RenderCV integration

[m3lixir]

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• I read through FAQ and searched through the past issues, none of which addressed my feature request.
• Yes, I have checked that this feature request isn't already filed.

Description & Motivation

CV page content is generated from either a json or yml. json input conforms to JSON Resume schema (#1513), however there is no schema defined for yml input. I propose we add in RenderCV support and add functionality so that the pdf of the CV can be generated on your current cv.yml (on each push).

• https://rendercv.com/
• https://github.com/sinaatalay/rendercv
  • https://github.com/sinaatalay/rendercv/blob/main/schema.json
• https://github.com/sinaatalay/rendercv-pipeline

Pitch

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Alternatives

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Additional context

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[gmsundar15]

If RenderCV support is added, it would be great if the JSON resume could be used to automatically generate the downloadable PDF of the CV using RenderCV with each push, just like the yml file.

To achieve this, JSON resume can be easily converted into the CV section of RenderCV with the RenderCV design, locale, and settings being specified using the --design, --locale-catalog and --rendercv-settings runtime options.

[george-gca]

If you know how to do this, we are welcoming PRs.

[gmsundar15]

I did try creating a worker to achieve this but there is an open bug report on RenderCV when using external YAML files which causes my approach to fail. I will give it another go once this bug has been fixed.

rendercv/rendercv#272

[george-gca]

Does it work when using a path without spaces? Because I don't think this is much of an issue, since it is recommended to avoid spaces in directories name. If it works in a path without spaces (like my design/design.yaml), then it is fine. We just add a line in README to warn about avoiding spaces.

[gmsundar15]

I tried running it locally and get the same error when run without any spaces in the absolute file path. It seems like these runtime options are just completely broken.

[george-gca]

I sent a PR there (rendercv/rendercv#310). After it gets accepted you can move on with the code.

[gmsundar15]

I have also added a PR to a different project that converts JSON resume to RenderCV (guruor/jsonresume-to-rendercv#3).

Currently, I only plan to add functionality to automatically convert a JSON resume to a RenderCV PDF. The original request of converting the cv.yml to the RenderCV schema would require major changes to _layouts/cv.liquid.

[george-gca]

But I think it would be also useful for our users to be able to generate a pdf from the yml. This way both solutions could be used to create render cv pdfs.

[gmsundar15]

I do agree it would be useful.

I gave it a go (https://github.com/gmsundar15/al-folio). You can view the rendered version at https://gmsundar15.github.io/al-folio/cv/. Needless to say, this deprecates the old cv.yml format.

I will send a PR for this once I do some further improvements and verify that the cv.yml properly follows the RenderCV schema.

As for the GitHub actions to generate the PDF, some decisions have to be made. The conversion from JSON to YAML works well enough, but isn't perfect because these formats have their differences. So there must be some way to give the user control over which file to use for which purpose, for example, giving the option to use the JSON for web view while using the YAML to generate PDF instead of generating both from the same file.

[george-gca]

I imagine that the user might prefer to keep only one of the solutions updated, and ditch the other one. At least I would rather keep only one.

Maybe in the future we could also add a pre-commit-hook or GitHub action to validate the files against the schema.