Can navbar be defined from within `materials` directory?

[tavareshugo]

Can the navbar and sidebar be defined from an index.md file in the materials/ directory? This way we can keep the navigation setup separate from the main _quarto.yml file.

This would also be an alternative to sidebar auto generation, which might be inconvenient in some cases.

[tavareshugo]

Yes it can.

• Add the following to _quarto.yml:

  metadata-files:
  - "materials/_sidebar.yml"

• Then create the file materials/_sidebar.yml with the sidebar specification only (this shouldn't be in the main _quarto.yml file anymore):

  website:
  sidebar:
    - title: "Materials"
      contents:
        - materials.md
        - section: "Section 1"
          contents:
            - "materials/path/to/lesson.md"
        - section: "Section 2"
          contents:
            - "materials/path/to/another.md"
            - "materials/path/to/third.md"

This is using the metadata merging feature of Quarto.

This might actually be a better alternative to automatic sidebar generation (it's more flexible and explicit)