@story645 I would like to work on this. Can I?

Go for it!

well before that can I have a short and brief google meet or zoom call so as to better discuss the layout of matplotlib's docs page?

We have our dev call Thursday, but you can drop into our gitter to ask questions https://gitter.im/matplotlib/matplotlib

actually I wanted to have more insights on rendering the docs why do we need to copy from other I believe it needs to be enhanced but we can create a custom layout. @story645 and sure I will put my doubts on gitter for a through deliberation. but how to join this dev call. My last PR hasn't been merged yet and I am also not a member of this repository.

The dev call is open to the public to discuss any PR, we put the link in the gitter day of. We don't need to copy from pandas or numpy, they're just ideas of similar projects and familiar UX tends to be welcome.
I think it'd be useful for you to open a PR or issue or post on discourse w/ some of your ideas that we can then discuss.

@story645 I had a thought regarding a format of the landing page. Instead to redirecting the user to a new page we create create a page having a column in the left with all the topics and subtopics mention in the left somewhat like pycaret documentation page has
https://pycaret.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
(see here) but what I would like to add here in the left column like adding a second level of column to it containing the subtopics of the topic like here taking the case of pycaret if I were doing it for them I would add each function involved in each topic for eg classification under that topic in the second level of left column.

@timhoffm what are your thoughts on this

to add here in the left column like adding a second level of column to it containing the subtopics of the topic like here taking the case of pycaret if I were doing it for them I would add each function involved in each topic for eg classification under that topic in the second level of left column.

I'm sorry, I'm having trouble following how this is a solution to the docs issue (rather than a homepage redesign like the caret page). Can you please at least sketch up a wireframe of your proposal?

yes @story645 surely can I put up rough pen sketch so that you can have an insight or should I explain it verbally on the dev call?

I think pen sketch would be very helpful and make it easier to follow a verbal explaination.

yess but don't count on my sketching skills they are very bad but I have explained all functionalities throughly. @story645

few more provisions like viewing the source and view on github are not added here

Thanks, much clearer! I'm not sure though how it addresses the roadmapping problem since if I'm reading it right, folks would have to hover each section to learn what it's about?

actually that's for reading part incase you wanna browse through a section but when itself you open up the web page it contains what matplotlib it about a like current overview of what it is okay its dependencies and basic features and how it came into play , its current version and footer will contain reference link to the reaserach papers that cited matplotlib

On having a deeper thought, I thought it would be grateful we we could add some matplotlib code snippets to showcase the beautiful graphs it can render though a separate section in the header or in left column namely see it in action/ Code Snippets

and we can also add a QnA support in the left column and below it will be a link to report an issue or bugthat redirects to our github repository

@story645 what do you think ??

you open up the web page it contains what matplotlib it about a like current overview of what it is okay its dependencies and basic features and how it came into play , its current version and footer will contain reference link to the reasearch papers that cited matplotlib

This sounds like a proposed redesign of the homepage and not the roadmap issue described here. If you are proposing a redesign of the homepage, please open a new issue or start a discussion on matplotlib.discourse.org with your sketch and your proposal clearly laid out - what you propose, why you're proposing it, how you plan to implement it. A clearly laid out what/why/how would also be appreciated even if I am misinterpreting and you are proposing a redesign of just the docs page.

I thought it would be grateful we we could add some matplotlib code snippets to showcase the beautiful graphs it can render though a separate section in the header or in left column namely see it in action/ Code Snippets

there are about 600 examples in the gallery, so please explain how this relates to the gallery.

add a QnA support in the left column and below it will be a link to report an issue or bugthat redirects to our github repository

Q & A belongs in the discourse and on stack overflow, the issue and bug tracker are for reporting actionable tasks. Please explain how your proposed layout improves the roadmapping in the homepage:

will contain reference link to the reasearch papers that cited matplotlib

while cool, this information is actually fairly difficult to obtain in a robust way.

Also, if you'd like to chat more about your ideas, please drop into our incubator channel https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/contributing.html#contributor-incubator

@story645 whats the major learning objective that this page is meant to have?

I think part of why that link is so jarring to click on is that Documentation != Table of Conents but the Documentation tab links to the TOC nonetheless.

Given that there are already top level links to Examples and Tutorials maybe it would make more sense to rename the Documentation to API (with approriate relinking) and then also create a Contents link?

I go back and forth - the thing I like w/ both the Numpy and Pandas links is they give brief descriptions of the different types of docs, and I think that's what's missing from that page - like if you don't already know the mpl docs it's not gonna help you (I'm not even certain it'll help you if you do, but that's a bigger UX issue).

One thing to note is that both of your links are essentially the top level of the docs. So they are a natural place to have links with short descriptions. In contrast Matplotlib has a reasonable top level page, but then the concept of what a "Documentation" tab is seems ill-defined. Documentation is what I'd expect the entire website to be, hence my thought that the tabs should represent a specific subsection of documentation.

