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If you're wondering about the phases, here's our phased transition strategy enabling you to move over your MkDocs projects to Zensical:
zensical.org/compatibilit...

Release 0.0.17 · zensical/zrx Summary This version ships the initial version of the module system and includes a ground up rewrite of zrx-scheduler and zrx-stream to support it. Together with the fundamental changes made to zrx...

ZRX 0.0.17 is out – the foundation of Zensical.

This one's a big deal – the module system is here, and with it a ground-up rewrite of the scheduler and stream crates. Three months of work. Phase 2 done. Phase 3 starts now.

Release notes:
github.com/zensical/zrx...

The dumbest thing ever... YouTube video by Awesome

The software industry is being flooded with slopware – crypto bros moving into software, doing what they do, chasing quick gains now that "coding is solved."

Craft has never been a bigger moat.

And yes, I know. Only 6 more months, and "computer uses itself".
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrCh...

Hydro & War - Lateral Thinking (Full Album) YouTube video by i so late

This is such a good album. Hydro & War are absolute peak in terms of production skills and musicality when it comes to Drum & Bass. I'm coming back to this one again and again, as well as to their other works.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Glr9...

AWS started using Zensical as well 😎 docs.aws.amazon.com/durable-func...

Release 2.2.0+zensical-0.1.0 · squidfunk/mike This version modernizes the project infrastructure — build system, dependencies, CI, and linting — as part of the initial cleanup after forking from upstream mike. Changes 829f9e6 — Initial README...

I just released mike 2.2.0+zensical-0.1.0!

I modernized the project, made sure tests are running + some missing replacements of "MkDocs" with "Zensical". This means you can now deploy versioned Zensical documentation to GitHub Pages!

github.com/squidfunk/mi...

The reason is that we need to be sure our design is complete. Porting existing MkDocs plugins will show us the things we need to address before making it available to the public. We want to get this right from the start ☺️

Just to set expectations: the module system will arrive in the next 1-2 weeks, which will allow us to provide plugin compat very fast. However, the module _API_ will be in preview for a while (probably summer) before we release it to the public.

Zensical 0.0.30 adds a new floating table of contents menu on mobile/tablet, and ships support for our fork of "mike" – a tool that enables you to deploy multiple versions of your documentation to GH Pages.

Checkout the 0.0.30 release notes:
github.com/zensical/zen...

Every MkDocs plugin plotted by relevance and porting effort – so we know exactly where to focus first. mkdocs-redirects, which we classify as Tier 1, is a good example: high relevance, and relatively low effort.

Love our bi-weekly open calls – nothing beats talking directly to the people building with @zensical.org, including our Spark members. Today we shared the results of our latest MkDocs plugin ecosystem analysis.

One interactive analysis from today's session 👇

Zensical - a modern static site generator If you've built documentation in the Python ecosystem, chances are you've used Martin Donath's work. His Material for MKDocs powers docs for FastAPI, uv, AWS, OpenAI, and tens of thousands of other pr...

🎙️ We were on @talkpython.fm!

Episode #542 is live – Martin Donath (@squidfunk.com) joined @mkennedy.codes to talk about the origin story of Zensical, how it differs from MkDocs, and what drove us to build it.

If you're curious about the "why", this is a good listen:
talkpython.fm/episodes/sho...

Just finished the impl of a central module system concept: Specificity. If multiple selectors match a resource, ordering becomes important. This allows for super fine-grained module interdependencies 😎

Released as part of ZRX 0.0.15
github.com/zensical/zrx...

Let’s just say we got off that train at the right time, and started in 2024 to pour all of our time into giving the community a new home at @zensical.org ☺️

The Slow Collapse of MkDocs

A very well researched article answering the question why MkDocs as we know it is dying. Recommended read, especially if you or your organization depend on it.

fpgmaas.com/blog/collaps...

Sounds like a problem with Python Markdown, which you can confirm by running it with MkDocs. If it's a problem with Zensical only, please crease a new issue and we'll look into it. ☺️

In the light of the latest MkDocs developments, we've updated our plugin section to outline how we plan to reach feature parity as quickly as possible, and how MkDocs plugins relate to @zensical.org modules.

zensical.org/compatibilit...

Release 0.0.25 · zensical/zensical Summary This version updates the user interface to v0.0.9, which improves on accessibility and fixes some minor rendering issues. Additionally, it fixes some bugs related to configuration parsing a...

We've just released Zensical 0.0.25, which includes several improvements for authoring and user experience, as well as accessibility.

We're also making good progress on the module system, so shouldn't be long ☺️

github.com/zensical/zen...

Jep, it's very tricky to navigate the situation, which is why we constantly iterate on it. I'm glad that your first experience was great – it'll get better and faster in the weeks and months to come 🚀

Thanks for sharing! We updated the warning message in 9.7.4 to include more information and updated the blog post to give more details + only mention Zensical briefly now. Our aim is to warn you, not to sell you something, but give you a relatively comfortable way out, if you want.

What MkDocs 2.0 means for your documentation projects - Material for MkDocs MkDocs 2.0 is a ground-up rewrite of the documentation tool tens of thousands of projects rely on, introducing potentially significant breaking changes

We've updated our MkDocs 2.0 analysis with the latest developments – the change in its contribution model, why we didn't fork, and a full timeline of events.

squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-mater...

4/4 We're working hard to allow everybody to switch from Material for MkDocs to Zensical as soon as possible, so you don't need to scrap your existing documentation projects and start from scratch to make it work with the upcoming MkDocs 2.0 update.

3/4 We're very thankful for everybody that has tested Zensical, maybe already migrated their sites, and uncovered the problems reported. Once the ZRX overhaul is complete and the module system is in closed preview, we'll start shipping support for all popular MkDocs plugins.

2/4 We're currently overhauling large parts of the ZRX runtime that powers @zensical.org, tackling all discovered problems that we learned in the first 4 months of usage. Additionally, we're working on bringing the module system in a state where we can ship the first modules.

If the first version of the thing you release doesn't suck in one or the other way, while still demonstrating where you want to go with it, you shipped too late.

1/4 Thread ↓

Tech Giants Are Nothing But Middlemen, with Tim Wu

Great episode of Factually!

Over the last 30 years, companies have shifted us to a computer-based society – "every work is email" [...] and now they're saying: "you don't use computer anymore, computer uses itself – it doesn't need you".

open.spotify.com/episode/1zQn...

Zensical Adaptive systems for evolving ideas – Zensical creates scalable Open Source systems for technical writing that always keep you in the flow

You might save yourself the trouble and consider to subscribe to our newsletter, where we'll share it once it's ready 😉
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Zensical Adaptive systems for evolving ideas – Zensical creates scalable Open Source systems for technical writing that always keep you in the flow

For reference:
zensical.org/compatibility/

Other than that, Zensical is much more compatible with MkDocs 1.x than is MkDocs 2.0. The only thing we do not support are popular plugins. If you can live without some plugins for a short while, you can switch already and get much faster rebuilds and better search.