On Thu, 2009-01-22 at 19:17 +0530, Kenneth Gonsalves wrote:
> On Thursday 22 Jan 2009 6:48:11 pm Malcolm Tredinnick wrote:
> > I think you have not described whatever problem it is that you're trying
> > to solve particularly well. "Index" has at least three different
> > meanings for the documentation. I'm assuming you mean the content index
> > (/dev/genindex/), but maybe you mean something else.
> 
> ok, the problem is simple: in the old days it was dead easy to find relevant 
> parts of the docs. Now it is not.

Debateable as to the realtive ease. Certainly things are different now
and takes some time to get used to. We are also steadily improving
things as concrete problems are pointed out. Realise that the earlier
versions of the documentation were also becoming quite hard to find
things in as individual pages became longer and longer.

After the docs refactor the follow-up idea is that we now need to fill
in a lot of places with cross-references and with extra documentation so
that it can serve the purpose of being both reference and tutorial (for
multiple levels of ability) documentation.

>  I thought it was only me, but I have seen 
> enough comments on IRC to find that it is general. The main document page for 
> before restructuring was good. Now the only way to find anything is through 
> google search. So my request is very simple: if we cannot go back to the old 
> structure, at least put google search and the module/global index as the 
> *first* items on the left hand side of the page so we can go there.

Okay, so you were talking about the sidebar, not the index pages.

>  After a 
> gap, I am coding a new django site, and decided to do it from scratch with no 
> copy/paste and checking the docs. It is proving difficult. Please do not 
> think I am criticising the docs - I am not. But I *am* viewing the docs as an 
> end user and putting forward my feedback.

Firstly, I explained in my original post why that meta information is on
the right-hand side, not the left (along with it being a design
decision). This is one of those things where reasonable people will have
different opinions. Having to scroll right if you're on some kind of
narrower screen-width browser window just to read the content is kind of
painful, too, I'm sure you'll agree.

Secondly, if things are hard to find without search (and that is
something that is improving over time), a much better fix is to work
where the difficulties are and improve them by fixing the docs (via
ticket reports with patches). Adrian did that a few months back, for
example, when he reorganised the content on the front page.

Moving the search box to occupy prime real-estate has drawbacks and
doesn't save an enormous amount of time. However, if that does really
help you out, one solution that springs to mind is easy: use different
stylesheets (or remove the Django stylesheets and just use the default
Sphinx ones) on your local build of the docs. You can organise things
however you like there. But please do understand that this isn't a
change that is necessarily universally better for everybody. It does
harm the content presentation, for example.

Regards,
Malcolm


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