Would you recommend a custom format or a filter?

[andrewpbray]

Description

@jimjam-slam and I have been working on the Closeread custom format and recently we were discussing whether to convert it from a custom format to a filter. Here are the pros and cons of the filter that we were able to identify:

Pros

• It would be possible for users to create a closeread custom format.

Cons

• It feels like a categorically different format even though it isn't (like revealjs), so for casual users it, calling it a filter might obscure what it is.
• Passing metadata under the custom format feels more natural than triggering the filter and then having a separate key to pass metadata options.

What are y'alls thoughts on the tradeoffs here?

@georgestagg @coatless How did you think about this with webr (a filter) and quarto-live (a custom format)? As an avid user of format: live-html, I am bummed I can't make a custom format ...

[coatless]

You can make a custom format on top of an existing format, c.f.

r-wasm/quarto-live#49

[andrewpbray]

Ah, interesting. So, the way to make a custom live-html format isn't to hope for mycustom-live-html but just make mycustom-html and then add the relevant yaml fields from the quarto-live _extension.yml?

Thanks!