Rest Styleguide

Description

How to write content for the Plone Documentation.

Introduction

This chapter explains the basics of editing, and updating to the Plone Documentation.

Note

All pages should be in ReStructured Text, and have a .rst extension. Images should be in .png, or .jpg format. Please, don't use .gif, because the PDF-generating software has issues with that.

Line length & translations

Documentation is not code. Repeat after us: Documentation is not code.

Therefore, documentation should not follow PEP8 or other arbitrary conventions.

Note

Remember : This documentation is set up so it is fully translatable by using standard tools like transifex.

Your sentences will become .po strings, to be translated.

Now, think about how translations would work if the translator can only see an arbitrary part of a sentence. Translating is hard enough without creating additional problems...

If you want to keep short lines:

Use semantic linefeeds (http://rhodesmill.org/brandon/2012/one-sentence-per-line/) when you are editing restructured text (or any other interpreted rich text format) because it will greatly improve the editing and maintenance of your documents.

Take this example paragraph:

Patterns can take options in two ways:
from the DOM or via the jQuery interface.
It is highly recommended to use the DOM interface,
since it offers a lot more flexibility compared to the jQuery approach.
Also,
if you wish to use the automatic binding and rebinding functionality,
the DOM approach is more straightforward and hassle-free.

Notice how it's easier to just reshuffle sentences and add stuff if, instead of using your editor "autowrap" feature, you manually insert line breaks after full stops, commas, or upon "grammatical" boundaries (and not merely word ones).

But again, do not be afraid to use more than 80 characters. It's 2014, and it's documentation.

Document page format

Here are some Sphinx coding conventions used in the documentation.

Tab policy

• Indentation 4 spaces
• No hard tabs
• No trailing whitespaces

Headings and filenames

• For the headings, capitalize the first letter only
• For the filenames, use_underscore_naming_style

Page structure

Each page should contain, in this order:

• The main heading. This will be visible in the table of contents:

==================================
Writing and updating this document
==================================

• The description of the page, which will appear in Plone's Description Dublin Core metadata field. This created using the reST admonition directive. A single paragraph of text consisting of 1-3 sentences is recommended, so that the same text fits into the search engine results (Google):

.. admonition:: Description

   This text will go to Plone's pages description field. It will appear in
   the search engine listings for the page.

The contents directive will cause Sphinx to generate the Table of Contents shortcut links at the start of the page. Using the local option excludes the page itself and ToC title from the listing:

.. contents:: :local:

Introduction paragraph: A brief overview:

Introduction
------------

This chapter will describe the basics of how to contribute to this document.

A number of paragraphs: The actual content of the document page:

Contributions needed
--------------------

Below is the list of documentation and references we'd like to see

Section structure

Each section (folder) must contain

• index.rst with:
• Section heading: This will be visible in the table of contents
• A single paragraph summarizing what this section is all about. This will be mapped to Plone folder description.
• Sphinx toctree directive, maxdepth 2. Each .rst file in the folder should be linked to this toctree.

.. toctree::
   :maxdepth: 2

   chapter1
   chapter2
   chapter3

Headings style guide

ReStructured text and Sphinx enable any style you would prefer for the various heading level you would need. In example, underlining level 1 headings with ., level 2 headings with # and level 3 headings with | is perfect as far as docutils is concerned. But not for a human documentation maintainer.

In order to have consistent heading styles in all files that make this great document, it is recommended to follow strictly the rules stated in the Sphinx manual here: http://sphinx-doc.org/rest.html#sections

As individual files do not have so called "parts" or "chapters", the headings would be underlined like this:

Heading 1
=========
...
Heading 2
---------
...
Heading 3
^^^^^^^^^
...
Heading 4
`````````
...

Links

Sphinx can use two link styles, inline and via a link at the end of the page. Please only use inline links like this:

`Example <http://example.com>`_

otherwise the URL is not attached to the context it is used in, and that makes it harder for translators to use the right expressions.

Syntax highlighting

Sphinx does syntax highlighting using the Pygments library.

You can specify different highlighting for a code block using the following syntax:

With two colons you start a code block using the default highlighter::

    # Some Python code here
    # The language defaults to Python, we don't need to set it
    if 1 == 2:
        pass

You can specify the language used for syntax highlighting by using the code-block directive:

.. code-block:: python

    if "foo" == "bar":
        # This is Python code
        pass

For example, to specify XML:

.. code-block:: xml

    <somesnippet>Some XML</somesnippet>

... or UNIX shell:

.. code-block:: console

   # A comment
   sh myscript.sh

... or a buildout.cfg:

.. code-block:: ini

   [some-part]
   # A random part in the buildout
   recipe = collective.recipe.foo
   option = value

... or interactive Python:

.. code-block:: pycon

   >>> class Foo:
   ...     bar = 100
   ...
   >>> f = Foo()
   >>> f.bar
   100
   >>> f.bar / 0
   Traceback (most recent call last):
     File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
   ZeroDivisionError: integer division or modulo by zero

Setting the highlighting mode for the whole document:

.. highlight:: console

All code blocks in this doc use console highlighting by default::

   some shell commands

If syntax highlighting is not enabled for your code block, you probably have a syntax error and Pygments will fail silently.

The full list of lexers and associated short names is here: http://pygments.org/docs/lexers/

Other Sphinx and restructured text source snippets

Italics:

This *word* is italics.

Strong:

This **word** is in bold text.

Inline code highlighting:

This is :func:`aFunction`, this is the :mod:`some.module` that contains
the :class:`some.module.MyClass`

Note

These Python objects are rendered as hyperlinks if the symbol is mentioned in a relevant directive. See http://sphinx-doc.org/domains.html and http://sphinx-doc.org/ext/autodoc.html

Making an external link (note the underscore at the end):

`This is an external link to <http://opensourcehacker.com>`_

Making an internal link:

:doc:`This is a link to </introduction/writing.txt>`
...
See also :ref:`somewhere` (assuming that a line containing only
``.. _somewhere:`` exists above a heading in any file of this
documentation) ...
And a link to the term :term:`foo` assuming that ``foo`` is defined in
the glossary.

Glossary:

.. glossary:: :sorted:

Bullet list:

* First bullet
* Second bullet with `a link <http://opensourcehacker.com>`_

Warning:

.. warning::

   This is a warning box (yellow)

Warning

This is a warning box (yellow)

.. error::

   This is an error box (red)

Error

This is an error box (red)

Note:

.. note::

   This is a note box (blue)

Note

This is a note box (blue)

.. TODO::

   This is a TODO item

Todo

This is a TODO item