Markbind init --convert improvements

[kaixin-hc]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Any related issues?

Other suggestions for MarkBind init command #1782, #1844

Tell us about your environment

MacOS Monterey

MarkBind version

3.1.1

What did you do? Describe the bug

Created a repository with .md files (https://github.com/kaixin-hc/animal-behaviour-LSM1303) and ran markbind init --convert

Steps to reproduce

Clone my repository, navigating to the branch without MarkBind (https://github.com/kaixin-hc/animal-behaviour-LSM1303/tree/toTestInitOn), and run markbind init --convert. Or make your own repository with file names that have spaces.

Expected behavior

Site is created and all elements are natural and intuitive.

Actual behavior

• Default files(the contents folder) are still created and included in the sitenav by default; since it is a conversion of an existing repo, you would expect these files not to be created and included
• The sitenav does not work as expected (Files with spaces are not rendered correctly)
• Instead of the default navigation sidebar name being "Template", it makes more sense for it to be something like "Contents"
• Titles are not auto-generated for content pages.

Nits

• Personally, I feel like the default brand image makes it look like there was an error in rendering the favicon, rather than a default placeholder being selected by default.
• The auto-generated default.md file has a few blank lines after the navbar; I think most linters will flag this as an issue and we can do without them.

Anything else?

No response

[ong6]

I agree with the points that you have raised. I believe that the convert feature is quite important since most new users would be using this to help generate a site from markdown files.

• Default files(the contents folder) are still created and included in the sitenav by default; since it is a conversion of an existing repo, you would expect these files not to be created and included

I think there's an option to convert with a template? Does this still happen if you use the Minimal template?

[tlylt]

I agree with the points that you have raised. I believe that the convert feature is quite important since most new users would be using this to help generate a site from markdown files.

• Default files(the contents folder) are still created and included in the sitenav by default; since it is a conversion of an existing repo, you would expect these files not to be created and included

I think there's an option to convert with a template? Does this still happen if you use the Minimal template?

Conversion with a template doesn't seem to be documented yet. I believe we worked on it in #1718

@kaixin-hc any reason the above draft PR was closed? 🤔

[kaixin-hc]

Conversion with a template doesn't seem to be documented yet. I believe we worked on it in #1718

@kaixin-hc any reason the above draft PR was closed? 🤔

I believe I fixed the issue in #1829 😅 I closed the PR because I accidentally added extra changes not related to #1718 in the branch, but thought it would be more useful to use the branch to PR #1829 instead.

Does this still happen if you use the Minimal template?
The additional files are not created, but the CSS template is not created either.

[tlylt]

Conversion with a template doesn't seem to be documented yet. I believe we worked on it in #1718

@kaixin-hc any reason the above draft PR was closed? 🤔

I believe I fixed the issue in #1829 😅 I closed the PR because I accidentally added extra changes not related to #1718 in the branch, but thought it would be more useful to use the branch to PR #1829 instead.

I see, sorry I was referring to the official UG and didn't realize that this has been updated in the latest branch 😅

[lhw-1]

To summarize, the changes that should be addressed / fixes that should be implemented are:

• Remove default file generation if it is a conversion (Modify behavior of --convert - up for a discussion)
• Properly render files with spaces for the sitenav (Improve file name parsing - might want to look into whitespace handling as a whole within MarkBind)
• Auto-generate titles for new content pages (Parse file name as title - related to discussion in Remove empty title tags in generated tests #2166)
• Consider modifying default favicon to be more on-brand (minor fix - a new separate issue was opened Consider replacing the default favicon for conversion #2279)
• Change the sidebar name from "Template" to "Contents" (minor fix in default.md - addressed in Fix minor UI issues with default.md #2278)
• Remove blank lines after the navbar in default.md (minor fix in default.md - addressed in Fix minor UI issues with default.md #2278)

For the 3rd point, we can consider implementing auto-generation of titles for .md files specifically only when --convert is used, since for conversion from pre-existing documentation, it would be better on the user-end not to have to specify the title for every .md file (which can be quite a lot). We can even look into an extension where we allow users to specify the title generation behavior through a CLI flag on conversion (--verbose-title vs. --nonverbose-title or something along those lines?).