Rambling
- I have been exploring docuemntation sites in several of my projectsa nd ahve been getting more expeirenice and insight
- i want to use this tidbit ot compile that inshgt and also to do slihgglt more rhtourhg omaprisons of docs site feature aprity
- jsuta s self reference amterial for docs sites dated Nov 2026 (as this like willc hagne rapidaly in 2027)
- The first reference table is a link to the docs site related PRs i have been doing recently.
- preivous pR meniton other tech but failed to touhc on psit great docs packge as docs fremwaokr.
- its currently on Pythong
- But roadmas is to have rust and JS support and R
- there are also other general docs gfrmaowek
- mkdocs amterial
- vitepress (no built in vrisoning)
- mkdocs (in maiyinacne model, supercied but very young zeinsical)
- spinx (python centric)
- zensical - https://github.com/zensical/zensical (too new)
- Here are some features sin my mind that must have NATIVE SUPPORT
- multi-linugal focus
- semvar of docs
- agents accesiblity
- mermaid diagramres
- Interactive compoetsl like tables (OJS tables)
- Listing pages for glossaries and blogs
- layout features like quarto for fleixblie and compelxity of docs
- next stesup
- link related PRs
- initail queisotna botu greater docs
- its only py spport?? not R or rust or JS?
- is it a packgea doucs framisome ntoa genral docs frmawkorig (relquires roxysngenr ot soemthign); so it cnanot be used frogneral docs sites?
- develop a Parity table of tech avlailble adn silcnude the feautre sin my mind from above
- Initi blocked page so tehconolgoes that are bl
Understanding
- There is a difference between package docs generators (Pkgdown for R and Great Docs for Python) and general docs site frameowrks (docusarus, astro-starlight, quarto)
- This tidbit is focused on geneal docs sites framwroks only so we will onyl evlaute docsuars, astro-satrlight, quarto
- the feature aprtiy table is shown in ref 3
- the takeaway for general docs sites is to use docusarus as it has hte most antive spport ofr core feature required.
- but you can’t really go wrong - hope quarto adds native semvra support soon but a issue scan.. seems unlikely. so for genral docusarus seems okay. for anything that is more R centric stick with quarot and tdoa handrolled CICID like salurbal-infra? maybe time will tell. we will try docsauruse with salrubal-obt jsut for the semvra stuff.
- time will tell…
References
3. Feature parity: general docs frameworks
Researched 2026-11-09 against each repo: Docusaurus 3.10.2 · Starlight 0.42.10 · Quarto 1.11.9.
✅ native · 🧩 extension · ❌ none
| Feature | Docusaurus | Starlight | Quarto | Extension that fills the gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built on | React (JS/TS, MDX) | Astro (JS/TS, MDX) | Pandoc (Lua filters, .qmd) |
— |
| Multilingual site | ✅ | ✅ | 🧩 | babelquarto (62★, v0.1.0, R package) |
| Docs versioning | ✅ | 🧩 | 🧩 | starlight-versions (102★, v0.10.2) · quarto-version-selector (0★, v1.0.0, 2 weeks old) |
Agent access (llms.txt) |
🧩 | 🧩 | ✅ | docusaurus-plugin-llms (147★, v0.6.1, used in loom #44) · starlight-llms-txt (117★, v0.12.0) |
| Mermaid diagrams | ✅ | 🧩 | ✅ | astro-mermaid (125★, v2.2.0) |
| Interactive tables | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | none needed |
| Listing pages (blog, glossary) | ✅ | 🧩 | ✅ | starlight-blog (277★, v0.30.2), blog only |
| Flexible layout | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | none needed |
| Runs R and Python code | ❌ | ❌ | ✅ | none |
- Interactive tables and flexible layout: in Docusaurus and Starlight you write React or Astro components; in Quarto it is Markdown syntax or R/Python widgets.
- Quarto gaps: multilingual (quarto-cli #275, open since 2022) and versioning (quarto-cli #474, open since 2022).