Are man pages not readable because the original source form is troff?
I think it’s unusual to have a readme with as much info as a man page, but readme is for the source right. The documentation is usually organized depending on the type of project.
The times should reflect this evolving need.
Sure, you can put a bunch of quick links in there to get people started, but as a potential user interested in using a project, I'm not interested in your complete overview of the source code architecture or the necessary onboarding steps.
Put a quick link in the README to guide people to the right place, but don't put all of your project documentation in there unless your project is particularly small. We've grown beyond storing a bunch of texts files in a SVN respository, every major source control system also has a way to document your project.
If you choose to keep your documentation inside of your source control, the rise of Markdown viewers that support navigating links can help you achieve the same benefits by just linking to docs/project-overview.md in the top of your README.
There's no need since, these needs are already addressed in their own files for decades IMHO.
Readme files are a general map most of the time. Other relevant files are "Install", "Contributing", etc. Your README should be concise and refer to another text (or markdown) files in the repository.
Of course people adapt and evolve but, I don't understand the attitude of "We've just invented this". No, we didn't. README.1st, CONTRIBUTING files are as old as computing now.
I also like that the on-ramp document can get PRs from new hires who find some improvement, etc etc.
I think the disagreement largely boiks down to semantics of the word "readme." Both versions can coexist, probably will. They're just going argue about which one is the "real" readme... the old school or the one that the author wants you to read.
That's what Stallman wanted for GNU. The results speak for themselves.
I too prefer to subjectively dictate based upon prior experience.
How someone organizes a project is up to them, and the folks interested in it?
Shouldn't everything only work in a web browser? I'm not sure why documentation hasn't been migrated to containerized microservices deployed on K8s with a React frontend yet. This stuff is all sooo antiquated. /s
I think markdown is probably as fancy as it can get and still be readable in the terminal after I clone the repo, or any ide, or the browser.
I think of it as a more formatted man page. Would I want a man page to be interactive? Or only work in a browser.
I also think if GitHub allowed more flexible markdown (like allowing html and js) it would turn more into a MySpace chaos. I don’t think authors would limit themselves to nice functions only once you let the JavaScript and CSS cat out of the bag.
I think your example is neat but that’s what pages is for. Use pages and add a link at the top of your readme. Just because GitHub is the first thing your users see doesn’t mean it has to be. Make a project web site, direct users there. Use GitHub pages for that if you don’t have a site elsewhere.