DOC: Reorganized the documentation contribution docs (#19645)

* DOC: Reorganized documentation contribution docs

1. Removed Documentation conventions page
2. Merged A guide to NumPy documentation into How to contribute to NumPy documentation
3. Moved Building NumPy reference and docs to Development section
4. Removed the Documentation index stub

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 126 deletions

diff --git a/doc/source/docs/howto_build_docs.rst b/doc/source/docs/howto_build_docs.rst
deleted file mode 100644
index 884cf7935..000000000
--- a/doc/source/docs/howto_build_docs.rst
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,126 +0,0 @@
-.. _howto-build-docs:
-
-=========================================
-Building the NumPy API and reference docs
-=========================================
-
-If you only want to get the documentation, note that pre-built
-versions can be found at
-
-    https://numpy.org/doc/
-
-in several different formats.
-
-Development environments
-------------------------
-
-Before proceeding further it should be noted that the documentation is built with the ``make`` tool,
-which is not natively available on Windows. MacOS or Linux users can jump
-to :ref:`how-todoc.prerequisites`. It is recommended for Windows users to set up their development
-environment on :ref:`Gitpod <development-gitpod>` or `Windows Subsystem
-for Linux (WSL) <https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10>`_. WSL is a good option
-for a persistent local set-up.
-
-Gitpod
-^^^^^^
-Gitpod is an open-source platform that automatically creates the correct development environment right
-in your browser, reducing the need to install local development environments and deal with
-incompatible dependencies.
-
-If you have good internet connectivity and want a temporary set-up,
-it is often faster to build with Gitpod. Here are the in-depth instructions for
-:ref:`building NumPy with Gitpod <development-gitpod>`.
-
-
-.. _how-todoc.prerequisites:
-
-Prerequisites
--------------
-
-Building the NumPy documentation and API reference requires the following:
-
-NumPy
-^^^^^
-
-Since large parts of the main documentation are obtained from NumPy via
-``import numpy`` and examining the docstrings, you will need to first
-:ref:`build <building-from-source>` and install it so that the correct version is imported.
-NumPy has to be re-built and re-installed every time you fetch the latest version of the
-repository, before generating the documentation. This ensures that the NumPy version and
-the git repository version are in sync.
-
-Note that you can e.g. install NumPy to a temporary location and set
-the PYTHONPATH environment variable appropriately.
-Alternatively, if using Python virtual environments (via e.g. ``conda``,
-``virtualenv`` or the ``venv`` module), installing NumPy into a
-new virtual environment is recommended.
-
-Dependencies
-^^^^^^^^^^^^
-
-All of the necessary dependencies for building the NumPy docs can be installed
-with::
-
-    pip install -r doc_requirements.txt
-
-We currently use Sphinx_ for generating the API and reference
-documentation for NumPy. In addition, building the documentation requires
-the Sphinx extension `plot_directive`, which is shipped with
-:doc:`Matplotlib <matplotlib:index>`. We also use numpydoc_ to render docstrings in
-the generated API documentation. :doc:`SciPy <scipy:index>`
-is installed since some parts of the documentation require SciPy functions.
-
-Submodules
-^^^^^^^^^^
-
-If you obtained NumPy via git, also get the git submodules that contain
-additional parts required for building the documentation::
-
-    git submodule update --init
-
-.. _Sphinx: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/
-.. _numpydoc: https://numpydoc.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
-
-Instructions
-------------
-
-Now you are ready to generate the docs, so write::
-
-    cd doc
-    make html
-
-If all goes well, this will generate a
-``build/html`` subdirectory in the ``/doc`` directory, containing the built documentation. If
-you get a message about ``installed numpy != current repo git version``, you must
-either override the check by setting ``GITVER`` or re-install NumPy.
-
-If you have built NumPy into a virtual environment and get an error
-that says ``numpy not found, cannot build documentation without...``,
-you need to override the makefile ``PYTHON`` variable at the command
-line, so instead of writing ``make  html`` write::
-
-    make PYTHON=python html
-
-To build the PDF documentation, do instead::
-
-   make latex
-   make -C build/latex all-pdf
-
-You will need to have LaTeX_ installed for this, inclusive of support for
-Greek letters.  For example, on Ubuntu xenial ``texlive-lang-greek`` and
-``cm-super`` are needed.  Also, ``latexmk`` is needed on non-Windows systems.
-
-Instead of the above, you can also do::
-
-   make dist
-
-which will rebuild NumPy, install it to a temporary location, and
-build the documentation in all formats. This will most likely again
-only work on Unix platforms.
-
-The documentation for NumPy distributed at https://numpy.org/doc in html and
-pdf format is also built with ``make dist``.  See `HOWTO RELEASE`_ for details
-on how to update https://numpy.org/doc.
-
-.. _LaTeX: https://www.latex-project.org/
-.. _HOWTO RELEASE: https://github.com/numpy/numpy/blob/main/doc/HOWTO_RELEASE.rst.txt