Support reactive vanilla JavaScript as an alternative to OJS

[IliasAarab]

Description

With Observable Framework and the newer Observable Notebooks 2.0 adopting standard JavaScript while retaining reactivity, I wonder whether Quarto could follow a similar direction.

Currently, Quarto supports OJS for reactive client-side computations and visualizations, but standard JavaScript requires manually managing interactions and dependencies.

Would it make sense to introduce a reactive {js} engine that:

• Uses standard JavaScript syntax (const, let, import, etc.).
• Preserves automatic dependency tracking between code cells.
• Supports Observable Plot, Inputs, and other JavaScript libraries.
• Maintains backwards compatibility with existing {ojs} documents.

This could improve interoperability with the broader JavaScript ecosystem while preserving one of Quarto’s most useful features for interactive documents.

Is something along these lines already being considered?

[mcanouil]

@IliasAarab please search for other threads before opening new ones.

• If Observable is abandoning OJS… #14877

Also, see engine extension.

[IliasAarab]

Thanks for pointing me to the existing discussion. I missed it when searching. I’ll close this one as a duplicate and follow #14877 instead.