Exploring a "Universal" way to handle interactive plots in static outputs (PDF/DOCX)

[ar-puuk]

Description

First, I want to say thank you for Quarto. It has completely changed how I think about documentation and reproducible research. The ability to mix R, Python, and OJS in one place is incredible.

The "Pain Point"

I’ve been trying to create reports that work both as interactive HTML dashboards and as static PDFs/Word docs for stakeholders. I’ve noticed that while the HTML side is perfect, the "static" side is still a bit fragmented. For example, R users have webshot2, Python users have library-specific fixes like kaleido, and OJS users don't have a clear path to static output at all.

The Idea

I was wondering if the team has ever considered a "language-agnostic" approach for a quarto-ext extension—something that looks at the final HTML/JS output and captures a snapshot for the AST, similar to how Quarto beautifully handles Mermaid and Graphviz diagrams?

Why I think this would be helpful

• Consistency: It would give users a "standard" way to handle any interactive widget, regardless of whether it came from R, Python, or OJS.
• Format Parity: It would help fulfill the "write once, publish anywhere" promise for documents that use modern interactive visualizations.
• Simplicity: If it could leverage a headless browser (perhaps using the logic Quarto already uses for diagrams), it would save users from having to manage multiple language-specific capture libraries.

I realize this is a complex ask involving headless browsers and rendering delays, and I don't want to oversimplify the technical hurdles. I just wanted to share this "missing piece" from my workflow to see if it’s something the team has thought about or if there's a recommended path for the community to explore building this as an extension.

Thank you again for all the hard work on this project!