ERROR: Book contents must include a home page (e.g. index.md) -- how can I use external page instead?

[PathosEthosLogos]

Description

I created a Quarto book, but I would like to use my own custom index.html page instead. How can I achieve this?

If I don't include an index.qmd in the _quarto.yml file, it gives me the ERROR: Book contents must include a home page (e.g. index.md). Further, even if I leave it blank, then it shows up on the table of contents (so I'm forced to create a blank h1 heading with {.unnumbered} tag) which creates a completely different page with its own Quarto Book format.

There must be some way to disable this, right?

[mcanouil]

That's not possible.
How would the navigation elements (sidebar, etc.) be integrated in your standalone HTML page?

Why don't you write your HTML as raw block in index.qmd?

[PathosEthosLogos]

@mcanouil thanks for the quick reply.

How would the navigation elements (sidebar, etc.) be integrated in your standalone HTML page?

I assumed that I would be able to customise the navbar. Is there a way, where I can just manually add a hard-coded index.html somewhere? Where can I add this? Making index.qmd as a requirement seems restrictive and not very integration friendly with millions of other platforms out there, let alone just customising it, no?

Why don't you write your HTML as raw block in index.qmd?

The problem with this is that in a Quarto Bookdown, it will still have the sidebar among all the other pre-coded stuff. This is part of my quarto.yml.

project:
  type: book
  output-dir: public

book:
  title: TITLE
  description: DESCRIPTION
  chapters:
    - index.qmd
    - some_page.qmd

format:
  html:
    theme:
      light: white
      dark: darkly

This pre-codes the index.html page to have navbar, title, etc.