How do I suppress redundant lot (list of table) entries in quarto book pdf output?

[cderv]

Discussed in #11865

^{Originally posted by bergsmat January 15, 2025}

Description

I'm using Quarto 1.6.39 with RStudio 2024.12.0 and R 4.4.2.

I created an instance of the quarto book template, then edited _quarto.yml like this:

pdf:
    documentclass: scrreprt
    toc: false
    lot: true

In intro.qmd I appended this:

```{r}
#| label: tbl-longtable
#| tbl-cap: A Long Table
set.seed(0)
knitr::kable(
  data.frame(
    index = 1:20, 
    letter = sample(letters, 20, replace = TRUE)
  )
)
```

Then I executed quarto render at the terminal prompt.

By design, my table spans multiple pages. What I notice is that by default I get a repeated table caption on each page: Table 1.1: A Long Table and each of these is included in the list of tables with correct page numbers, but the hyperlinks in the list of tables all point to the first page.

I have no objection to the repeated table captions, but I do not find the repetition in the lot to be helpful. How can I suppress the redundant (and possibly incorrectly-linked) entries in the list of tables? (I could not find an existing issue or discussion on this topic.)

[cderv]

More info on this:

This is not tied to book. It can be reproduced with

---
title: "Tables with weird numbering"
format: pdf
keep-md: true
keep-tex: true
lot: true
---

```{r}
#| label: tbl-longtable
#| tbl-cap: A Long Table
set.seed(0)
knitr::kable(
  data.frame(
    index = 1:20, 
    letter = sample(letters, 20, replace = TRUE)
  )
)
```

I'll see if I can reduce to a Markdown only reprex. knitr here does produce Markdown table.

So problem is that we process this table, and probably add the caption. THough

• pandoc does create \longtable
• With longtable \caption needs to be inserted the right way to avoid repetition. that is

\caption{caption text}
\endfirsthead
\caption*{caption text} % or `\caption[]{caption text}`

something like this using \endfirsthead

[bergsmat]

Thanks for looking into this! The importance of \endfirsthead sounds familiar. My workgroup encountered a non-Quarto problem today where separate pdf hyperref links mistakenly pointed to the same location; the solution involved deliberate coordination of \renewcommand{\thetable} and \renewcommand{\theHtable}. (Possibly unrelated.)

[cderv]

Note to self: I don't understand yet why this happens only for Markdown generated by computation (in .cell div) and not to markdown table directly.

Our Lua Process is not the same looking at lua trace operation, and I don't know why 🤔

---
title: "Tables with weird numbering"
format: pdf
keep-md: true
keep-tex: true
lot: true
---

::: {#tbl-longtable}

| index|letter |
|-----:|:------|
|     1|n      |
|     2|y      |
|     3|d      |
|     4|g      |
|     5|a      |
|     6|b      |
|     7|w      |
|     8|k      |
|     9|n      |
|    10|r      |
|    11|s      |
|    12|a      |
|    13|u      |
|    14|u      |
|    15|j      |
|    16|v      |
|    17|n      |
|    18|j      |
|    19|g      |
|    20|i      |
|    21|o      |
|    22|u      |
|    23|e      |
|    24|i      |
|    25|y      |
|    26|n      |
|    27|e      |
|    28|e      |
|    29|b      |
|    30|j      |

A Long Table
:::

[cderv]

So when Markdown table is provided we do go there and return content as is

quarto-cli/src/resources/filters/customnodes/floatreftarget.lua

Lines 327 to 337 in ca05876

	elseif float.content.t == "Table" and float_type == "tbl" then -- float.parent_id is nil here
	-- special-case the situation where the figure is Table and the content is Table
	--
	-- just return the table itself with the caption inside the table
	-- FIXME how about tables in margin figures?
	caption_cmd_name = "caption"
	float.content.caption.long = float.caption_long
	float.content.attr = pandoc.Attr(float.identifier, float.classes or {}, float.attributes or {})
	return float.content

But when the content is inside a .cell-output-display go in later part when Table is converted to raw LaTeX by Pandoc

quarto-cli/src/resources/filters/customnodes/floatreftarget.lua

Lines 395 to 445 in ca05876

	float.content = _quarto.ast.walk(quarto.utils.as_blocks(float.content), {
	traverse = "topdown",
	Div = function(div)
	if div.classes:find_if(isStarEnv) then
	return _quarto.ast.walk(div, {
	Table = function(tbl)
	if float.type == "Table" then
	figEnv = "table*"
	else
	figEnv = "figure*"
	end
	local result = latexTabular(tbl)
	return result
	end
	}), false
	end
	end,
	Table = function(tbl)
	local cites = pandoc.List({})
	local guid_id = global_table_guid_id
	local uuid = "85b77c8a-261c-4f58-9b04-f21c67e0a758"
	tbl = _quarto.ast.walk(tbl, {
	Cite = function(cite)
	cites:insert(cite)
	guid_id = guid_id + 1
	-- this uuid is created a little strangely here
	-- to ensure that no generated uuid will be a prefix of another,
	-- which would cause our regex replacement to pick up the wrong
	-- uuid
	return pandoc.Str(uuid .. "-" .. guid_id .. "-" .. uuid)
	end
	})
	local raw_output = pandoc.RawBlock("latex", pandoc.write(pandoc.Pandoc({tbl}), "latex"))
	if #cites > 0 then
	local local_guid_id = global_table_guid_id
	local result = pandoc.Blocks({
	_quarto.ast.make_scaffold(pandoc.Span, cites:map(function(cite)
	local_guid_id = local_guid_id + 1
	return _quarto.ast.make_scaffold(pandoc.Span, pandoc.Inlines({
	pandoc.RawInline("latex", "%quarto-define-uuid: " .. uuid .. "-" .. local_guid_id .. "-" .. uuid .. "\n"),
	cite,
	pandoc.RawInline("latex", "\n%quarto-end-define-uuid\n")
	}))
	end)), raw_output})
	global_table_guid_id = global_table_guid_id + #cites
	return result
	else
	return raw_output
	end
	end
	})

and then this is processed (fixup) differently leading to the issue seen above (with double caption, and double TOC)

I still need to understand which is the correct patch for such table.

I am starting to think that .cell-output-display shouldn't be in the output.

Using output: asis in the cell does solve it (as not .cell-output-display div)

---
title: "Tables with weird numbering"
format: pdf
keep-md: true
keep-tex: true
lot: true
---

```{r}
#| label: tbl-longtable
#| tbl-cap: A Long Table
#| echo: false
#| output: asis
set.seed(0)
knitr::kable(
  data.frame(
    index = 1:30, 
    letter = sample(letters, 30, replace = TRUE)
  )
)
```

Could it be a knitr issue with Quarto behavior ?

knitr:::knit_print.knitr_kable
#> function (x, ...) 
#> {
#>     x = one_string(c(if (!(attr(x, "format") %in% c("html", "latex"))) c("", 
#>         ""), x, "\n"))
#>     asis_output(x)
#> }
#> <bytecode: 0x000002b6e250ddc8>
#> <environment: namespace:knitr>

asis_output() is set.. 🤔

[cderv]

Could it be a knitr issue with Quarto behavior ?

So related to this

• [knitr] asis_output() has not the same effect as output: asis #9185

Solving the above linked issue could fix up the problem but there still exist two path to handle Markdown table - and I don't know if this is expected ...