Remote MD

I try to create beautiful WebSlides by combining a html-template with md-content. Typically, they have the same filename (but for the extension) in the same directory (and site).

In this blog, we are examining another option: Apparently it is possible to load a remote MD-file. This gives new options. By example: host a (generated) html-file on one cloud-provider and the md-file on another-one.

Unfortunately this setup is unstable: It may work, and sometimes does; but it may fail too….

Ultimate, I would like to have all (source) files in a cloud-hosted version-controlled system as https://bitbucket.org. And host the documentation on (eg) http://readthedocs.org. When possible, the WebSlides are (eventually) embedded in a Sphinx-build html-file, which reads the md-file directly from (eg) bitbucket.

Setup

The html-template is like usual, only the location of the md-file differs: fill in the URL to that file, as shown below.

      <section data-markdown="http://albert.mietus.nl/Demos/WebSlides/demo-remoteMD.md"

This demo however, does NOT work!

Unstable

The first try did work …

An early try-out version worked however. I started with an existing md-file (on github) [1] with the (existing, different) html-template copied to my local web-server. It worked! Enthusiastic, I modified the template into my rst-style setup; still it loaded. Due a different setting of the data-separators [2], the slides were malformed. But writing a new md-content is easy… And I have some old (public) websevers, to show the intermediate results for everbody.

So, I created the above democode/demo-remoteMD.html example; with the md-file on my (old) http://albert.mietus.nl server. And it fails: A popup is shown saying it can’t load the md-file. Copying that URL, and open in manually does work however. (Try if you like.)

It doesn’t work, despite the md-file (http://albert.mietus.nl/Demos/WebSlides/demo-remoteMD.md) does exist and is (manually) loadable.

I tried several in-between alternatives. Even one loading the md-file of he first experiment, with my html-template [2]. A diff showed one changed line only: the URL of the md-file; and serve that from the same (local) websever: One works, the other not!

Apparently, the site hosting the md-file has effect. An effect, I do not fully understand. But still …

Good experiment: No-Go

It was a nice experiment. With a clear conclusion:

This is a No-Go. Possible, it may be workable with a fixed, well-tuned set of servers. But it’s not generally working. So, I will look for other options.

Feel free to comment.

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Footnotes

[1]

On https://theno.github.io/revealjs_template/slides.html a similar demo is given. I tried the slides.md.

[2] (1,2)

The “data-separators” in the html-template and the md-file should match. As I’m trying to stay as-close-as-possible to the rst-syntax & semantics, “my” regexps do not match the ones used in used md-file.

Still, when the md-file is loaded, one can see result: one very long slide.

The html-template   All Sphinx Directives

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