I would be nice for the user to be able to know what version the documentation pertains to, and view earlier versions as well (like python or sklearn docs do).

It's also nice for the developer to know when the docs were generated (for example, to see if a new generation came through yet). Unless a better/easier idea comes along; generation date should be included subtly (small font, gray, footer?).

Sphinx does this with rst: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/extensions/doctest.html

How do we get this to work with md?

For the documentation to be published, you need to got to https://github.com/i2mint/unbox/settings/pages, then do some simple manipulations, like:

Simple, yes, and usually only has to be done once. Still, having it done automatically would be nice if it's not too much dev to get there. Is there an API or a CI instruction that would get us there?

results in

def docs_starts_directly_with_doctest(docstr):
    """Return true if and only if docstr starts directly with a doctest,
    which results in an erroneous rendering in some systems"""
    return bool(re.compile(r'\s*>>>').match(docstr))

See: https://github.com/i2mint/stream2py/blob/master/stream2py/examples/usage/triggered_starts.py

Also, how do we graphviz with markdown.

• What possibilities does sphinx offer for markdown?
• pros and cons (rst more functional, md easier to start with but what are we sacrificing?)?
• Try out https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/markdown.html
• integrate with CI (isee)

I see that epythet imports recommonmark, but as seen on recommonmark's page it is now deprecated in favor of MyST:
"Warning: recommonmark is now deprecated. We recommend using MyST for a docutils bridge going forward. See this issue for background and discussion.": recommonmark deprecated

The presence of local docs produces a lot of annoying "information washout":

during IDE (pycharm here) search

When searching for objects, a big proportion of files are html or js, which makes it hard to find stuff.
The cleaner solution would be that I parametrize the search to ignore .js and .html files, but haven't managed to find how to do that.

in git prints

Hard to see what’s (arguably) more important when, say, doing a git pull.

Solution and their tradeoffs

Of course, it's nice to have local documentation, but personally I almost always use online documentation, so it's an easy price for me to pay to not have the docs locally.

What about the solution of putting docs/* in the gitignore. Would that be sufficient? in which situations would that not be recommended?

I've seen some html documentation have a "toggle >>>" button that allows the reader to switch from

>>> t = 3 + 2
>>> t
5

view to a

t = 3 + 2
t

view that's easier to copy/paste/try.

How do we integrate this option in epythet's doc gen?

I've disabled the markdown support because it messes with the rst code blocks and numbered lists. You can find examples on this page when you compile the docs:
https://i2mint.github.io/epythet/module_docs/epythet.html

This code needs to change
epythet/_static/docsrc/conf.py

import commonmark


def docstring(app, what, name, obj, options, lines):
    md = '\n'.join(lines)
    ast = commonmark.Parser().parse(md)
    rst = commonmark.ReStructuredTextRenderer().render(ast)
    lines.clear()
    lines += rst.splitlines()


def setup(app):
    app.connect('autodoc-process-docstring', docstring)

The markdown parser should not be blindly applied to the entire document.

One possible solution is to have some kind of sentinel or keyword show where md starts and finishes and only apply it to those sections. Even better if you can tell the difference between md and rst without the users knowledge.

Documentation must be added for whatever the solution ends up being.

Another problem to solve in doc gen: Spell checking.

• How can we have pycharm/vscode tell us about possible mistakes in module and functions/classes docs?
• A function/command to ask sphinx to spell check those things that will actually end up in the docs? Integrate that with the default doc gen?