Recently I ported my online manual for animint2 from:

  • Rmd source files on GitHub
  • converted to HTML files on my computer
  • using jekyll, library(rmarkdown), and an old version of library(bookdown)
  • deployed to rcdata.nau.edu using rsync -r

to:

  • qmd source files on GitHub
  • converted to HTML on GitHub Actions
  • using quarto
  • deployed to netlify

This is documented in my French animint2 slides.

A major advantage of this setup is the netlify deployment, which creates a preview web site for every pull request! (separate from the main deployment)

Alternatives to quarto include Jupyter Book, GitBook and mdBook.

Jupyter Book version 2 is based on MyST, supports math, and executable code chunks (python or R). Demo includes figure output, so this seems to be most similar to quarto.

mdBook is based on rust and was used to create this online physics-based simulation manual. It supports executable rust code blocks, but I do not see any other languages mentioned (R and python support missing).

GitBook also supports pull request preview, and code syntax highlighting, but I do not see any mention of code chunk execution, although variables seem to be similar.