Improve documentation navigation by consolidating blank parent pages with their subsections

[divine7022]

Description

The current PEcAn documentation (built with bookdown) has poor navigation UX due to blank or nearly-blank parent pages that serve only as containers for subsections. When users navigate to these pages, they see just a title with no useful content, forcing them to immediately click into a subsection.

The issue stems from how bookdown handles the split_by: section setting in index.Rmd. With this setting, every level-1 header (#) becomes a separate html page. Several chapters have:

• level-1 header with minimal/no introductory content
• all meaningful content relegated to level-2 subsections (##)

This creates blank "landing pages" that provide no value and hurt navigation.

these are few examples of such --

• https://pecanproject.github.io/pecan-documentation/develop/pecan-standards.html
• https://pecanproject.github.io/pecan-documentation/develop/met-drivers.html
• https://pecanproject.github.io/pecan-documentation/develop/troubleshooting-and-debugging-pecan.html

Proposed approach: add introductory content to blank pages
for each blank parent page add:
1 ) brief description of what the chapter covers
2 ) table of contents or summary of subsections with links
3 ) quick reference information where applicable

here are the examples of sparse parent pages; these files have proper headings but could benefit from more introductory content --

• https://pecanproject.github.io/pecan-documentation/develop/installation-details.html
• https://pecanproject.github.io/pecan-documentation/develop/docker-index.html

Tasks

• 02_pecan_standards.Rmd add introduction explaining PEcAn's data standardization philosophy, link to subsections
• 01_meteorology.Rmd add introduction explaining what met drivers are, how to choose one, and a summary table linking to each driver
• 12_troubleshooting-pecan.Rmd add introduction with common troubleshooting approaches, link to specific issues
• Part headers (00_topicalpages.Rmd, 00_tutorials_demos_workflows.Rmd): These (PART) headers are bookdown conventions for grouping chapters review if additional intro text is needed or if these can be combined with subsequent files
• Audit all 00_*.Rmd index files for similar issues and ensure they provide value as landing pages

[S1DDHEY]

Hi @divine7022 I'd like to work on this issue.

[man080107]

Hi @divine7022, I’d also like to work on this issue. I’ve gone through the details and am eager to get started. I’ve also connected with you on Slack for any discussion or guidance. Thanks!

[divine7022]

@man080107 appreciate the interest, it's already assigned, feel free to check out other open issue

[man080107]

Thanks for the update! I’ll check out other open issues and get started. Appreciate it.