I’ve been using JupyterBook to create this site for a while, and I’ve been pretty happy with it. But I’ve recently started using Quarto, and I think it’s better. Here’s why.
The great thing about JupyterBook is its integration with Jupyter notebooks. It just works, and it’s super easy to get something going. But… it is Sphinx based, and to be honest I just can’t get my head around the whole Sphinx ecosystem. Doing anything beyond the out of the box functionality is a bit too contrived for me.
In that sense, Quarto, with a hierarchical configuration system, and what to me seems like a much saner approach to configuration and extensibility, is a breath of fresh air. It supports R, as well as Jupyter and Python, will also be a plus in the long run.
Caching, building, and deployment makes a lot more sense in Quarto, and configuring various outputs is intuitive. In addition, it gives me the option to set this site as a blog (including an RSS feed), which JupyterBook doesn’t. Quarto’s documentation is well organized, easy to follow, and has a lot of examples that make it comprehensible - getting it going and migrating from JupyterBook is a breeze.