Manually run tlmgr install

[kenjisato]

Description

I’d love a way to easily install missing LaTeX packages directly from Quarto, without having to manually find and run tlmgr.

Why?

I write in Japanese and need the haranoaji package for LaTeX, but Quarto can't install it automatically because the error message isn’t typical. I’m also not sure if haranoaji is the only missing package.

Right now, installing LaTeX packages is tricky because:

1. The TinyTeX path is hard to find (I know quarto check shows it, but still…).
2. There's no simple way to install missing packages directly from Quarto.

I do know a way to do it manually, but it’s not straightforward, and I imagine others might struggle with it too.

Sorry if there’s already an official way to do this! I couldn’t find one, but I’d appreciate any pointers if it exists.

Thanks for considering this!

[mcanouil]

How did you install TinyTex?

That exactly what Quarto is doing right now, i.e., detecting missing packages and installing them.
Any small reproducible example where you don't see the automatic installation?

---

You can share a self-contained "working" (reproducible) Quarto document using the following syntax, i.e., using more backticks than you have in your document (usually four ````).
See https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#small-is-beautiful-aim-for-a-single-document-with-10-lines.

If you have multiple files (and if it is absolutely required to have multiple files), please share as a Git repository.

R	Python
````qmd --- title: "Reproducible Quarto Document" format: html engine: knitr --- This is a reproducible Quarto document. {{< lipsum 1 >}} ```{r} x <- c(1, 2, 3, 4, 5) y <- c(1, 4, 9, 16, 25) plot(x, y) ``` {#fig-placeholder} {{< lipsum 1 >}} The end after @fig-placeholder. ````	````qmd --- title: "Reproducible Quarto Document" format: html engine: jupyter --- This is a reproducible Quarto document. {{< lipsum 1 >}} ```{python} import matplotlib.pyplot as plt x = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] y = [1, 4, 9, 16, 25] plt.plot(x, y) plt.show() ``` {#fig-placeholder} {{< lipsum 1 >}} The end after @fig-placeholder. ````

Additionally and if not already given, please share the output of quarto check within a code block (i.e., using three backticks ```txt), see https://quarto.org/bug-reports.html#check.

[cderv]

I have the same font-not-found error with tinytex and rmarkdown.

So as I expect, this is an error in the log that is unknown by TinyTeX and thus also Quarto (we try to sync special cases about log parsing).

The following lines indicate that the HaranoAji fonts are missing,

We can probably use this, and indicate to use haranoaji. I'll look at it. Thanks !

[cderv]

@kenjisato I opened in TinyTeX

• missing font not detected for missing package haranoaji rstudio/tinytex#465

Once solved there I'll adapt our missing font detection in Quarto accordingly.

• missing font not detected for missing package haranoaji #12194

Thanks for the report.

[cderv]

In next quarto version, haranoaji should be installed after missing font has been detected correctly. Thanks again for the report ! You helped us fix this in both Quarto and tinytex

[kenjisato]

Thank you so much for the quick fix! This will make things much smoother for me and others writing in Japanese. 🙌

[cderv]

Thanks a lot for the report. We wouldn't have found it without you.

[jpthiele]

On a similar note, I encountered the problem that quarto and/or tinytex was unable to figure out that babel-german needs to be installed when \usepackage[ngerman]{babel} is called (at least from within a documentclass, in my case lni)
In CI I used the update path option to call tlmgr directly but on my machine I don't want to mess/mix with the texlive installation already present, so that is not an option.

[mcanouil]

Would you mind sharing a concrete small and reproducible example where this occurs using Quarto 1.7.31? Others have been using ngerman and hyphenation and did not get an install issue.

See for example:

• How to combine the "lang"-Option with the "babel"-package #3844 (reply in thread)

[cderv]

On a similar note, I encountered the problem that quarto and/or tinytex was unable to figure out that babel-german needs to be installed when \usepackage[ngerman]{babel} is called (at least from within a documentclass, in my case lni)

To add some context,

• TinyTeX (the TeX Live distribution) won't install any package automatically.
• tinytex R 📦 and Quarto LaTeX engine do by looking at the error in log file, and try to guess the missing package to install.

To confirm the problem, we need at least the .log file, but the example is definitely better.
This will also ensure that the configuration is expected.

Then, we need to see if this reproduces with both tools, or just one.

Thank you.

[jpthiele]

Here is the MWE

---
title: "The erroneous search for ngerman.ldf "
format:
  pdf:
    documentclass: lni
    pdf-engine: pdflatex
---
# MWE
lorem ipsum

and the important part from the log is

! Package babel Error: Unknown option 'ngerman'. Either you misspelled it
(babel)                or the language definition file ngerman.ldf
(babel)                was not found.
(babel)                There is a locale ini file for this language.
(babel)                If it’s the main language, try adding `provide=*'
(babel)                to the babel package options.

Using tlmgr to install babel-german removes that particular error.

All following errors are fixed in the full document using LaTeX commands in a full template.

[cderv]

Thanks !

I can reproduce.

I am pretty sure we handle variations of this message as we have specific handling for ngerman, but maybe we are not considering this specific Babel Error one.

So this is probably something we can do. I'll have a look.

For more context on language support in Quarto and Pandoc, here are some considerations that may have some impact:

Pandoc did update its babel support (jgm/pandoc@9be0963), and now the language is passed the language in documentclass.

We have this in the bundled template

quarto-cli/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc/doc-class.tex

Lines 5 to 7 in dcb7c8c

	$if(babel-lang)$
	$babel-lang$,
	$endif$

and this other file too: https://github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli/blob/main/src/resources/formats/pdf/pandoc/babel-lang.tex

When you are writing in a different language, the lang option is supposed to be set.
So lang: de would activate the different babel-related stuff in the template.

For example this simple doc

---
title: "The erroneous search for ngerman.ldf "
format: pdf
keep-tex: true
lang: de
---

# MWE

lorem ipsum

would show this in the latex template

\documentclass[
  ngerman,
  letterpaper,
  DIV=11]{scrartcl}

and then just use \usepackage[bidi=default]{babel} later.

[cderv]

• Quarto does not detect missing package from this LaTeX babel error  #12732