FR: Support markdown in subdirectories

[mjpieters]

I'm using backslide to manage slides used in training, and the training can be divided over multiple sessions, and even across multiple days.

I split up the sessions into a separate .md file each, and have a top-level index.md which links to the sessions so I can just fire up bs serve and navigate to the current session via the slides.

However, I do end up with a large pile of day1_session1.md, day1_session2.md, day2_workshop1.md, etc. I'd prefer to use subdirectories for these, but backslide only supports .md files in the current directory.

Would supporting subdirectories be possible? I'm fine with having to specify a pattern on the command line here, like bs serve . day* (serving the current directory, as well as any directory that starts with day), to prevent having to watch a deep hierarchy of irrelevant directories with assets and PDFs and rendered versions.

[sinedied]

Should be possible to adapt the embedded pattern matching to do this, but all of the files in subdirectories would end up in a flat folder anyways so no filename duplicates would be allowed (despite folders), due to the way it works right now (otherwise css/images links would not work). Would it still be useful that way?

Properly supporting subfolders would be possible with a complete rewrite of the way the processing is done, I have a branch for that but it's been few years since I don't have much time nowadays to spend on this project :/

[mjpieters]

That's an interesting issue I hadn't considered. :-/ If subfolders are merged into a flat filesystem then you have to have unique filenames and so defeats the purpose somewhat (I still end up with dayX_partY.md files).

I may as well wait for the possibility that you get back to working on that branch one day (or someone else willing to pick up that gauntlet).