[Numpy-discussion] docs.scipy.org -- new site for the documentation marathon

[Pauli Virtanen]

Hi all,

Gaël and I finished moving the Scipy documentation editor web app to a
new site (at Enthought, thanks!). The Numpy documentation marathon can
now be found at

	http://docs.scipy.org/numpy/

instead of the old location. Everything should work as previously, or
even better, but if something is broken, please notify me.

    ***

The domain name was, however, very tempting for hosting also the
Sphinx-generated documentation, so we put those there too. You can
browse to

	http://docs.scipy.org/

to see how they currently look like. Suggestions how to improve this
are welcome!

Currently, the sources for the Sphinx stuff can be found here:

	https://code.launchpad.net/~pauli-virtanen/scipy/numpy-refguide
	http://www.iki.fi/pav/tmp/scipy-refguide.tar.gz
	http://www.iki.fi/pav/tmp/docsscipy-frontpage.tar.gz
	(The latter two are tarballs because of problems with
	launchpad.net and apparently Bzr 1.6.1.)

But I think I will move all of them to Scipy's SVN -- I believe the
advantages of using the same revision control system as numpy and scipy
themselves will outweigh those of using Bzr.

Eventually, we can also make all this documentation editable on the web
via the Documentation marathon app. (Actually, we already could, but
creating new files is not possible using the app yet, and there are some
performance issues remaining in rendering long documentation files.)

   ***

Now, the role of docs.scipy.org warrants discussion, because on the one
hand, the domain "docs.scipy.org" looks very official, and on the other
hand, "scipy.org/Documentation" claims to be the place for official
documentation. What do you think: should we use the current front page
of docs.scipy.org, shifting the focus and entry point of documentation
to the Sphinx-generated pages, or still keep the focus on the Moin wiki
at scipy.org?

I'd like to see a move towards a full dedicated documentation site -- I
believe using Sphinx is the way to go in the future, and documentation
generated by it does have a reassuring and clear visual appearance.
Also, making the Sphinx documentation more prominent could help people
to focus documentation efforts, and write more of it :)

Cheers,

-- 
Pauli Virtanen