Reorg devdocs by melissawm · Pull Request #69 · melissawm/matplotlib · GitHub
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Reorg devdocs - #69

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melissawm wants to merge 16 commits into
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reorg-devdocs

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@melissawm

@melissawm melissawm commented Sep 1, 2026

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PR summary

Reorganization of devdocs, building on matplotlib#26392, matplotlib#28578, matplotlib#26196.

This PR won't be submitted to matplotlib as a whole block, but broken up into different smaller parts. I wanted to build it like this to see if the final product would make sense.

Items changed:

  • Added captions to left-hand sidebar toctrees, making it easier to parse content
  • Removed some duplicate/redundant content from development workflow
  • (@story645's work) Better separation of build/write docs instructions, and style guide
  • Groups Triage with Maintenance and Pull Request Guidelines with Development workflow (A lot of the pr guidelines information is aimed at contributors and could be lost under "Bug triage and issue curation")

Not sure if I succeeded completely, but the goal is:

  • All information about how to use rST syntax, tips on how to make plots and other similar instructions go on "Write documentation"
  • Information about Matplotlib's developers opinion on formatting and style, grammar, and preferences for docstring conventions go on "Style guide"
  • Removed an outdated troubleshooting item.

Other minor changes:

  • Typos, capitalization
  • Fixed alignment of buttons in Contribute page cards
  • Added Sphinx theme section to Contribute landing page
  • Made card titles and toctrees the same for lower cognitive load

Screenshots for reference

Captura_de_tela_20260901_082010 Captura_de_tela_20260901_083318 Captura_de_tela_20260901_083637 Captura_de_tela_20260901_083653

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PR quality check

  • Use an expressive title, e.g. "Fix title font property precedence"
  • New and changed code is tested
  • Plotting related features are demonstrated in an example
  • New features and API changes have release notes
  • Documentation complies with general and docstring guidelines

@melissawm

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@story645

story645 commented Sep 1, 2026

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Big picture sounds good, I'm gonna leave feedback in pieces:

and Pull Request Guidelines with Development workflow

So I'd rather keep dev workflow scoped to "how to GitHub" and prg has a lot of mpl process stuff. But also I think the bigger issue is that PRG is really two docs smushed together - a "did you follow coding guidelines?" for writers and a full on reviewing and merging guide for maintainers. So I think maybe splitting out the two might be the move: checklist either moved to top of coding guide or maybe its own page (it kinda goes w/ triage but I don't think writers will find it there) and reviewer guide moved to maintaince?

@story645

story645 commented Sep 1, 2026

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Or b/c pull request checklist applies to code and docs, split so just the checklist for writers goes in workflow?

@melissawm

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Big picture sounds good, I'm gonna leave feedback in pieces:

and Pull Request Guidelines with Development workflow

So I'd rather keep dev workflow scoped to "how to GitHub" and prg has a lot of mpl process stuff. But also I think the bigger issue is that PRG is really two docs smushed together - a "did you follow coding guidelines?" for writers and a full on reviewing and merging guide for maintainers. So I think maybe splitting out the two might be the move: checklist either moved to top of coding guide or maybe its own page (it kinda goes w/ triage but I don't think writers will find it there) and reviewer guide moved to maintaince?

Agreed! Will work on it.

Comment thread doc/devel/contribute.rst
Comment on lines +152 to +159
Sphinx Theme
------------

Matplotlib has a few subprojects that share the same navbar and style, so these
are centralized as a sphinx theme at
`mpl_sphinx_theme <https://github.com/matplotlib/mpl-sphinx-theme>`_. Changes
to the style or top bar should be made there to propagate across all subprojects.

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this is now documented in the doc docs, but maybe it should be a top level heading? https://matplotlib.org/devdocs/devel/document.html#theme

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This is exactly that section, I just moved it here. My rationale is that this is a different way to contribute we could highlight here:

Captura_de_tela_20260907_134219

By top-level heading, do you mean it should be next to "Ways to contribute" or next to "Style guide", for example?

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By top level I mean not under a subheading in the docs guide. I think it's a little too specific for the broader contribution guide - like is there someone who'd be into this type of contribution who wouldn't read the docs guide?

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I see what you mean - I don't have a strong opinion here, so would be fine to leave as is.

Comment on lines -90 to -93
If you started making changes on your local ``main`` branch, you can convert the
branch to a feature branch by renaming it::

git branch -m <newname>

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not sure if it'd be helpful to keep this somewhere

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My reasoning for these changes was to leave only the most essential git guidance here, or anything that is Matplotlib-specific. For general git tips and tricks, trust that the reader can search elsewhere. This is to avoid redundancy and outdated information, but also to tighten documentation scope. This specific one is 3 lines long so I don't mind keeping if we do feel strongly about it, though.

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Nah that's fine, your reasoning makes sense and "it's only 3 lines" is how we snowball

Comment thread doc/devel/triage.rst Outdated
@story645

story645 commented Sep 1, 2026

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did not know you could do this, very much 😍
image

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