Change build system to e.g. Astro

[penelopeysm]

Right now we're using Quarto to build the code this repository into HTML. However, Quarto is primarily a content-driven framework, and specifically, content which involves executing Julia (or other languages') code. In this repo, there is no code, just static content. So there is no real benefit in using Quarto.

In view of this, it would be better to use a framework such as Astro that has the explicit purpose of web design. The benefit of this would be that the code is more composable and maintainable (hopefully). Since Astro can also read Markdown files (https://docs.astro.build/en/guides/markdown-content/) this allows contributors who don't know Astro to still contribute to content.

See: #105 (review)

[shravanngoswamii]

Will we seriously consider moving to Astro? Just sharing my view — I think it's good to avoid frameworks that depend heavily on JavaScript. One benefit of Quarto is that it works even when JS is disabled, which I personally value for static, text-heavy sites. I know we use some JS now, but maybe we'll move away from it over time.

[penelopeysm]

I just personally find the way that we are using Quarto to design a general website to be quite weird. I see the point about JS although if one is careful with writing code it should be possible to avoid that / provide progressive enhancement. In any case though I feel like it's very unlikely that I'll ever bother getting around to it, so I'm not opposed to closing as wontfix.

[shravanngoswamii]

I agree to you, but we are using Quarto for docs so let's just be consistent here too!