout package by Ben Jann.