smalldocs

smalldocs builds a website from a folder of Markdown pages and notebooks, in Python. A file _smalldocs.yml in the folder holds the options of the site. smalldocs writes the site into the folder _site. The site has these parts:

• pages with a navbar, a sidebar and a table of contents
• notebooks, with the outputs that were saved in them
• reference pages, made from the code of a package
• listings of posts, with categories and a feed

The site can use any Bootswatch theme, in a light version and a dark version, or a theme from a git repository.

smalldocs makes websites only. It does not make PDF files, Word files, slides or books, and it runs no code. It is one package from PyPI, and it needs no other programs.

smalldocs takes its conventions from Quarto. They are the .qmd pages, the Markdown of Pandoc and the options of a site. So a Quarto website builds with smalldocs, from its _quarto.yml, with no change.

pip install smalldocs

smalldocs render docs              # build docs/_site
smalldocs preview docs             # serve it at http://127.0.0.1:4200, and build it again on each change
smalldocs check docs               # options that smalldocs ignores, broken links, Markdown it does not read
smalldocs api build --dir docs     # the API reference, from docstrings, types and comments
smalldocs publish gh-pages docs    # push the site to the branch gh-pages

The documentation is at docs.smallish.dev. smalldocs builds it from docs/.

What smalldocs reads

• The options. smalldocs reads _smalldocs.yml, a _metadata.yml file in each folder, and the front matter of each page. The front matter wins over a _metadata.yml, and a _metadata.yml wins over _smalldocs.yml.
• The Markdown. smalldocs reads CommonMark. It also reads front matter, tables, footnotes, attributes, divs, callouts, tabs, maths, diagrams, raw HTML and shortcodes. A .qmd page is Markdown that uses them. Writing pages describes each one.
• Notebooks. smalldocs shows the outputs that were saved in a notebook. The #| option lines at the top of a cell can hide its code or its output. Optional browser notebooks add run and download buttons with JupyterLite and Pyodide.
• Listings. smalldocs makes listings as rows, cards or a table, with sorting, a filter, categories, pages and an RSS feed.
• Pages for agents. With llms-txt: true, smalldocs writes a Markdown copy of each page and an index, llms.txt, as Quarto does. See Pages for agents.

Licence

smalldocs has the MIT licence. It includes Bootstrap, Bootswatch and Bootstrap Icons, with the MIT licence, and Fuse.js, with the Apache-2.0 licence. The licence of each is in src/smalldocs/assets/vendor/.

The documentation follows the nossaifd writing guide, https://github.com/rahuldave/nossaifd. See style/README.md.