How can I change the placement of Table of Contents in a Quarto book project?

Question

I am using Quarto inside RStudio to create a book project. The output will be a pdf/LaTeX file. Quarto originally puts the Table of Content just after the title page. But I need to put the abstract, preface and acknowledgements first before the Table of Contents. How can I change this sequence? Is it possible to change this sequence using _quarto.yml file or do I need to change it through LaTeX?

Answer 1

You can do this using template-partials

To do that you need to create a before-body.tex file as a partial latex template and put all the necessary latex code that will go before the table of contents, list of figures, list of tables, and rest of the document.

---

before-body.tex

$if(has-frontmatter)$
\frontmatter
$endif$

$if(title)$
\maketitle
$endif$

\newpage

%----------------------------------------------
%   Abstract
%----------------------------------------------

\begin{center}
\Large{Abstract}
\end{center}

\vspace*{\baselineskip}

This is the Abstract part

\newpage

%----------------------------------------------
%   Preface
%----------------------------------------------

\begin{center}
\Large{Preface}
\end{center}

\vspace*{\baselineskip}

This is the Preface part

\newpage

%----------------------------------------------
%   Acknowledgement
%----------------------------------------------

\begin{center}
\Large{Acknowledgement}
\end{center}

\vspace*{\baselineskip}

This is the acknowledgement part

\newpage

---

Then to add this template, use the template-partials option in _quarto.yml

_quarto.yaml

project:
  type: book

book:
  title: "Quarto book"
  author: "Shafee"
  date: "7/31/2022"
  chapters:
    - index.qmd
    - intro.qmd

format:
  pdf:
    toc: true
    documentclass: scrreprt
    template-partials:
      - before-body.tex

---

Also, create the partial file named exactly as before-body.tex, since per the documentation,

Note that the name of the partial files is important. You choose which portion of the template to replace by providing a partial with that name.