New documentation now available

The Wiki at the Github site has been getting stale, and I’ve been reluctant to add new features there because I’ve realized a need for a better way to present documentation for some time.

Check this out: http://iotawatt.readthedocs.io

Most of you have probably come across the readthedocs site. It’s an open project to host documentation. They support multiple formats, and I’ve gone with the popular restructured text format. It’s supported in vscode, which is the IDE that I use to develop the IoTaWatt firmware and use platform I/O (another great tool).

The primary advantage of readthedocs is that the actual .rst files reside in the Github repository and become part of the version control. Users can select a version of documentation so that it matches the features of the version of IotaWatt that they are using. Going forward, documentation for each new release will be frozen and available from a menu in the docs home page. The default will be the version for the current MINOR version, and ALPHA users will be able to get the documentation for new features that are unique to their release.

There is a link to the Github repo, so now the community can submit pull-requests to offer corrections or enhancements, if not whole new topics.

Right now the initial docs are just a rework of the Github WiKi, but even that is a big improvement in readability and navigation. Plus it just looks real slick.

As of this writing I’m waiting for CNAME records to propagate so that the new documentation will be available at docs.iotawatt.com, but in the meantime, they are always available at the URL above.

3 Likes

Nice transition - I like the ability to be able to reference documentation WITHIN a certain version. The format is also more readable and organized for these old eyes…

The new docs look great!