Option to disable compact navigation structure when a category contains only one reflection

[NkemdiAnyiam]

Search Terms

compact, navigation, single reflection

Problem

Given: The typedoc.json navigation.includeCategories option is set to true.

When there is only one reflection with a given @category tag, the rendered docs will not render the category as a dropdown. Instead, it will be displayed in a compact form, i.e., "(category name)/(reflection name)". This can be visually confusing (and aesthetically unpleasing), especially when there are other categories that are not compacted.

For example, suppose I have a module named colors.ts which has 7 interfaces named Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Purple, and Gray and 1 class named Color. And suppose I separated the interfaces into 3 categories: "Warm", "Cool", and "Neutral". The rendered navigation for the colors module would look like the following:

I would like to be able to render it as a dropdown like the following despite Gray being the only reflection categorized under "Neutral":

Suggested Solution

Add an additional boolean configuration option like navigation.compactOrganization or navigation.compactStructure (I'm not sure of the best name). It can default to true (in which case, nothing changes), but if set to false, categories (and groups) containing only a single reflection will still render a dropdown.

[Gerrit0]

With #2656 I believe this is unnecessary

[NkemdiAnyiam]

#2656 was for a way to prevent reflections from being placed into an "Other" dropdown. This new issue is for a way to prevent dropdowns from being compacted into a categoryName/singleReflection form. The way it is now, if Gray is the only thing with "@category Neutral", the navigation UI will look like this:

• T Neutral/Gray

But I want the option to tell it to just go ahead and treat it as if there were multiple reflections with "@category Neutral" so that it renders as a normal dropdown like this:

• Neutral (down carrot)
  • T Gray

[NkemdiAnyiam]

I think what I'm trying to describe is a little confusing, but I think showing an example of what VSCode does should clarify what I'm asking for. In VSCode, if a folder A contains only one single folder B, the explorer just renders it as A/B, like this:

But in the settings.json, if explorer.compactFolders is set to false, it renders A as a normal dropdown with B as a child (which is what I prefer) like this:.

I would like a similar setting for typedoc.json (something like navigation.compactOrganization, navigation.compactStructure, navigation.compactFolders—whatever name fits the best). This way, categories or groups that only have a single reflection are still rendered as dropdowns instead of being compacted (as demonstrated by the screenshots of the example docs in my original post). The setting would look something like this:

[Gerrit0]

Gotcha, that makes sense!