Exchanging Sphinx theme for more structure

[Paebbels]

The default theme used by Sphinx is not very suitable for longer or detailed documentations.

I suggest switching to the ReadTheDocs theme. It looks like this:

Source: https://pyterminalui.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

In bigger examples is becomes like this:
Source: https://ghdl.readthedocs.io/en/latest/getting/index.html

Here is an updated conf.py. Lately, Sphinx get rid of unused parameters in the config file. So when you start the Sphinx wizard nowadays, it's a tiny file.

# Configuration file for the Sphinx documentation builder.
#
# This file only contains a selection of the most common options. For a full
# list see the documentation:
# https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/configuration.html

# -- Path setup --------------------------------------------------------------

# If extensions (or modules to document with autodoc) are in another directory,
# add these directories to sys.path here. If the directory is relative to the
# documentation root, use os.path.abspath to make it absolute, like shown here.
import os
import sys
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath('.'))
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath('..'))
#sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath('../src/pydecor'))
#sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath('_extensions'))
#sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath('_themes/sphinx_rtd_theme'))

# ==============================================================================
# Project information
# ==============================================================================
project =   "pydecor"
copyright = "2016-2019 Patrick Lehmann - Boetzingen, Germany"
author =    "Patrick Lehmann"

# ==============================================================================
# Versioning
# ==============================================================================
# The version info for the project you're documenting, acts as replacement for
# |version| and |release|, also used in various other places throughout the
# built documents.
from subprocess import check_output

def _IsUnderGitControl():
    return (check_output(["git", "rev-parse", "--is-inside-work-tree"], universal_newlines=True).strip() == "true")

def _LatestTagName():
    return check_output(["git", "describe", "--abbrev=0", "--tags"], universal_newlines=True).strip()

# The full version, including alpha/beta/rc tags
version = "0.4"     # The short X.Y version.
release = "0.4.3"   # The full version, including alpha/beta/rc tags.
try:
    if _IsUnderGitControl:
        latestTagName = _LatestTagName()[1:]        # remove prefix "v"
        versionParts =  latestTagName.split("-")[0].split(".")

        version = ".".join(versionParts[:2])
        release = latestTagName   # ".".join(versionParts[:3])
except:
    pass

# ==============================================================================
# Miscellaneous settings
# ==============================================================================
# The master toctree document.
master_doc = 'index'

# Add any paths that contain templates here, relative to this directory.
templates_path = ['_templates']

# List of patterns, relative to source directory, that match files and
# directories to ignore when looking for source files.
# This pattern also affects html_static_path and html_extra_path.
exclude_patterns = [
    "_build",
    "_themes",
    "Thumbs.db",
    ".DS_Store"
]

# The name of the Pygments (syntax highlighting) style to use.
pygments_style = 'stata-dark'

# ==============================================================================
# Restructured Text settings
# ==============================================================================
prologPath = "prolog.inc"
try:
    with open(prologPath, "r") as prologFile:
        rst_prolog = prologFile.read()
except Exception as ex:
    print("[ERROR:] While reading '{0!s}'.".format(prologPath))
    print(ex)
    rst_prolog = ""

# ==============================================================================
# Options for HTML output
# ==============================================================================
# html_theme = 'alabaster'
html_theme = 'sphinx_rtd_theme'

# Add any paths that contain custom static files (such as style sheets) here,
# relative to this directory. They are copied after the builtin static files,
# so a file named "default.css" will overwrite the builtin "default.css".
html_static_path = ['_static']

# If not None, a 'Last updated on:' timestamp is inserted at every page
# bottom, using the given strftime format.
# The empty string is equivalent to '%b %d, %Y'.
html_last_updated_fmt = "%d.%m.%Y"

# ==============================================================================
# Options for LaTeX / PDF output
# ==============================================================================
from textwrap import dedent

latex_elements = {
    # The paper size ('letterpaper' or 'a4paper').
    'papersize': 'a4paper',

