So, I think we're all interested in using Sphinx for documenting our 
projects.  Well, I'm not sure about TG, but I know Ben is converting 
Pylons, and I'm planning to convert my projects (I got Paste setup so 
far, but not uploaded anywhere).

Right now Ben is including documentation for some projects (like webob) 
directly on pylonshq, and I'm guessing that he's planning on adding more 
libraries.

I'm not sure how I feel about this.  In the case of a library that is 
managed by someone else and isn't going to be Sphinx-documented, that's 
fine (e.g., simplejson, as I don't know if there's any plans to change 
over its docs).  But if webob documentation gets mirrored all over the 
place, that does bother me a bit.  I dislike the ambiguity of the 
situation, where you could google for webob docs and get identical docs 
at a variety of locations, and easily come upon documentation for old 
versions without realizing that's what you had gotten.

I understand the reasons for mirroring them too.  To document the 
version of a library that you are using in your framework, to easily 
link to reference documentation using the Sphinx conventions, and to 
have navigation that is consistent across all the documentation.

I'm not sure what the middleground is.  For old versions, some Sphinx 
configuration to put strong notices in the template about the status of 
the version would do it.  With linking, it might be resolvable with a 
modest amount of programming effort, if we could tell Sphinx how to link 
certain packages.  That would still leave navigation unresolved, which 
unfortunately I have no solution for.  I'm quite open the idea of some 
consistent styling so that the move from site to site isn't jarring, but 
that still doesn't give backlinks.

Backlinks actually *would* be a sort of solution, and could be 
interesting.  That is, if every page pointed to all the pages that point 
to it.  This wouldn't be open backlinking, just closed among a whitelist 
of sites (and maybe a specifically maintained list too, for things like 
blog posts?)  That wouldn't make the navigation exactly consistent, but 
maybe close enough?

-- 
Ian Bicking : [EMAIL PROTECTED] : http://blog.ianbicking.org

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