Re: [PATCH v2 0/6] docs: Improvements to our HTML output

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org>]

Em Tue, 11 Oct 2022 13:00:41 -0600
Jonathan Corbet <corbet@lwn.net> escreveu:

> For a long time we have rejoiced that our HTML output from Sphinx is far
> better than what we got from the old DocBook toolchain.  But it still
> leaves a lot to be desired; the following is an attempt to improve the
> situation somewhat.
> 
> Sphinx has a theming mechanism for HTML rendering.  Since the kernel's
> adoption of Sphinx, we have been using the "Read The Docs" theme — a choice
> made in a bit of a hurry to have *something* while figuring out the rest.
> RTD is OK, but it is not hugely attractive, requires the installation of an
> extra package, and does not observe all of the Sphinx configuration
> parameters.  Among other things, that makes it hard to put reasonable
> contents into the left column in the HTML output.
> 
> The Alabaster theme is the default for Sphinx installations, and is bundled
> with Sphinx itself.  It has (IMO) nicer output and gives us the control
> that we need.
> 
> So: switch to Alabaster.  Additional patches adjust the documentation and
> remove the RTD references from scripts/sphinx-pre-install.
> 
> The penultimate patch changes the way that kerneldoc declarations are
> rendered to (IMO) improve readability.  That requires some changes to
> kernel-doc to output a new container block and some CSS tweaks to improve
> things overall.
> 
> It should be noted that I have a long history of inflicting ugly web
> designs on the net; this work is a start, but I think we could do far
> better yet.  It would be great if somebody who actually enjoys working with
> CSS and such would help to improve what we have.
> 
> As before, I've put a copy of the rendered docs at:
> 
>   https://static.lwn.net/kerneldoc/
> 
> To compare the kerneldoc changes specifically, pick a page that includes a
> lot of definitions; for example:
> 
>   https://static.lwn.net/kerneldoc/driver-api/media/drivers/frontends.html
>   vs.
>   https://www.kernel.org/doc/html/latest/driver-api/media/drivers/frontends.html
> 
> -------
> Changes from the initial version:
> 
> - Tweak more alabaster style parameters, including the maximum page width.
>   There will surely be disagreement over what the right value should be,
>   but at least it's defined in units independent of screen resolution.
> 
> - Remove "classic" theme configuration and a bunch of other conf.py cruft.
> 
> - I've tried to answer all of the other comments, but a couple remain.  The
>   sidebar contents are unchanged; making that more useful will require some
>   thought and work.  The gray background on function prototypes that Jani
>   pointed out is actually something I did intentionally, with the idea of
>   making each declaration stand out better in the wall of text.  I still
>   think it's better but am not married to it if the world disagrees.
> 
> - I've tested PDF and epub builds (no changes) and Sphinx back to v1.7.
> 
> In the absence of objections I'll be putting this into docs-next after the
> merge window closes.  We can (and surely will) tweak this forever, but at
> least it, I hope, shows a direction in which we can go.

No objections from my side. Surely more things could be tweaked. In
particular, I didn't like having two ToCs at the index (a complete one
and a second one pointing to where we are at the docs), but that's a lot
better than before, so, I'm OK with that.

Feel free to add my ack to the patches:

Acked-by: Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab@kernel.org>

Regards,
Mauro

> 
> Jonathan Corbet (6):
>   docs: Switch the default HTML theme to alabaster
>   docs: tweak some Alabaster style parameters
>   docs: update sphinx.rst to reflect the default theme change
>   docs: sphinx-pre-install: don't require the RTD theme
>   docs: improve the HTML formatting of kerneldoc comments
>   docs: decruft Documentation/conf.py
> 
>  Documentation/conf.py                  | 204 ++++---------------------
>  Documentation/doc-guide/sphinx.rst     |  16 +-
>  Documentation/sphinx-static/custom.css |  28 ++++
>  Documentation/sphinx/requirements.txt  |   1 -
>  scripts/kernel-doc                     |  52 ++++---
>  scripts/sphinx-pre-install             |   8 -
>  6 files changed, 91 insertions(+), 218 deletions(-)
>  create mode 100644 Documentation/sphinx-static/custom.css
>