Updating Sage documentation presentation

[saad khalid]

Hi all:

The sage documentation hosted online (eg. http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/index.html ) looks very old. To me at least, it makes the software seem ancient, and I believe it puts off younger new users. The Cocalc interface for Sage maintains a modern looking aesthetic which makes it easy to show my peers (because it doesn't look that intimidating). I wish the documentation was the same way. Has there been any thought towards updating the look of the documentation? For example, we could use readthedocs (I believe this is the simplest option). Alternatively, we could use something like slate (https://github.com/lord/slate) or a variety of other options. My question is, has this been considered and is there any obvious reasons to not do this?

Thanks!

[Kwankyu]

On Wednesday, June 19, 2019 at 9:31:05 PM UTC+9, saad khalid wrote:

Hi all:

The sage documentation hosted online (eg. http://doc.sagemath.org/html/en/reference/index.html ) looks very old. To me at least, it makes the software seem ancient, and I believe it puts off younger new users. The Cocalc interface for Sage maintains a modern looking aesthetic which makes it easy to show my peers (because it doesn't look that intimidating). I wish the documentation was the same way. Has there been any thought towards updating the look of the documentation? For example, we could use readthedocs (I believe this is the simplest option). Alternatively, we could use something like slate (https://github.com/lord/slate) or a variety of other options. My question is, has this been considered and is there any obvious reasons to not do this? 

I am curious if the Python documentation looks fancy to you?

https://docs.python.org/3.6/ 

[saad khalid]

I definitely see your point, it doesn't look fancy to me. But, I would argue that Mathematica does have very "fancy" and accessible looking documentation, and I think accessibility and polish are what new users may base their choice on when deciding which CAS to use.

[Kwankyu]

On Friday, June 21, 2019 at 11:29:06 AM UTC+9, saad khalid wrote:

I definitely see your point, it doesn't look fancy to me. But, I would argue that Mathematica does have very "fancy" and accessible looking documentation, and I think accessibility and polish are what new users may base their choice on when deciding which CAS to use.

To me, the Python documentation looks better than the Mathematica documentation, in terms of readability. But I think this is just personal preference.

Anyway, definitely the Sage documentation needs to be improved, and I guess no one does not want to stick to the present state. You are welcome to try other options. There is no reason not to.