👋 Welcome

This is the main repository of Stencila, a platform for authoring, collaborating on, and publishing executable documents.

Stencila is comprised of several open source packages, written in a variety of programming languages. This repo acts as an entry point to these other packages as well as hosting code for our desktop and CLI tools.

We 💕 contributions! All types of contributions: ideas 🤔, examples 💡, bug reports 🐛, documentation 📖, code 💻, questions 💬. If you are unsure of where to make a contribution feel free to open a new issue or discussion in this repository (we can always move them elsewhere if need be).

📜 Help

For documentation, including demos and reference guides, please go to our Help site https://help.stenci.la/. That site is developed in the help folder of this repository and contributions are always welcome.

🎁 Hub

If you don't want to install anything, or just want to try out Stencila, https://hub.stenci.la is the best place to start. It's a web application that makes all our software available via intuitive browser-based interfaces. You can contribute to Stencila Hub at stencila/hub.

🖥️ Desktop

If you'd prefer to use Stencila on your own computer, the Stencila Desktop is a great place to start. It is still in the early stages of (re)development but please see the desktop folder for its current status and how you can help out!

⌨️ Command line tool

Prefer to work on the command line? The stencila command line tool (CLI) is for you! Please see the cli folder for installation and usage instructions.

🔌 Plugins

The stencila Hub, Desktop and CLI all rely on plugins to provide much of their functionality. You can install plugins using the stencila Desktop or CLI tool using it's name or an alias,

stencila plugins install <name or alias>

The following table lists the main plugins. These plugins are in various stages of development and not all of them are compatible with the Desktop and CLI. Generally, it won't be worth installing them prior to v1 and coverage of at least 90%.

🚨 We are the process of deprecating the "executor" plugins rasta, pyla and jesta and instead focussing on a tighter integration with Jupyter kernels by way of porting the functionality in jupita into the core Rust library.

Plugin	Aliases	Version	Coverage	Primary functionality
encoda	converter			Convert documents between file formats
jesta	javascript			Compile, build and execute documents that use JavaScript
rasta	r			Compile, build and execute documents that use R
pyla	python			Compile, build and execute documents that use Python
jupita	jupyter			Execute documents that use Jupyter kernels
dockta	docker			Build Docker images for executable documents
nixta	nix			Build Nix environments for executable documents

🐳 Docker images

You can use Stencila as a Docker image. We provide several images of varying sizes and capabilities. All include the stencila CLI as the image ENTRYPOINT but add varying numbers of plugins and packages.

At present the number of images listed below is limited. We plan to move the generic images e.g. stencila/executa-midi (which are currently built in the dockta repository), to this repository as we reach plugin compatibility for the relevant language packages.

Image	Size	Description
stencila/stencila		Base image containing stencila CLI
stencila/node		Adds Node.js and jesta

👩‍💻 Language bindings

If you prefer, you can use Stencila from within your favorite programming language. Some of these language bindings are in an early, proof-of-concept state and are likely to be developed further only based on demand. If your favorite language is missing, or you would like to help us develop the bindings, let us know!

Language	Bindings	Status
Node	node	In-development (used for Desktop)
Python	python	Experimental
R	r	Experimental