[Mesa-dev] [Request for Comments] - Port documentation to Markdown

Tue Mar 7 12:02:23 UTC 2017

Eric, 

>>On Monday, 2017-03-06 18:36:32 +0000, Jean Hertel wrote:
>> Hello guys,
>> 
>> 
>> I want to propose a port of the current HTML documentation to a markdown-like syntax.
>> 
>
>I was thinking of doing essentially the same thing, just haven't had the
>time to do so yet. Please CC me (eric at engestrom.ch) on anything related
>to this project :)
>
>> 
>> Current problems
> > 
> > 
> > Right now I see some problems with the approach used.
> > 
> >   *   People maintaining the documentation must know basic HTML syntax;
> >   *   There is no easy way to add a new release page;
> >      *   You need to open the index file and make changes there;
> >      *   You need to make a new file that will say what has been changed;
> >      *   You need to remember to update the release notes pages;
> >   *   The current website has many HTML tags not being closed;
>>   *   The website don't fit well in mobile area. (The layout is not responsive);
>>   *   Making any change to the layout is very hard, because you need to rewrite many pages;
>>   *   The current website doesn't show all the possibilities of the library. The website has a 1990 layout, and I think having a new layout would benefit the project;
>
>Agreed on all counts :)
>
>> 
>> Proposal for Markdown
> > 
> > Rewriting the documentation in a markdown syntax can bring some benefits to the development, like:
> > 
> >   *   Anyone writing for freedesktop.org, StackOverflow and Github already knows the markdown syntax.
> >   *   Independence of HTML. The developer don't need to worry if the HTML output will be correct. The generator makes all the translation from markdown to HTML;
>
> Agreed, but more on this below.

> >   *   Easily change the layout of the site, simply changing the theme; (I don't think you change the layout much, but allowing it to be easy wont hurt)
>
> Having a proper (generated?) HTML structure and a clean CSS is all you
> need for this.
>
I agree.

> >   *   Creating a new release post can be maded easy, using some static site generator, for example, pelican;
>
> This can be done with any old tool. You could even have a simple
> release.template and copy it and modify it as you need to make a new
> release.

> > 
> > 
> > Right now I have maded a partial port from HTML to Markdown.
> > 
>> The code can be found here:  https://github.com/jlHertel/mesa-pelican
>
>I looked at your conversion on a couple random files, and it looks
>pretty good to me. (I have a couple nit-picks obviously :P, but the
>basic concept is fine.)

If you find any problem, you can report them directly via a github issue or send me an email. As soon as possible I will fix it.

>> 
>> I'm using the pelican static site generator with a layout ported from Wordpress using Twitter Bootstrap CSS.
>> 
>> A live preview can be found here: http://mesa.jeanhertel.com.br/
>> 
>> 
>> The static site generator tool and the theme used can be ignored if you want, the point here is to rewrite the documentation in a way that is easy to maintain and that >>don't need a good knowledge in HTML.
>
>I haven't look into Pelican (and won't have time to do so before the
>weekend), but I think it sounds like a reasonable kind of requirement to
>have. There are plenty of other markdown-to-html generators around, if
>someone prefers another one.

Agree, any generator is fine for me.

>One thing that I would prefer so not see if heavy things like Bootstrap.
>We definitely don't need it, I think writing our own few lines of CSS
>(which can be inspired by anything you want) is better. We have more
>than enough people who know how to do it (myself included), it will be
>cleaner (we won't need to include the whole forest to get our tree) and
>much easier to fix when there's a bug.

As I already answered Emil, I have put it there because of mylack of knowledge on doing good CSS.
Of course you're welcome to help me write a more clean CSS. Any help and suggestion is very apreciated.

>One core thing that might need to be changed is Markdown itself. It is
>great for prose, but it breaks down quite quickly when you start to
>write code in it. For this reason, people are moving to RST instead for
>code documentation.
>
>The question becomes: how much code do we expect to put on the website,
>and how complex will it be?
>
>I had in mind that we could start adding small code examples to help new
>learners to understand how the apis are used. No tutorial-style articles,
>just enough to understand that "you need to init this, then query that,
>and pass arguments like this, and handle errors like that".

I have never heard of problems writing code inside Markdown. My own blog has some code and uses Markdown without problems.
Can you please give me a link explaining what are the common problems? 
Maybe we should worry with this before doing anything.

>If we ever need to convert from Markdown to RST, I think the conversion
>would be pretty trivial, so baring objections I'd recommend going with
>Markdown for now.

I agree that the conversion seems easy.
Of course the choosen tool (pelican) supports both Markdown and Rst.
You cannot mix them in the same document, but having some documents in RST and some in Markdown is fine.

>I'll have a look at generators and make sure things can work on
>annarchy when I find the time, and I'll get back to you.
>
>Cheers,
>  Eric
>> 
>> 
>> Please leave your comments on the proposal.
>> 
>> 
>> Best Regards
>> 
>> Jean Hertel
>> 
>> 
>> ------------------
>> 
>> Some terms used are web-focused, so I will leave some links if anyone don't know what I mean:
>> 
>> Twitter Bootstrap Css: http://getbootstrap.com/
>> 
>> Responsive layout:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design
>> 
>> Pelican static site generator: https://blog.getpelican.com/
>> 
>> Markdown: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markdown

Best Regards,
Jean Hertel