Doc tools

Build your docs site using either MkDocs or Quarto, using the templates provided in this repository under idm_standards_plugin.

Both tools use Markdown as the source file format. Generally, we recommend using the same tool for all tools in a modeling ecosystem to make interlinking easier. A quick comparison of the two tools is below:

Tool	Pros	Cons
MkDocs (with the Material theme)	Easier to set up. Large user base and available plug-ins. Can include API reference documentation for external packages.	Less control over layout and rendering. MkDocs will not support Material going forward, so docs must be migrated to Zensical in the near future.
Quarto	More flexibility and support for R packages and workflows. Easily produce research dashboards with interactive plotting.	Higher startup cost. Not a Python installation. Newer tool with smaller user base.

In the past, IDM used Sphinx to build documentation. Sphinx is no longer supported for actively maintained software. To migrate from Sphinx, review How to migrate from Sphinx.