quarto-dev / quarto-dev/quarto-cli

[Book] Cross reference doesn't work if `output-file` is used

Open
#13,076 14 comments 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

books bug
Dominant language
JavaScript
Stars
6k
Forks
458
Avg merge
1d 9h
Merged PRs (30d)
41

Description

I have:
  • searched the issue tracker for similar issues
  • installed the latest version of Quarto CLI
  • formatted my issue following the Bug Reports guide
Bug description

Cross reference is unable to find any reference of content of a page/chapter which's output filename has been changed by the user.

Index file

---
output-file: index-es
---

# Chapter 1

This is an example.

## Section 1.1 {#sec-test}

Awesome section.

Test file

# Chapter 2

I would like to ref. @sec-test

I think that if the bug is not fixable, we can update the documentation warning the user for this constraint.
I think that this issue mainly can happen only in book projects.

Steps to reproduce

No response

Actual behavior

No response

Expected behavior

No response

Your environment

No response

Quarto check output
quarto check

[✓] Checking environment information...
      Quarto cache location: /Users/iagoba/Library/Caches/quarto
[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
      Pandoc version 3.6.3: OK
      Dart Sass version 1.85.1: OK
      Deno version 1.46.3: OK
      Typst version 0.13.0: OK
[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK
[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
      Version: 1.7.32
      Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
      TinyTeX: v2025.03.10
      Chromium: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
      Using: TinyTex
      Path: /Users/iagoba/Library/TinyTeX/bin/universal-darwin
      Version: 2025

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
      Using: Chrome found on system
      Path: /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
      Source: MacOS known location

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
      Version: 3.13.2
      Path: /opt/homebrew/opt/python@3.13/bin/python3.13
      Jupyter: (None)

      Jupyter is not available in this Python installation.
      Install with python3 -m pip install jupyter

[✓] Checking R installation...........(None)

      Unable to locate an installed version of R.
      Install R from https://cloud.r-project.org/

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Reproduce the issue with the provided Index file using output-file: index-es and the Test file's @sec-test reference. Start by tracing Quarto book cross-reference handling for renamed output files; done means the reference resolves correctly, or the book documentation clearly warns about this constraint.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
markdown
Domain
documentation
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
3/5
Estimated time
1-2 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
35/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.