Preliminary Support for Typst in knitr | /en/2026/04/knitr-typst/

I fully agree that HTML is the most powerful and elegant solution, but with one caveat: it must be self-contained in one file that requires no server. Even requesting users to unzip a packed version is not acceptable.

I was surprised to read on a GitHub thread from the Quarto team that we should expect Quarto HTML to always require a server in the future.

This would be a deal-breaker for me. Customers expect the report to be shareable like a PDF or DOCX file. They will never agree to store it on a public server, not even one with maximum security, and they will only rarely accept installing it on the intranet.

Ten years ago, everything had to be a .docx because higher-ups wanted to make comments in the text. Big bosses required it on paper, but that was a bit extreme. Recently, I was surprised when I wanted to try my first large Typset project (500+ pages) and the pharma bosses were ready to accept a PDF-only solution. PDF editors seem to be much more common nowadays.

There should be a warning for HTML that says, "This feature will disallow the creation of a standalone HTML."

What's missing is: A commenting feature, like in Word or PDF. Without this feature, higher-ups will never accept HTML. Nowadays, when I send them HTML, they print it out, comment on the paper, and then scan it!