Add documentation on how to use thebe(-light) for creating interactive coding exercises

[joelostblom]

In jupyterlite/jupyterlite#1333, I asked about using jupyter book / jupyter lite for creating a textbook with interactive coding exercises. It was suggested that this might be possible with thebe-light but that there are currently no docs on how to do it, so I'm opening this issues to suggest that this is added to the docs. See the issues linked above for a more exact description of what I have in mind.

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[psychemedia]

I was hoping to start exploroing the use of thebe again using the jupyter book publishing machinery but haven't as yet found any example ls or docs for how to set up the _config.yml file and appropriately tag cells if particular tags are required.

I seem to recall seeing myst tools demos, but I'd rather stick with jupyter book for now. (If jupyter book is sunsetting in favour of myst tools and I am forced to migrate to another publishing toolchain, I suspect my colleagues would be arguing we move to quarto...)

[agoose77]

@psychemedia it would be really interesting to hear about your feelings here

If jupyter book is sunsetting in favour of myst tools and I am forced to migrate to another publishing toolchain, I suspect my colleagues would be arguing we move to quarto..

Jupyter Book is continuing as a project, but will be built on top of mystmd (see here for more).

[psychemedia]

@agoose77 Re: the change to mystmd tools, and away from sphinx, a certain amount of tooling we have built using custom sphinx extensions and sphinx xml will be broken. (Institutionally, we use a custom XML format and have been transforming the sphinx xml to that format, often with some clunky exception handling on the side.)

The myst toolchain also moves things from python to typescript development, which requires a different development environment and skillset (though I guess genAI tools will be doing more of the actual code writing for many people).

That said, adoption of our legacy tooling has been low, so a fresh start may be a Good Thing.

The thebe integration has always been one of the things that I think could have been transformative in my org (though again I am in a minority arguing that because production ready tooling around JupyerLite and thebelite has not been stable enough for us to adopt with our students. Things seem to be improving stability wise with JupyterLite (although JupyterLab's recent wobbles with dodgy scrolling behaviour caused some upset), which is why I'm keen to revisit thebe. But that said, from examples I see coming out from Posit, the Quarto tool chain, and the ever increasing support for in-browser wasm, I keep thinking if we are to reimagine our online materials an explore things given where tooling is now, that might be a better bet because the in-browser wasm support, quarto-live developments, etc, does seem so much better supported. That said, I haven't had much chance to explore it (opportunity cost thing and being locked more into Jupyter tools and UIs. But if there is a need to move to a new toolchain / development context, opting for quarto does look attractive. (There is also the consideration that internally there is interest in using notebooks in VS Code with students, rather than Jupyter UIs, and the Posit IDE is just one step away from that.)