toc-location: left doesn't work in "about" page

[xuefeng-xu]

Description

I set toc-location left but it appears at right. Not sure if it's related to #5204 (comment)

To reproduce, first create the website project, then replace the about.qmd file as following.

quarto create-project --type website toc-left

---
title: "About"
toc: true
toc-location: left
about:
  id: heading
  template: jolla
  links:
    - icon: bluesky
      text: Bluesky
      href: https://bsky.app/
    - icon: linkedin
      text: LinkedIn
      href: https://linkedin.com
    - icon: github
      text: Github
      href: https://github.com

---

:::{#heading}

About this blog

:::

## content 1

## content 2

quarto check

Quarto 1.9.37 [✓] Checking environment information... Quarto cache location: /Users/u5537929/Library/Caches/quarto

[✓] Checking versions of quarto binary dependencies...
Pandoc version 3.8.3: OK
Dart Sass version 1.87.0: OK
Deno version 2.4.5: OK
Typst version 0.14.2: OK

[✓] Checking versions of quarto dependencies......OK

[✓] Checking Quarto installation......OK
Version: 1.9.37
Path: /Applications/quarto/bin

[✓] Checking tools....................OK
TinyTeX: (not installed)
Chromium: (not installed)
Chrome Headless Shell: (not installed)
VeraPDF: (not installed)

[✓] Checking LaTeX....................OK
Using: Installation From Path
Path: /Library/TeX/texbin
Version: 2024

[✓] Checking Chrome Headless....................OK
Using: Chrome found on system
Path: /Applications/Google Chrome.app/Contents/MacOS/Google Chrome
Source: MacOS known location

[✓] Checking basic markdown render....OK

[✓] Checking R installation...........OK
Version: 4.4.1
Path: /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Resources
LibPaths:
- /Library/Frameworks/R.framework/Versions/4.4-arm64/Resources/library
knitr: 1.48
rmarkdown: 2.28

[✓] Checking Knitr engine render......OK

[✓] Checking Python 3 installation....OK
Version: 3.12.2 (Conda)
Path: /opt/miniconda3/bin/python
Jupyter: 5.7.2
Kernels: python3

[✓] Checking Jupyter engine render....OK

[✓] Checking Julia installation...

[mcanouil]

quarto create-project --type website toc-left This is a quite outdated command that is not even documented anywhere anymore.

quarto create project website ...

---

Important

Accessibility: To improve accessibility, please add alternative text to your screenshots. This helps all users, including those using screen readers, to understand the context of the images. A brief description can make a big difference! See Good Alt Text, Bad Alt Text — Making Your Content Perceivable.

[mcanouil]

Regarding the issue, the templates for About pages currently assume/require to have the table of contents be located on the right side, so the issue you mentioned made sure the toc-location was set to "right".

• quarto-cli/src/project/types/website/website-navigation.ts

  Lines 252 to 259 in fcb70f3

  	const tocLocation = () => {
  	if (isAboutPage(format)) {
  	return "right";
  	} else {
  	return format.metadata[kTocLocation] || "right";
  	}
  	};

The alternative fix would have been to change the EJS templates responsible of the about pages to be TOC-robust which is a bigger change.

In the current state, this is a feature request to support toc-location in about pages rather than a bug as it's currently behaving as intended based on two different location sin the codebase that enforce toc-location: right.