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Update documentation guidelines about references#1589

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parulin wants to merge 2 commits intoQubesOS:mainfrom
parulin:expand-external-cross-ref
Open

Update documentation guidelines about references#1589
parulin wants to merge 2 commits intoQubesOS:mainfrom
parulin:expand-external-cross-ref

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@parulin
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@parulin parulin commented Dec 19, 2025

At first, this PR was meant to fix QubesOS/qubes-issues#10321 but I ended up doing some other things, related to the RST style guide / How to edit the docs:

  • correct some URLs for linkcheck
  • "TL;DR: Cross-referencing" is now a real "TL;DR:" about the most common use cases. Anything else resides in the style guide
  • The cross-referencing explicit label now is attached to the Cross-referencing section of the style guide
  • Examples of the rst syntax have been simplified as much as possible
  • do not insist on the glossary directive
  • add :program: role
  • detail each way of using cross-references in paragraphs separated by headers
  • try to clarify the use of hyperlinks (confusing absolute/relative URLs from the website?)
  • limit the presentation of the header levels to the bare minimum
  • developed and consistent Markdown Cheatsheet

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parulin commented Dec 19, 2025

I think it could be a good idea to split the RST style guide with:

  1. a tutorial about the use of RST in qubes-doc
  2. a style guide, focusing on guideline narrowing the use of the syntax (i.e.: header levels, embedded links, etc.

Two other TL;DR of the How to edit the docs could be simplified too.

@parulin parulin force-pushed the expand-external-cross-ref branch from c89b05c to 3079e9d Compare December 19, 2025 09:09
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unman commented Feb 11, 2026

What is the advantage of this change? Does it not make it more difficult for contributors? I think it cannot be used for links within pages, so we end up with two forms for links in the docs.

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unman commented Feb 11, 2026

The VPN guide should be in the official docs, with a link there to the meta list.
I think the Salt and Ansible guides should also be in official docs.
I have tested few of the others. Some of them are guides fraught with potential issue for users - minifying templates, changing firewall, etc. Some (like 3wm, mutt) are special interest.

I think that links to external sites should carry a health warning to say that they are not endorsed.
The only way I can see of doing this is to have a separate index page with this information and take individual links from the main index.

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unman commented Feb 11, 2026

and THAT was in the wrong issue

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parulin commented Feb 12, 2026

What is the advantage of this change? Does it not make it more difficult for contributors? I think it cannot be used for links within pages, so we end up with two forms for links in the docs.

Are you talking about the roles using :py:class:...? We already have two forms for links in the docs: :doc: and :ref:. The roles relative to code objects are for developers.

Everything I tried to describe is already used in the documentation. It was already difficult to use (see the discussion about #1554) so I'm trying to clarify how to use Sphinx in the Qubes documentation context.

@parulin parulin force-pushed the expand-external-cross-ref branch from 79e9673 to 5f91ebf Compare February 12, 2026 07:43
* correct some URLs for linkcheck
* "TL;DR: Cross-referencing" is now a real "TL;DR:" about the most
  common use cases. Anything else resides in the style guide
* The ``cross-referencing`` explicit label now is attached to the
  Cross-referencing section of the style guide
* Examples of the rst syntax have been simplified as much as possible
* do not insist on the glossary directive
* add `:program:` role
* detail each way of using cross-references in paragraphs separated by
  headers
* try to clarify the use of hyperlinks (confusing absolute/relative URLs
  from the website?)
* limit the presentation of the header levels to the bare minimum
* developed and consistent Markdown Cheatsheet
* only allow alphanumeric characters and hyphen in custom labels
Those page where used as a base to rewrite part of the style guide, so I
made minor edits, according to the example used in style guide.
@parulin parulin force-pushed the expand-external-cross-ref branch from 5f91ebf to c6c4d85 Compare February 28, 2026 08:56
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Expand examples of external cross-referencing in the documentation

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