Compare the information in the old help documentation on the portfolio and position objects to this miserably thin description given in the new:
New

But maybe its just me. Maybe I am a miserable, lazy, ignorant, curmudgeonly old git.

@Zenothestoic -I couldn't imagine you being any of those things. The single page format of the old docs began getting cumbersome as more features were added. While it's often nice to see everything 'all at once' there is a point at which it breaks. We were trying to be proactive. The intent was to encapsulate everything in the original docs plus more.

I personally find the best way to find info in the docs is to use the 'search the docs' feature. It's pretty good and will pull info from all the different sections. In this case search for 'portfolio'. A (rather) long list of results appears. The class definition in the results is similar to the original docs (though I do see there are some omissions - we'll fix that). Check out the two versions original docs and the current docs.

One thing we did with the new docs is to link the class definitions directly to the zipline docstrings. The text in the docs are pulled directly from them. As an example, This should better keep everything aligned. Check out the class description in the docs then the docstring, and actual code, from zipline .

I'd encourage everyone to contact support if you see any omissions or errors in the docs. We can then work to clean them up.

All that said, one can get back to the original docs here. I'll agree there is something comforting in their familiarity. Note this page won't be updated going forward however.

Dan
Thanks for the answer. The new documents are simply too cryptic. The class definition may be similar but you are given no clue what to do with it (leaving aside the omissions).....The old docs held your hand and there seemed to be countless examples of how to do things including iterating through positions and their values. Perhaps its just me but I find the new documents incomprehensible.

It's about on par with Microsoft help documentation for user friendliness!

And of course no Stackexchange to go and get help from.

Which is one of the biggest benefits of the DIY approach using Python and Pandas rather than the Q IDE and Zipline.

But I admit it is probably my lack of familiarity and experience of these things.

@Zenothestoic - "I couldn't imagine you being any of those things". .... said Dan.

@Zenothestoic: Actually we don't need to imagine .... but we still like you anyway ;-))

I would like to say that the layout of the old documentation wins hands down based on ease of use.

Is there anyway we can revert back to the format of the old documentation?

Thank you everyone for the feedback. The biggest reason we went to the new documentation format is that it requires much less manual updating. It pulls much of the content from the code repositories. This not only saves time, but also reduces the potential for errors. That said, we certainly understand the old format had some advantages. The old site documentation (not data) can still be viewed here. It's not updated so there are certainly things missing however, it should still be accurate and contain 90% of the same information as the current version.

Ok, sure. Thanks Dan!

Hi Dan or any forum members,

I am trying to transition to the current documentation interface after having gotten use to the old interface (quantopian.com/help) . Whilst I am sure that the current interface will be better for me in the long run, I am currently learning how to find information on the current interface which I could have found with ease in the old interface (quantopian.com/help) and would really welcome any help or tips which anyone could provide.

For example, the old interface (quantopian.com/help) has the following writeup on the Future Object. Can I ask where in the current interface can I find the equivalent information?

==========================================================================================

Future object
If you have a reference to a future object (contract), there are several properties that might be useful:

sid

Integer: The id of the contract.

root_symbol

String: The string identifier of the underlying asset for this contract. This is typically the first two characters of the contract identifier.

symbol

String: The string identifier of the contract.

exchange

String: The exchange that the contract is trading on.

tick_size

String: The minimum amount that the price can change for this contract.

multiplier

String: The contract size. The size of a futures contract is the deliverable quantitiy of underlying assets.

asset_name

String: The full name of the underlying asset for this contract.

start_date

Datetime: The date when this contract first started trading.

notice_date

Datetime: The first notice date of this contract (reference).

end_date

Datetime: The last traded date for this contract (reference).

auto_close_date

Datetime: The auto_close_date is two trading days before the earlier of the notice_date and the end_date. Algorithms are not able to trade contracts past their auto_close_date, and have any held contracts closed out at this point. This is done to protect an algorithm from having to take delivery on a contract.

expiration_date

Datetime: The date when this contract expires.

exchange_full

String: The full name of the exchange that the contract is trading on.