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

Tue Mar 7 21:47:27 UTC 2017

Hey Jean,

On Tue, Mar 7, 2017 at 4:02 AM, Jean Hertel <jean.hertel at hotmail.com> wrote:

> 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/
>

Ok, that looks amazing...

> >> 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.
>

I would tend to agree but I don't care too much about those details so long
as it's maintainable.  My primary concern is that while a lot of random
developers in the community are liable to have brushed into CSS a time or
two, most probably won't know bootstrap.

> 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.
>

How much are we trying to just make the website easier to update vs. how
much are we trying to expand documentation?  If we're just trying to give
the website a face-lift, then something like pelian is probably
sufficient.  If we want to start putting substantial pieces of
documentation into the website, then using a more complete tool such as
Sphinx may be in order.  More on that below.

> >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.
>

First off, it's worth throwing out there that this is not the first
proposal to do something like this, just the proposal with the prettiest
demo :-)  A few references for you:

https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2016-August/127178.html
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2015-June/085786.html
https://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/mesa-dev/2016-December/138196.html

In particular, the conversion of the entire mesa website to rst has already
been done... twice.

One thing that I would personally like to see is for us to start building
some Sphinx-based architecture-level documentation for mesa.  There is
already some substantial gallium documentation written using RST and Sphinx
and I have some pretty good chunks of NIR and ISL documentation floating
around that I'd like to merge at some point but there's no good place to
put it at the moment.  Whether this sort of documentation ties into the
website or is its own thing that developers just build from the git tree, I
don't care too much.  However, given the way Sphinx is designed, just doing
everything in Sphinx seems like a reasonable thing to do.
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