Can I preview a presentation in the RStudio Presentation pane but render to a folder?

[donboyd5]

Hi. I apologize if this is answered in the docs somewhere but I have not found it.

• I'm developing a presentation (reveal.js) in RStudio
• quarto 0.9.374, RStudio daily-373
• Efficient workflow is to use visual editor, render on save, edit presentation, and see results in RStudio Presentation pane. (Or in browser if I need to see bigger version.)
• If I do this, it creates the presentation files and folders (index.html, index_files, styles.css, and maybe others) in my main project directory, which also has other files and folders (input data, etc.).
• Periodically I want to upload the presentation to Netlify to share draft with other people.
• For this purpose, it would be nice to have the presentation files and folders in a clean folder that has nothing else, (a) so I am sure of exactly what is needed for the presentation (I am not very familiar with html and websites), and (b) so that I can easily upload the entire folder to Netlify in one fell swoop (Netlify requires a folder, not individual files).
• Because the presentation files are mixed with other files in my project directory, that is awkward. I could manually create an upload folder and copy the necessary files to it when I am ready to share, but as I am not knowledgeable about websites I prefer for the system to tell me what must go into the folder.
• I tried adding output-dir: _site to _quarto.yml; when I do that, it will render to a folder, but it no longer will preview to RStudio's Presentation pane. That's inefficient for me because then I have to switch to a browser to see the preview, then back to RStudio to modify again.
• I thought there might be a way to NOT put output-dir: _site in the yml file, allowing me to see previews in the RStudio Presentation pane, and when I am ready to share a draft with others, issue a terminal command like quarto render index.qmd --output-dir: _site so that I have a clean folder of site files.
• However, that's a made-up option for quarto render and it doesn't work. I have looked for documentation of quarto render but haven't found it consolidated in one place (maybe I missed it), but in any event this doesn't work.

So that's my goal: Is there a way to preview a presentation in RStudio's Presentation pane, but when I am ready to share, render it to a folder that I can upload (e.g., to Netlify)?

I realize there is a simple workaround: I can add output-dir: _site to my _quarto.yml file, comment it out while previewing, and then uncomment it when it is time to have a clean folder for upload. But I'd love to remove that step from my workflow. I figure there are a lot of people creating presentations and uploading them to the web, and someone must have a better workflow. I'd much appreciate advice. Thanks.

[jjallaire]

If you create a website project and then make the index.qmd your presentation then things should work as you are hoping for. If you just have a _quarto.yml file as follows you should get the behavior you want:

project:
  type: website

[donboyd5]

Perfect!

Thanks. This will save me time and, more important, avoid potential errors on my part.