Use HTML for Source in Book Theme?

[eightbit]

Hi.
Book Theme is very elegant - nice job!
Is there a way to bypass the Markdown conversion and use HTML files as source?
Why? Because I have a lot of documentation to convert from MS Word and for this workflow it is easier to control and preview HTML than MarkDown - especially tables.
Thanks.

[rajk-cerebras]

Are you saying you already have a bunch of static html files and you want to bring them over into the book theme? I do that for some auto-generated API docs. I put them in source/_static/ folder, making sure that I have the index.html file as source/_static/index.html (or wherever under the _static folder). Then in some reStructuredText file I have the link like this:

My HTML Source <_static/myhtmldocs/html/index.html#http://>. The #http:// at the end is definitely a hack, I don't prefer it, but if I do not put it, it wasn't working. Alternately, if you have these html files served by http server somewhere, it is easier--you can just go: My HTML Source <http://example.com/index.html>. Was this what you were looking for?

[eightbit]

Thanks for your reply!
To be clear, what I want to achieve is to parse html the same way md is parsed. So in the example below, I want source/_static/testZoom.html to show up in the build with a link in the TOC which would then display the contents.

Here's what I have, it's not parsing the html:

index.rst

.. toctree::
   :caption: IABLE Docs
   :maxdepth: 4

   testMe01.md
   memberclicks.md
   addZoom.rst

source/addZoom.rst

addZoom
===========

Zoom Docs <_static/testZoom.html#http://>

When I open the link in the build, I get the contents of the addZoom .md, just as I do for the other md files, but it adds an extra / to the link to the html (</ rather than <).

addZoom¶

Zoom Docs </_static/testZoom.html#http://>

[rajk-cerebras]

I see. So, maybe this helps. To place a link in the left sidebar to an already existing html, below are two scenarios:

1. Link to an external website, like you see the link to the GitHub repository in the left sidebar here: https://sphinx-book-theme.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html. To get this, just go:

.. toctree::
   :caption: IABLE Docs
   :maxdepth: 4

   testMe01.md
   memberclicks.md
   Zoom Docs <http:://example.com/testZoom.html>

This is not helpful to you, since you do not have the testZoom.html accessible at any http:// location. This doesn't require any additional rst file to place your link. But the below option is applicable to you, as you use the addZoom.rst file to create the link.

2. Please try the below minor modification to your source/addZoom.rst file:

addZoom

Zoom Docs <_static/testZoom.html>

As shown above, when we want to link to an HTML file, we have to put the whole thing in single quotation marks. This is the standard reStructuredText syntax.

[rajk-cerebras]

Well, the line above isn't showing the actual syntax, but it is

`Zoom Docs <_static/testZoom.html>`

[eightbit]

Thanks again for the reply. I assume the tildes should be omitted, but I tried it both ways.
Still not working. The version w/the tildes prints in italic.

In the build I still see the contents of source/addZoom.rst:

addZoom

Test Print

Zoom Docs <_static/testZoom.html>

Zoom Docs <_static/testZoom.html>