From db67eb748e7a8e9310accf3eff606b40008ef145 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Jonathan Corbet Date: Mon, 3 Jan 2022 15:33:47 -0700 Subject: docs: discourage use of list tables Our documentation encourages the use of list-table formats, but that advice runs counter to the objective of keeping the plain-text documentation as useful and readable as possible. Turn that advice around the other way so that people don't keep adding these tables. Acked-by: Christoph Hellwig Acked-by: Randy Dunlap Signed-off-by: Jonathan Corbet --- Documentation/doc-guide/sphinx.rst | 11 +++++------ 1 file changed, 5 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-) (limited to 'Documentation/doc-guide/sphinx.rst') diff --git a/Documentation/doc-guide/sphinx.rst b/Documentation/doc-guide/sphinx.rst index 673cbb769c08..bb36f18ae9ac 100644 --- a/Documentation/doc-guide/sphinx.rst +++ b/Documentation/doc-guide/sphinx.rst @@ -261,12 +261,11 @@ please feel free to remove it. list tables ----------- -We recommend the use of *list table* formats. The *list table* formats are -double-stage lists. Compared to the ASCII-art they might not be as -comfortable for -readers of the text files. Their advantage is that they are easy to -create or modify and that the diff of a modification is much more meaningful, -because it is limited to the modified content. +The list-table formats can be useful for tables that are not easily laid +out in the usual Sphinx ASCII-art formats. These formats are nearly +impossible for readers of the plain-text documents to understand, though, +and should be avoided in the absence of a strong justification for their +use. The ``flat-table`` is a double-stage list similar to the ``list-table`` with some additional features: -- cgit v1.2.3-59-g8ed1b