TEST: Switch to new quantecon-sphinx-theme (Theme #2) + collect Feedback

[mmcky]

Test PR: New QuantEcon Sphinx Theme

This PR replaces quantecon-book-theme with the new quantecon-sphinx-theme.

Changes

• environment.yml: Replaced quantecon-book-theme==0.15.1 with quantecon-sphinx-theme installed from the git main branch
• lectures/_config.yml:
  • Changed html_theme from quantecon_book_theme to quantecon_sphinx_theme
  • Updated html_theme_options to use the new theme's configuration schema (color_scheme, dark_mode, toc_sticky, toc_autoexpand, etc.)
  • Removed old book-theme-specific options (authors, header_organisation, analytics, launch_buttons)

Purpose

This is a test PR to evaluate the new theme's rendering with our lecture content. Review the CI build output to assess compatibility.

DO NOT MERGE — This is for testing/evaluation only.

[github-actions]

🚀 Deployed on https://699d241d064feca2f249791b--epic-agnesi-957267.netlify.app

[mmcky]

[mmcky]

This is a DEMO of a second theme that includes "features" of our theme, still minimal but is distinctively different to our current theme. This theme could serve two purposes:

1. a theme that others can use on their projects (protecting the QE identity by restricting quantecon-book-theme)
2. a theme to be used by a "contributors" series of lectures -- non primary QE lecture series.

[mmcky]

I am not convinced about the name quantecon-sphinx-theme:

• quantecon-minimal-sphinx-theme
• ...

[mmcky]

@kp992 I have been working on a second QuantEcon theme that we could use for non-core QuantEcon lectures - i.e. topic series. Here is a prototype. It has many of the same features from the QuantEcon theme but it is a bit more minimal and focuses on the content.

https://699d241d064feca2f249791b--epic-agnesi-957267.netlify.app/intro

If you had any time I would welcome any feedback on the design. What works? What doesn't work? What you like? What you don't like?

(cc: @HumphreyYang, @nisha617, @jstac)

[mmcky]

Comments (please edit):

• add in Authors and Translator Fields for each lecture
• New theme is not rendering $ math environment correctly:

• Navigation from the right side is a bit off and hard to jump on different sections.

• The UI element needs some fixes on lower border side.

[mmcky]

Closing this — it did its job as a design prototype, and it's no longer a useful place to carry the work forward.

Status at close: conflicts with main on both touched files (environment.yml has since moved to anaconda 2026.07 / quantecon-book-theme 0.21.0, and lectures/_config.yml picked up a new linkcheck ignore, a corrected repository_url, and sticky_contents). The theme was pinned to @main rather than a tagged release, so the Netlify preview here isn't reproducible from the config alone.

The bigger reason: the repo is migrating to Jupyter Book 2 / the MyST CLI, which replaces the entire sphinx: + html_theme_options block this PR edits. Any revival of the second-theme idea needs to be written against the jb2 config format, not rebased onto this one.

The design feedback collected above has been carried over to the theme repo, where it belongs:

Issue
quantecon-sphinx-theme#1	Inline $...$ math does not render correctly
quantecon-sphinx-theme#2	RHS table of contents is misaligned and hard to navigate
quantecon-sphinx-theme#3	UI element has a broken lower border
quantecon-sphinx-theme#4	No support for Authors and Translator attribution per lecture
quantecon-sphinx-theme#5	Decide the theme's positioning, then its name
quantecon-sphinx-theme#6	Audit and review the project: go / no-go before further work

A fresh test build will be opened once the theme project is re-established.

---

Correction to an earlier version of this comment. It claimed the preview build here predated the theme's mathjax fixes and that the rendering complaints above were therefore probably stale. That was wrong. All 15 commits in quantecon-sphinx-theme were authored between 01:55Z and 03:13Z on 24 Feb and pushed together at 03:16Z; this PR's commit is 03:58Z and its preview built at ~04:08Z against @main, which already contained every fix. The reviewers were looking at the theme's final state, so the defects reported above are real and open — hence #1–#3 rather than a "re-test first" note.