How do I create a title page using typst and quarto markdown?

[Amogh-Joshi]

Description

I want to create a title page. The end product is "pdf". I found a title page that I like: https://typst.app/project/rMobzKMab8wdFrb_MWiW0z

My question is: How do I use this as a template? I've looked at a couple of videos (e.g., using _brand.yml) but I don't get it. Help?

---
title: "Exploring Typst Workflow"
author: "Test"
date: "`r Sys.Date()`"
format:
  typst:
    toc: true
    toc-depth: 2
    toc-title: Contents
    toc-indent: 1.5em
    papersize: us-letter
    margin:
      x: 1cm
      y: 1cm
---

# Introduction

This report analyzes the **Gapminder dataset**, focusing on **GDP per capita**, **life expectancy**, and **population trends** over time.


```{r}
#| include: false

# Load required libraries
library(tidyverse)
library(gapminder)


```

The plot below shows the relationship between GDP per capita and life expectancy.

```{r}
#| echo: false

ggplot(gapminder, aes(x = gdpPercap, y = lifeExp, color = continent)) +
  geom_point(alpha = 0.7) +
  scale_x_log10() +  # Log scale for better visualization
  labs(title = "GDP per Capita vs. Life Expectancy",
       x = "GDP per Capita (log scale)",
       y = "Life Expectancy") +
  theme_minimal()

```


# Conclusion

The plot above illustrates the relationship between GDP per capita and life expectancy across different continents. The following observations can be made:
- Countries with higher GDP per capita tend to have higher life expectancy.
- Life expectancy has generally increased over time in most countries.
- The wealthiest countries in 2007 had GDP per capita exceeding $40,000.

[mcanouil]

Could you properly format your post using code blocks for code and terminal outputs? Thanks.
If your code contains code blocks, you need to enclose it using more backticks, i.e., usually four ````.
See https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#formatting-make-githubs-markdown-work-for-us.

you really should not be doing that in Quarto.

date: "`r Sys.Date()`"

Use the native feature instead: https://quarto.org/docs/reference/dates.html

To customise the templates, see the partials/templates documentation: https://quarto.org/docs/journals/templates.html

[mcanouil]

You need to read or reread the documentation about the templating syntax (Quarto and Pandoc), look as suggested into Quarto extensions providing Typst formats, learn more about Typst itself.

[mcanouil]

Take a look at this extension for example: https://github.com/quarto-ext/typst-templates/tree/main/ams/_extensions/ams

[Amogh-Joshi]

Telling someone to read document isn't helpful. I'm here because I wasn't able to fix the issue and I don't want to read hundreds of pages of document to get a solution to my problem.

I figured out the issue. I just needed to include $body at the end of the template.

[cderv]

I figured out the issue. I just needed to include $body at the end of the template.

If you only do this, you will loose some feature of quarto for sure because you replace the whole template

format:
  typst:
    template: cover_page.typ

You can see at https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/src/resources/formats/typst/pandoc/quarto/template.typ that our full template is much more complicated to handle Quarto features.

To tweak only part of the template, Quarto has a system of partials: https://quarto.org/docs/journals/templates.html#typst-partials
which allows the modification of part of the full template. And there is also a system of includes: https://quarto.org/docs/output-formats/typst.html#includes

When you need to modify the default template, you need to play with that.

1. Identify which part you need to modify
2. if a partials, modify and provide new partials using template-partials config key
3. if you need to modify full template, tweak the template provided by quarto directly.

For what you need to do, I don't think we have a partial yet just for that. This is the topic of issue shared to you above

• Extract typst title block into a partial #11710

typst-template.typ could be of interest.

Anyhow, if you are happy with the result - awesome !! But just a warning that by replacing the the full default template by yours

which I understand could be something like

#let title-page(title: [], author: [], body) = {
  set page(fill: rgb("#FFD700"), margin: (top: 1.5in, rest: 2in))
  set text(font: "Source Sans Pro", size: 14pt)
  set heading(numbering: "1.1.1")
  line(start: (0%, 0%), end: (8.5in, 0%), stroke: (thickness: 2pt))
  
  align(horizon + left)[
    #text(size: 24pt, title)
    #v(1em)
    #text(size: 16pt, author) 
    #v(2em)
  ]
  
  align(bottom + left)[#datetime.today().display()]
  pagebreak()
  set page(fill: none, margin: auto)
  align(horizon, outline(indent: auto))
  body
}

#show: body => title-page(
  title: [$title$],
  author: [$author$],
  body
)

$body$

lots of Quarto and Pandoc feature won't work.

I hope it helps understand a bit more the logic. We don't have a title page insertion logic yet (this is part of ideas behind having a Quarto Book with Typst output, but we're not there yet) - so this is all manual process, that require a bit of reading, and practice.

[cscheid]

I'm here because I wasn't able to fix the issue and I don't want to read hundreds of pages of document to get a solution to my problem.

This is not a constructive comment, and I want to ask you to do better. We put a lot of effort into our documentation and I genuinely believe Quarto's documentation is top-notch. On top of it, there are only a small number of us. So yes, we do ask you to read the documentation before asking questions. Please keep that in mind in the future.

[rainer-rq-koelle]

@Amogh-Joshi and others that come here based on the subject of adding a title page (and possibly back cover) to a typst pdf report. I am also new to R+Quarto+typst, and while I concur that the documentation is excellent (thanks @cscheid) I struggle often with trying to understand how to work on the templates or work with partials. My "painless" approach to putting a cover (and back cover) to a pdf report is actually moving outside Quarto.

Just pdf your cover(s) and plug them to the report with {pdftools}.
E.g. with below I add the front-cover from a figures subdirectory to the report rendered into the docs subdirectory.

library(pdftools)

pdf_combine(
  c(
        "./figures/the-awesome-front-cover.pdf"
      , "./docs/the-report-with-no-cover.pdf"
      # possible back cover ....
    ), 
  output = "./docs/the-final-report-with-cover.pdf"
  )

This does the magic (at least for me).

[christopherkenny]

This popped up for me, so sharing an example for the cover page, at least. In my preprint template ctk-article, I have a cover page that will print the title, author info, abstract, and key words. If a yaml option of title-page is set, then it introduces a new page after it and fixes the numbering.

Setting that up is relatively simple. You need to add:

1. a pandoc if statement to your typst-show.typ partial saying:

$if(title-page)$
  title-page: $title-page$,
$endif$

2. Then you need to print whatever you want on the title page. You can make that conditional if you want, just wrapping it like so:

if title-page {
  #text(weight: "bold", size: 30pt)[#title]
}

3. Then you want to (probably) reset the page numbering so that the title isn't page 1 in typst-template.typ.

  if title-page {
    counter(page).update(n => n - 1)
  }

4. Finally, you need to trigger a new page. I do this by changing the set page characteristics in typst-template.typ which will trigger a new page.

set page(numbering: "1")

If you aren't changing the page, then insert one manually, likely with weak: true in case you're already on a new page.

pagebreak(weak: true)

To add an end page, based on the template, it looks like you want a partial to pass to include-after.

This should give you enough information to know where to place your typst code from your title-page function in a partial.