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The `Home` page of the new documentation is confusing

Open WhatisRT opened this issue 5 months ago • 4 comments

The Home page is just a copy of the README file. So when you land on it when looking for the actual specification you're naturally directed to this section:

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Clicking on the first link just links to the site you're currently at, which is not at all what you want. I'd suggest to replace this with a page that suggests you to explore the sidebar on the left and provides links to Ledger.Conway.Ledger, Ledger.Conway.Epoch and Ledger.Conway.Chain, as the entry points for transaction processing, the epoch boundary and full block validation.

WhatisRT avatar Jul 23 '25 15:07 WhatisRT

The reason there's a link to the page you're currently on is because we decided to make the landing page identical to the README.md of the repository for maintainability (since README and CONTRIBUTING kept getting out of sync with reality). We can overturn that decision, but assuming we stick with it for now, it would be even more confusing to have the README.md page in the repo suggest exploring the sidebar on the left. (Also having a link to a page that you're already on is not unheard of and usually doesn't causes any confusion.)

williamdemeo avatar Jul 24 '25 14:07 williamdemeo

I'm not sure maintainability is necessarily an issue here, the page could also just contain this: 'This is the HTML version of the Cardano Ledger specification. You can explore the specification in the sidebar on the left.' That has zero maintenance required and tells you what you need.

Note that this isn't really my complaint, I never even really looked at the page. @kwxm got confused by this and thought some links were broken, so I made this ticket. So I think we should treat this as user feedback.

WhatisRT avatar Jul 24 '25 15:07 WhatisRT

I appreciate the feedback and agree that the site could be improved in this regard (and many others) but I don't agree that the solution you suggest is zero maintenance, since it means the landing page is not simply a copy of the README.md page---so there will be two pages to maintain instead of one. In any case, I will make the change you suggest.

williamdemeo avatar Jul 24 '25 16:07 williamdemeo

Let me add something to this: With the nested directory structure as it is now, it needs to be explained. Otherwise someone unfamiliar needs to search for quite a while to find the actual spec. I know to look in Conway/Specification for most of the relevant things, but this information needs to be presented on the Home page.

WhatisRT avatar Jul 29 '25 11:07 WhatisRT