This, mostly.This whole "discussion" misses the point. No one is expected to read the documentation; it is a Reference and easy to use, well documented and logically laid out.
If you need to explore a feature just use the index to access the area of interest. E.g. "Chapter 3. PIO" is quite readable if you need to use this feature.
In my working life I regularly used even larger documents (e.g. the Bell System signalling specification & ITU standards).
This is NOT intended as user documentation - there is plenty of accessible user documentation with examples. (Unfortunately Raspberry Pi Ltd. seems to want to sell hard copies but you can download much for free or a small fee - bizarrely you need to subscribe to the Pi magazine to access this.)
The datasheet need to be the length it is because it need to contain everything about the device. There is an index at the front which is clickable to get you to where you need to go, so when combined with a search function, available in all PDF readers, you can go straight to what you need.
We also have further documents that are less "dry" than the datasheet, for example the SDK PDF gives loads of much more user friendly information on how to program the device, with lots of hand holding. There is also the online documentation here : https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentati ... ntrollers/
On the whole, the documentation has been praised because it is so comprehensive, so I am not entirely sure where there is a problem.
Has the OP just missed the other documentation and got stuck on the datasheet? I'd recommend starting with this: https://pip-assets.raspberrypi.com/cate ... ion=inline
Statistics: Posted by jamesh — Thu Feb 12, 2026 10:02 am