Styles, 404 and extensions

Written for version 0.1.14. Part of The website, which lists the sources.

styles.css and quarto/_pending.lua

What they are. Two small files that add the site’s visual cues: the coloured sidebar icons, and the yellow marks on provisional text.

What’s in styles.css. The colour for each sidebar icon, tied to the icon itself rather than to a position in the sidebar, so pages can be added or moved without editing it. It also makes section headings bold, adds a thin rule between sections, makes the sections under Code a little lighter, and sets the yellow used for provisional text. A project that already has a styles.css keeps its own rules and adds these.

What _pending.lua does. It is the filter that adds the yellow marks while the site is built. It highlights:

• any paragraph that starts with Decision pending:;
• on the analysis plan’s page only, any paragraph that contains the plan’s Open: marker;
• any phrase written as [text]{.pending}, wherever it is, table cells included.

A page with at least one mark also gets a yellow ⏳ box at the top, headed “Provisional”, that says highlighted text depends on a decision the plan has not yet made.

The filter marks whole paragraphs only. A Decision pending: note inside a bullet or a table cell isn’t marked, so it is written as its own paragraph or wrapped as [text]{.pending}.

What it never does. Yellow means “an open decision could change this” and nothing else. A mark is removed when its decision is settled.

404.qmd

What it is. The page GitHub Pages shows when someone follows a link to an address that doesn’t exist. Quarto doesn’t make one on its own.

What’s in it. A short note that the page isn’t on the site, a link to the home page, and a pointer to the search box. It is built from the top of the repository, so its links work from any address once the site’s address is set in _quarto.yml. It has no sidebar entry.

_extensions/

What it is. The folder where Quarto keeps add-ons the site uses. It is committed with the repository.

What’s in it.

• custom-callout (required). The MIT-licensed coatless-quarto/custom-callout extension turns the three callouts defined in _quarto.yml into the coloured boxes. Its code isn’t bundled in the plugin. It is added with quarto add coatless-quarto/custom-callout, or copied from another repository that has it, and the assistant installs it only when authorised.
• Reader comments (optional). The issue-comments extension lets a reader highlight text and leave a comment, which is filed as a GitHub issue in the repository. It needs a relay and a GitHub App set up once, then three things switched on together for each site: the extension in _extensions/, the filter line in _quarto.yml, and the issue-comments: settings block. With all three on, the yellow Pending box also tells readers how to comment. Whether to use it is the project’s choice.