I'm wondering if we can add some images to this file, so that people can see view cell outputs; we could imagine having this be a Jupyter notebook that we convert to Markdown using jupyter nbconvert --to markdown quickstart.ipynb

So this started out as a jupyter notebook and I ended up switching it to markdown because I felt that the outputs of most of the code snippets in the quickstart guide are not essential and may even be distracting, as the snippets are meant to illustrate how to use apc objects, not how to plot things. And of course markdown is much easier to write, review, and version control.

How do you feel about leaving this as markdown for now but adding static images to show the output of printing colors, palettes, and gradients? (which are code snippets whose outputs I feel it would definitely be helpful to show)

That seems reasonable. I think it would be useful to show the outputs of plt.show() calls as well, since I think those would convey the expected behaviors of apc.mpl.setup() and apc.mpl.style_plot().

Added images for the color/palette/gradient swatches!

I guess I have a different feeling about adding images for the plt.show() outputs, which is that the quickstart guide should have a "just type this and your plots will be styled" vibe rather than "here is what your plots will look like". I think I have this feeling because:

• it helps make the quickstart guide as succinct as possible.
• the expected behaviors of setup and style_plot are already documented in thestyle_usage notebook and may be hard to grok without the before-and-after approach that that notebook uses (and that would feel too verbose in a quickstart guide).
• if we show plot outputs, the quickstart guide will start to reproduce the style_usage notebook.

In lieu of showing plot outputs, how would you feel about adding more obvious/explicit links to the style_usage notebook in the quickstart guide?

I suppose it's fine not to show the plot examples in the quickstart then, as long as we link to the relevant before/after examples in style_usage!

Added very explicit links to style_usage to the quickstart. I think it's good enough for now; happy to revisit later!