Jupyter Book Documentation

I'm enthusiastic about this prototype for py5's documentation website: py5dev.ixora.io. It is built with Jupyter Book.

Once I got up to speed on Jupyter Book I was able to modify the Reference documentation to use the new system. That was probably the most tedious part. One challenge is that I am using restructuredtext for the documentation source content, so the reference documentation build process also outputs restructuredtext. That's fine because Jupyter Book supports that, but it is clear that markdown or Myst is easier to use. I will use Myst for new documentation files, not restructuredtext.

One of the great features of Jupyter Book is the ability to link the documentation to binder. Readers will be able to launch a notebook kernel right from the documentation. In addition, Jupyter Book supports Thebe, an amazing tool that I never imagined was even possible. Readers will also be able to execute py5 code through the documentation website itself, with the execution results provided by binder. This supports custom kernels like py5bot and embedded animations using the Sketch Portal. This connection with binder will be used extensively in the tutorials and howto sections.