On 12/15/23 09:47, Jonathan Corbet wrote:
Carlos Bilbao <bilbao@xxxxxx> writes:The general consensus is that the documentation's website main entry point and its sidebar leave room for improvement. Something we can easily fix is that there's too much duplicated text. To that point, consider the titles "The Linux kernel user's and administrator's guide" and "The Linux kernel user-space API guide." We get it, it's the Linux kernel. It's assumed that everything listed pertains to the Linux kernel, given the overarching title, "The Linux Kernel documentation." Constant repetition of "Linux" and "kernel" (45 times each), "documentation" (21 times), and "guide" (18 times) are excessive and affect UX. I propose simplifying without altering actual document titles, the text linking to these documents on the main page ("link titles"). For example, "The Linux kernel user's and administrator's guide" could become "User's and Administrator's Guide," and "A guide to the Kernel Development Process" could be "Development Process". This is what my patch does.So I totally agree that the sidebar can use improvement, and I agree that this patch makes it better. I'm less convinced about the changes to the page itself, which I consider to be somewhat more important. There, I think, the more terse titles are likely to be less useful for readers. (OTOH, I think the result is an improvement for those reading the RST files). I spent some time a little while back understanding how the sidebar is generated, and feel that we can make it into what we want it to be. But I don't think we've decided what we really want it to be. I think there is simply too much stuff there in general; it's never going to be manageable that way. There was a suggestion at the kernel-summit session to just put the top-level books there: Kernel documentation Development-process guide Core API manual Driver API manual User-space API manual Maintainer guide Documentation guide Then perhaps add one level for whichever book is open (if any) at the time.
I like this idea; as of today, we have too many duplicated links. Regarding the addition of concise titles for the link titles, I'd argue that the important part is not to lose information. For example, I shortened "Submitting patches: the essential guide to getting your code into the kernel" to "Submitting patches". But, if I had simply put "Patches", it would have made it unclear what the document was actually about.
I'm sure there are other, better ideas as well. Meanwhile, I'm pondering on this patch, would like to know what others think. Carlos nicely put up some comparison images for us: https://github.com/Zildj1an/linux-kernel-docs-compare/blob/main/comparison.png ...so it's not necessary to build the docs to see the results. Thanks, jon
Thanks, Carlos
