The Slow Collapse of MkDocs

https://fpgmaas.com/blog/collapse-of-mkdocs/

by zdw • 4 months ago

62 11 4 months ago

A very surprising development indeed.

The original author (who is also the leading maintainer of httpx, another huge package) started a crusade against male-dominated spaces such as... Github issues and discussions.

So… sharing the source isn’t the problem here. The issue is the GitHub working environment. I’m not interested in the smokey boys-only-club atmosphere, it feels starkly unprofessional.
We’re not having any more conversation in all-male online spaces. Not happening.

It looks like 3 weeks ago a similar change happened in httpx - github discussions were disabled. https://github.com/encode/httpx/discussions/3784

I don't want to continue allowing an online environment with such an absurdly skewed gender representation. I find it intensely unwelcoming, and it's not reflective of the type of working environments I value.

As a mkdocs user and a httpx user I find that concerning - I hope personal issues won't harm those projects long term (well it looks like mkdocs is already dead).

aorth• 4 months ago

I'm not an MkDocs user yet but I've been meaning to be for years! It's unfortunate to hear about the issues with project leadership. Why bring the drama about gender into this?! It should be closed as off topic.

galkk• 4 months ago

Is there anybody in this story who ends up appearing as not a complete nutjob?

karel-3d• 4 months ago

squidfunk that just rewrote the entire thing as Zensical.

https://github.com/zensical/zensical

Txmm• 4 months ago

What are the best alternatives around? Not super keen to get locked into anything - don’t need crazy features. I’ll just set an agent migrating.

josiahpeters• 4 months ago

Of course, we just adopted Material for MK Docs about 12 months ago.

I’ve been looking at Zensical https://zensical.org/ as a replacement, but I couldn’t fully reason why they went off and did their own thing. I wasn’t sure if it was a money grab or what their motivation was.

This article provided the context I needed to understand the why. We’re going to definitely give them a shot.

pax• 4 months ago

I made a list [1] some time ago: Docusaurus has the most stars

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18Riw9yTx6Scix3xv0wiV...

shepherdjerred• 4 months ago

I love https://starlight.astro.build

digital_voodoo• 4 months ago

As a non-technical person (not a dev, not a SWE, just a curious and selftaught tinkerer), I only want my _local_ markdown files to render as a beautiful - or at least, clean - webpage, to ease reading and sharing. No Github involved, no contorsionism needed. Just local md files. It should not be that complicated, at least that's what I felt.

Those were the only requirements that made me settle with Material MkDocs, and that are driving me towards the fork MaterialX. The comparison the latter makes with Zensical [0] is _exactly_ how I feel it (again, as a non-technical person).

[0] https://github.com/jaywhj/mkdocs-materialx#differences-from-...

squidfunk• 4 months ago

Creator of Zensical here! Would you mind sharing a bit more detail on why you feel the comparison is on point? One of our core goals with Zensical is to simplify things – not add complexity. We’re also working toward making it an almost 100% drop-in replacement for Material and the broader MkDocs ecosystem, so I’d be especially interested in understanding what feels more complicated from your perspective. I’d appreciate any specifics on where we can improve.

That said, I do think the linked comparison may be a bit misleading. As far as I can tell, MaterialX is still largely based on the Material for MkDocs codebase with mostly some UI changes, several of which the author has taken from Zensical.

Muhammad523• 4 months ago

Imagine if oprypin is actually the original developer's sockpuppet account...

The Slow Collapse of MkDocs

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