Documentation improvement

[andreas-vester]

@polakowo

I learned about vectorbt some weeks ago and since then I am playing around with it. A proper documentation is absolutely necessary to become familiar with a new Python library and I highly appreciate the effort you took in order to come up with a thorough documentation.

However, as the code base is somewhat massive already and for a newcomer it is not easy to get hold of all vectorbt's functionality, I am wondering if "rearranging" the documentation might make sense? Currently I think that every method is quite well documented, but you need to drill down to every individual function in order to learn about vectorbt's advanced functionality. For an outsider it's also not easy to distinguish between functions that will be used internally (read: will get called by other functions) and functions that are supposed to be used by the user.

I am wondering if setting up a documentation system using sphinx could make sense? It could then be hosted, for example at www.readthedocs, or at your own site. What I actually miss are introductions to functions by topic.

What do I mean by that?
Well, imagine the user wants to know something about vectorbt's data management functionalities. You could give an introduction on how the package handles data in general and concrete links to all data management related functions.
If one wants to learn something about order management, I would look for an overview of the topic and hints towards all related functions, etc.

Eventhough the user gets a good first impression from your package introduction at https://vectorbt.dev/docs/index.html, it is not sufficient once you really start working with it.

By all means, don't get me wrong with this suggestion! I know that writing good docs isn't an easy task at all, especially if you are alone and the code base is large and has countless functions. From my experience, I prefer working with Python libraries that are well documented. The code base might be excellent, but if the user doesn't know how to leverage all the functionalities, he/she will simply move on. That's something vectorbt probably doesn't deserve. I really like its vectorized backtesting approach. It differentiates it from other packages out there.

What do you think? Maybe you need some support? Let's talk about it.

[polakowo]

@andreas-vester thanks for your input. I have been told many times that overview is missing and I will gradually add it to the documentation. The index page (https://vectorbt.dev/docs/index.html) is exactly where the overview will reside and will list all main components. Right now the index page is quite messy and has no real substance.

It would require a lot of effort to write a decent documentation website, I have no time for this tbh, too busy with features. But maybe we will figure something out in the long run.

[auraxchan]

@polakowo I will gladly join in assisting with that, Once I master it myself ;)