disable Visual editor

[tthrall]

Bug description

In RStudio, please allow the user to disable the Visual Editor. Currently, the user may switch between the Source Editor and the Visual Editor, but this is not sufficient: RStudio tends to revert to the Visual Editor without giving the user a choice.

I for one do not wish to use the Visual Editor in its current state. The Visual Editor automatically, without the user's permission, changes the semantic labeling of footnotes to numeric labels in the QMD file itself, not merely in the rendered file. From my own experience I can say that this behavior can exasperate the user and waste the user's time.

Steps to reproduce

No response

Actual behavior

No response

Expected behavior

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Your environment

No response

[cderv]

I am sorry to read the bad experience you have with visual editor.

First lets look at how this can be disable. Did you check the global option for RStudio IDE to not use visual editor by default ?
https://quarto.org/docs/visual-editor/options.html#global-options

This is the setting that may lead to having the visual editor open by default.

Otherwise, it will be activated if the YAML file header asks for it.

Is this helping ? Or is your question about how to completely opt-out visual editor feature with no possibility to activate it manually on per-file basis ?
If so this would be a question for RStudio IDE repo: https://github.com/rstudio/rstudio

The Visual Editor automatically, without the user's permission, changes the semantic labeling of footnotes to numeric labels in the QMD file itself, not merely in the rendered file

About the visual editing, this should not be without user's permission. The first time the visual editor is used, there is a modal to warn about this and require user's acceptance. This is probably only asked once by RStudio IDE.

And regarding conversion from labeling to numeric, this is among the unfortunate limitations for now: https://quarto.org/docs/visual-editor/markdown.html#known-limitations

This may evolve in the future.

[tthrall]

Hi Christophe, Thanks for your quick, informative, and sympathetic response! Please clarify the following.

You've guided me to RStudio's Global Options > R Markdown > Visual tab. What is the result of checking the box labeled "Write canonical visual mode markdown in source mode."? Does that make Source mode rather than Visual mode the default mode? If so, that solves my problem.

YAML heading in the Quarto document. Under Quarto's Writer Options I see the following parameter to be set to true or false. editor options > markdown > canonical. Does the setting of the canonical parameter affect the default mode of the editor? If so, please clarify.

These options may be technically precise from the perspective of the dev team, but I do not know how to interpret them. Thanks again for your helpful response. -- Tony

[cderv]

What is the result of checking the box labeled "Write canonical visual mode markdown in source mode."? Does that make Source mode rather than Visual mode the default mode? If so, that solves my problem.

No this one is about the canonical markdown syntax that is written by the visual editor. It can be made also used in source mode. See more at https://quarto.org/docs/visual-editor/markdown.html#canonical-mode

It means that when writing in source mode, when you save, it will behave as if you opened visual mode, and switch back to source mode to get the markdown be transformed to canonical.

Does that make Source mode rather than Visual mode the default mode?

Source mode should be the default mode, unless you have this global option set to make visual mode the default
https://quarto.org/docs/visual-editor/options.html#global-options

YAML heading in the Quarto document. Under Quarto's Writer Options I see the following parameter to be set to true or false. editor options > markdown > canonical. Does the setting of the canonical parameter affect the default mode of the editor? If so, please clarify.

This in YAML header will tell the default should be visual mode

editor: visual

and the other way

editor: source

For canonical, see the point I discussed above with link to canonical mode

These options may be technically precise from the perspective of the dev team, but I do not know how to interpret them. Thanks again for your helpful response.

I assumed they were clear enough in the context of the documentation for the visual editor in RStudio, which we have on the website. I just cherry picked some info to be interpreted in the context of the full doc. Sorry if this was not the case, you can submit some doc improvements at github.com/quarto-dev/quarto-cli if the documentation does not seem correct or clear.

[tthrall]

Great, Christophe! I have set "editor: source" in the YAML heading, and that seems to prevent me from being thrown into Visual mode. Thanks much - Tony

[cderv]

that seems to prevent me from being thrown into Visual mode.

Just curious: Is the global option turned off ?

[tthrall]

Sorry, no, I meant that in my Quarto document I've added "editor: source" to the YAML heading per your guidance. So far, so good -- Visual mode seems to be in abeyance for this document. That's good enough for me. Thanks - Tony