mkdocs-material VS Tufte CSS

Material Mk-Docs by Martin Donath works well if you prefer python.

https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/

I'm an 'outsider', but from from the outside the Material For MkDocs Project looks like a very well managed open source project.

Martin Donath's project uses a 'sponsorware' release strategy to generate donations.

From my vantage point it seems to be working pretty well.

I just recently went through this decision process. My aim is to write code and math oriented posts so I need good support for nice syntax highlighting (at least colored) and mathjax (preferable) or katex. Substack is the most popular newsletter platform but fails at these two criteria. I love how math and syntax highlighting (plus numerous other features) work in MkDocs Material, which recently added a Blog plugin.

I wanted to combine the best of both: Substack as an amazing email social network, and MkDocs Material’s awesome look. So I’ve gone with using Substack as the core platform which I use to manage subscribers, and use it to post either math/code-free posts or a short teasers pointing to my main blog site on MkDocs Material when I need to show math/code

https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/

I've been migrating content to MKDocs (Material) over the last few months, so feel fairly qualified on this subject. It's somewhat limited in terms of navigation, but can probably handle 400-500 pages; you can see how navigation works in the link. Otherwise, it can handle most, if not all, the tasks you've listed.

As it is often said in various designer forums, please avoid pure white (#FFFFFF) on black (here #111111), as it makes the text glow for the human eyes (therefore making it unreadable for long text). Instead, try to lower a bit the contrast on the text color.

Also, the dispositions for the buttons at the beginning (GitHub, NPM, ...) are not adjusted correctly for keyboard navigation (each button requires two tabs).

Appart from that, I do like a minimalist stylesheet, so I will also recommend Tufte CSS [0] for readers.

[0]: https://github.com/edwardtufte/tufte-css

CSS and HTML is great for documents - not so great for applications. Most sites end up implementing their own navigation UI/UX at a minimum (an application) - many end up as more applications.

For an example of "documents", see eg:

https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/

Or

https://alistapart.com/article/building-books-with-css3/

Just for kicks, I applied Tufte CSS[0] onto the page using a browser extension. Great ROI.

0. https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/

It's not the answer you're looking for, but https://edwardtufte.github.io/tufte-css/ might be of interest to you

A famous physicist, Richard Feynman, had a practice in his his extensive writing, e.g. a three-volume physics text, to use the methodology of sentences which then cumulate sequentially into paragraphs. (ht Ed Tufte)