    # The font size ('10pt', '11pt' or '12pt').
    #'pointsize': '10pt',

    # Additional stuff for the LaTeX preamble.
    'preamble': dedent(r"""
        % ================================================================================
        % User defined additional preamble code
        % ================================================================================
        % Add more Unicode characters for pdfLaTeX.
        % - Alternatively, compile with XeLaTeX or LuaLaTeX.
        % - https://github.com/sphinx-doc/sphinx/issues/3511
        %
        \ifdefined\DeclareUnicodeCharacter
            \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{2265}{$\geq$}
            \DeclareUnicodeCharacter{21D2}{$\Rightarrow$}
        \fi

        % ================================================================================
        """),

    # Latex figure (float) alignment
    #'figure_align': 'htbp',
}

# Grouping the document tree into LaTeX files. List of tuples
# (source start file, target name, title,
#  author, documentclass [howto, manual, or own class]).
latex_documents = [
    ( master_doc,
      'pydecor.tex',
      'The pydecor Documentation',
        'Matthew Planchard',
        'manual'
    ),
]

# ==============================================================================
# Extensions
# ==============================================================================
extensions = [
# Sphinx theme
    "sphinx_rtd_theme",

# Standard Sphinx extensions
    "sphinx.ext.autodoc",
    'sphinx.ext.extlinks',
    'sphinx.ext.intersphinx',
    'sphinx.ext.inheritance_diagram',
    'sphinx.ext.todo',
    'sphinx.ext.graphviz',
    'sphinx.ext.mathjax',
    'sphinx.ext.ifconfig',
    'sphinx.ext.viewcode',
#   'sphinx.ext.duration',

# SphinxContrib extensions
# 'sphinxcontrib.spelling',
# 'changelog',

# BuildTheDocs extensions
#   'btd.sphinx.autoprogram',
#   'btd.sphinx.graphviz',
#   'btd.sphinx.inheritance_diagram',

# Other extensions
    'sphinx_fontawesome',
    'sphinx_autodoc_typehints',

# local extensions (patched)
    'autoapi.sphinx',
]

# ==============================================================================
# Sphinx.Ext.InterSphinx
# ==============================================================================
intersphinx_mapping = {
    'python':   ('https://docs.python.org/3', None),
}

# ==============================================================================
# Sphinx.Ext.AutoDoc
# ==============================================================================
# see: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/extensions/autodoc.html#configuration
autodoc_member_order = "bysource"       # alphabetical, groupwise, bysource

# ==============================================================================
# Sphinx.Ext.ExtLinks
# ==============================================================================
extlinks = {
    'issue': ('https://github.com/mplanchard/pydecor/issues/%s', 'issue #'),
    'pull':  ('https://github.com/mplanchard/pydecor/pull/%s', 'pull request #'),
    'src':   ('https://github.com/mplanchard/pydecor/blob/master/src/pydecor/%s?ts=2', None),
    'test':  ('https://github.com/mplanchard/pydecor/blob/master/tests/%s?ts=2', None)
}

# ==============================================================================
# Sphinx.Ext.Graphviz
# ==============================================================================
graphviz_output_format = "svg"

# ==============================================================================
# Sphinx.Ext.ToDo
# ==============================================================================
# If true, `todo` and `todoList` produce output, else they produce nothing.
todo_include_todos = True
todo_link_only = True

# ==============================================================================
# AutoAPI.Sphinx
# ==============================================================================
autoapi_modules = {
  'pydecor':  {'output': "pydecor"}
}

[Paebbels]

I also saw:

• Sphinx is still using version 1.8.5
  • I encourage to use always latest Sphinx, because it still has a lot of bug and can only become better with every release
  • change requirement to >=2.3.x
• In addition: manually enforce Pygments to latest version, otherwise syntax highlighting might brake due to the old version used by ReadTheDocs 2.3.1
  • change requirement to >=2.5.x

[Paebbels]

Here is the intermediate state with a draft: https://paebbels-pydecor.readthedocs.io/en/paebbels-new-doc-theme/

If you like the direction, please give a go, and I'll go on otherwise I'll stop it here.

[Paebbels]

@mplanchard have you had time to look at my proposed new documentation layout? (see comment above)