[Development Call]: Script that converts .Rmd/Jupyter notebooks to TSH format

[shrabasteebanerjee]

Is your content request related to a problem you've encountered during your research process? Please describe.

Some folks are more comfortable writing on Rmd or Jupyter. Can we offer them the option of using a script that takes their markdown as input and generates the TSH template as output?

[hannesdatta]

Here are some pointers, @paulina-ambroziak.

https://hugodown.r-lib.org/

I'd say: teach yourself how this package works and what it can do (and cannot do). Then, provide an assessment whether it can be used for our purpose or not, and how much time it would take you to get it to work.

[paulina-ambroziak]

Hi @hannesdatta,

I'd like to have a short discussion to choose the best solution, some points for the meeting:

1. Hugodown and Blogdown hugodown is an experimental package – there’s not much documentation available blogdown might be more intuitive to use due to addins in RStudio (e.g. Addins > Blogdown > New post), Preview site with _blogdown::servesite() Info on using blogdown: https://smac-group.github.io/ds/section-blogdown-websites-and-blogs-creation.html

2. Hugo Archetypes It is possible to create Archetypes in Hugo so that when a new post is created (with ‘hugo new’ command), it contains a template (e.g. for a building block or tutorial). More info: https://gohugo.io/content-management/archetypes/

3. Convert Rmd to md It’s recommended to convert RMarkdown files directly to Markdown without Blogdown by using _render("input.Rmd", mddocument()) or adding _output: mddocument to the file’s front matter. Source: https://wowchemy.com/docs/import/rmarkdown/

4. Convert Jupyter Notebook to md Convert notebook to Markdown: _jupyter nbconvert Untitled.ipynb --to markdown --NbConvertApp.output_filesdir=. Source: https://wowchemy.com/docs/import/jupyter/

[paulina-ambroziak]

Status: done (see issue #670)

Notes after speaking to Valerie:

• .md format is not an issue
• the main issue was to find the template for writing the building blocks or tutorials (we have them here but it is not easy to find)
• problems with the text formatting (e.g. how to highlight text as a summary, example, warning or tip) were due to difficulties with finding the template
• it is not clear how to fill in e.g. aliases
• lack of instruction on how to preview the website locally (with hugo server)
• not clear process of opening a pull request on GitHub

Solution: update Onboarding Guide with a step-by-step guide explaining everything from creating a building block/tutorial from a template (including templates that can be downloaded in the .md format) to building the site locally to creating a pull request.

[paulina-ambroziak]

Status: to do

Notes after talking to Alex:

• the benefit of Rmd over md is that you can run a chunk of code and print the output
• so instead of running the code locally and saving the screenshots, the outputs are generated automatically on the website
• Alex has implemented it on his personal website, where the Rmd generates the output files and the HTML file

Action Point: research how to implement it on the TSH website

[hannesdatta]

Let's close. We didn't end up taking this route for TSH.