Error when Rendering Quarto Document to pdf (Won't install xelatex)

R Markdown
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#1

I have used the basic function of RMarkdown before but am now delving into the world of Quarto. When I put together a document I was able to render it as an html but when I tried to render as a pdf it gave me this error...

processing file: FLOURISH_mailer.qmd
                                                                                                           
output file: FLOURISH_mailer.knit.md

pandoc 
  to: latex
  output-file: FLOURISH_mailer.tex
  standalone: true
  pdf-engine: xelatex
  variables:
    graphics: true
    tables: true
  default-image-extension: pdf
  
metadata
  documentclass: scrartcl
  classoption:
    - DIV=11
    - numbers=noendperiod
  papersize: letter
  header-includes:
    - '\KOMAoption{captions}{tableheading}'
  block-headings: true
  title: FLOURISH Data Summary
  editor: visual
  
running xelatex - 1
command xelatex not found, attempting install
finding package for xelatex
> 1 package to install
> installing xelatex (1 of 1)
ERROR: tlmgr returned a non zero status code
The system cannot find the path specified.

When I run the quarto list tools command in the terminal it shows tinytex as being up to data and v2303.05 being installed. My R version is 4.3.0 and my Rstudio version is 2023.03.1 Build 446.

I have also run tinytex::install_tinytex() and uninstalled tinytex and reinstalled it with the addition of the --update-path command.

It seems like maybe R is confused in finding the file path to some of the tinytex material but I am unsure of how to remedy it. Many of the other forums online related to similar problems have seemed pretty inconclusive so hoping that maybe there is another solution out there!

#2

You show us the output of the quarto processing.
What do you specify as input? Exactly the output statements?

Does it compile with

pdf-engine: pdflatex

? Because maybe you do not need specific xelatex functionality.

See also e.g. https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/issues/909

#3

Thanks for the reply @HanOostdijk .

To get the error above my header was...

 ---
title: "FLOURISH Data Summary"
format: pdf
editor: visual
---

when I replace format: pdf with pdf-engine: pdflatex it gives an output but in html instead of pdf?
Here is the output:

 processing file: FLOURISH_mailer.qmd
1/7                 
2/7 [Setup]         
3/7                 
4/7 [Soil M graph]  
5/7                 
6/7 [Soil Tempgraph]
7/7                 
output file: FLOURISH_mailer.knit.md

pandoc 
  to: html
  output-file: FLOURISH_mailer.html
  standalone: true
  section-divs: true
  html-math-method: mathjax
  wrap: none
  default-image-extension: png
  pdf-engine: pdflatex
  
metadata
  document-css: false
  link-citations: true
  date-format: long
  lang: en
  title: FLOURISH Data Summary
  editor: visual
  
Output created: FLOURISH_mailer.html

I also tried running tinytex::uninstall_tinytex() and then reinstalling the larger tinytex bundle with tinytex::install_tinytex(bundle = "TinyTeX-2") hoping that with more packages it would get rid of the problem but it still resulted in the original error when ran with format: pdf

I know there are workarounds but was just trying to figure out why the default rendering wasn't working.

#4

In the https://quarto.org/docs/reference/formats/pdf.html I see a separate format and pdf-engine option.
So I would expect something like

---
title: "My Document"
format: 
  pdf: 
    pdf-engine: pdflatex
---

Is this what you did? If you did not specify the format pdf I can imagine (but I am not sure) that html would be the default.