Fix footer appearing on top for short pages

[Maetveis]

Fixes: #1276

[Maetveis]

Its easy to see the difference on the "Read the Docs functionality" page. Compare this PR vs main

[drammock]

I think this is actually intended behavior? (@choldgraf can confirm perhaps)

According to the docs

The article footer exists just below your page’s article, and is primarily used for navigating between adjacent sections / pages.

If you don't want prev/next to appear there, you can move the prev/next template, something like this:

html_theme_options = {
  ...
  "article_footer_items": [],
  "content_footer_items": ["prev-next.html"],
  ...
}

If you agree that this solves the problem, please close this issue, otherwise let us know (maybe I'm misunderstanding).

[Maetveis]

I think this is actually intended behavior? (@choldgraf can confirm perhaps)

I don't agree, #1215 changed the behavior (footer no longer sticks to bottom of page), but I don't think that change was intentional; from the description of #1215:

It doesn't change any end-user behavior, other than these sections now being configurable.

This is as explicit as it gets. Now I don't want to force the previous position if this change really way intentional or if it is decided to be kept, but personally I think the previous behavior made more sense, and this is just an accidental regression.

According to the docs

The article footer exists just below your page’s article, and is primarily used for navigating between adjacent sections / pages.

I don't think "just below" was meant to be read as without any space between the two, but instead as there will be no intervening elements between the two.

[drammock]

ok I'm convinced now that this wasn't an intended change in #1215. Thanks for fixing it!

[choldgraf]

My feeling is that this PR achieves the behavior that we want - I think it makes sense to snap these menu items to the bottom of the page 👍