Having now thought about this a bit more I'm more convinced that trying to improve the Contents.rst page to better match what expectations for a Documentation link is a losing battle. I think I would rename that tab, change where it points to and also re-order the tabs.

Installation - Tutorials - Examples - API Reference - Contributing

Installation followed by Tutorials seems like a very natural flow for a user to go through when first learning matplotlib.

^ This. 99.99% of the time I hit "Documentation" is to drill down into API, which then I have to get to by clicking again under the API tab.

@jklymak you're looking for this page I imagine: https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/api/index.html ? Or something else?

@story645 I think I have figured out what the landing page is missing and i will sketch up a wireframe soon.

@ianhi I almost always just want to go to modules: https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/api/index.html#modules All the verbiage before hand just makes for an extra click.

That is I think what I would want from that page. But I don't think it's a good pattern for a top level tab to link to the lowest heading in a page. So maybe that's a sign that that explanation of usage patterns really belongs somewhere else? (At least under the proposed re-organization)

The equivalent numpy page (https://numpy.org/doc/stable/reference/index.html) has a brief sentence on top and then jumps right in to what you are looking for.

@story645 what do you think will this wireframe solve the road mapping problem in the landing page

I get the feeling we are talking about two different pages..

Our landing page is http://matplotlib.org/stable/ which is not wildly different than the above sketches.

@story645 is discussing the contents page https://matplotlib.org/stable/contents.html, which you get to, confusingly, but pressing either the Contents in the breadcrumb, or Documentation in the header.

I would be against duplicating Contents and the home page with almost the same information.

I am somewhat happy with the recent changes to the home page, spearheaded by @timhoffm and @story645, though there is always room for improvement.

What @ianhi is suggesting (I believe) is a rethink of the top-level menu bar that currently says "Installation" "Documentation" "Examples" "Tutorials" "Contributing", in particular to get rid of "Documentation" and replace with "API".

I think the old organization came from the idea that the webpage was somehow separate from the "docs" and that the docs needed a narrative table of contents. Its 2021, and I'd say the webpage is the docs, and given the improvements to the home page, I really think the idea that the docs need a separate landing page should be rethought, which I think is what @story645 is suggesting.

I would be against duplicating Contents and the home page with almost the same information.
one thing to note is that both of your links are essentially the top level of the docs.
the webpage is the docs,

The numpy & pandas home pages have changed to be more holistic https://numpy.org/, https://pandas.pydata.org/, which is in line with the level of detail on the matplotlib homepage. The screenshots I posted are for the pages you get by clicking on the documentation tab of each homepage. I think a secondary confusion here is that their docs sites are styled differently from their homepages (and may even be different sites ). while in the current matplotlib site, these are sort of clobbered together. I'm not opposed to adding/changing tabs

Installation - Tutorials - Examples - API Reference - Contributing

but I don't think that's in conflict with reworking the docs landing page to provide some guidance on which part of the docs folks should go to. So I think the last wireframe @rajpratyush is in the right direction since it is strictly focused on the docs page. Though there is also the question of what shoud be pulled out of that table of contents - like third party package stuff is really ecosystem anyway.

I would prefer not to have to click 3 times to finally get to the API

IMHO the landing page is only a secondary problem. The major issue is that we in parts don't have a reasonable structure on the site. And that deficit makes it hard for the landing page to have meaningful structure and links. Sometimes, we don't have the proper pages to link to, and sometimes we have to include lines to make pages accessible, but the links don't really fit the desired scope.

So before we get to redesign the landing page, we need to reorganize the site. The landing page with then make itself evident from the structure.

Todo: Define categories, purpose and intendend audience for the existing pages and reorganize them.

@timhoffm @story645 did you checked my second wireframe. I think it will solve our problem and it will be interactive as well please go though it once and do tell me your opinions

@rajpratyush I like the overall idea. Probably needs still some fine-tuning. My larger point is that we can only do this after restructuring the site because we currently don't always have proper pages we can to link to from the landing page.

@timhoffm yes I agree the wireframe needs some fine tuning. Can you tell me all the pages which needs restructuring

We don't have a list because we don't fully know the answer to that question - someone has to go through the whole site and figure out what's there and how it's currently linked together (a full UX inventory) which I think is why @tacaswell pulled the good first issue label off this PR.

well @story645 that would definitely take more than one brain for sure. if you are willing to I have one friend with whom I can collaborate and work together on resolving this issue.

Hi @rajpratyush, we had a discussion on this and think that might be a bit too much as a new user contribution. But, if you and your friend are interested in doing a big documentation project, #18277 might be a good fit. The tasks involved are:

1. create a blank sphinx gallery page
2. fill it w/ minimal examples of each type of chart - the type of data the chart expects & the plotting call, no parameter tweaking

closing in favor of #20737