Before contributing please read and follow the principles outlined in

• the Divio documentation guide
• our style guide.

The documentation is written in reStructuredText (Link to the basics).

For building the documentation we use Sphinx and the theme from ReadTheDocs with minor design tweaks.

Sphinx supplies a number of useful "directives" (The sphinx equivalent of LaTeX commands) for stuff like code highlighting, remarks, warnings and so on.

Additionally, we have enabled the extension for todo directives

.. todo::

   Write a todo here

To show TODOs as warnings when building the docs you need to uncomment the following line in /source/testnet/conf.py and/or /source/mainnet/conf.py:

# todo_emit_warnings = True

NB: This will only show TODOs for the files being built; as opposed to TODOs from all files.

To generate SVG graphics, we use the Graphviz extension.

All of the documentation lives in the source directory, here there are subdirectories for Mainnet and Testnet, and a subdirectory shared for content which can be shared between the two.

The way to have shared content, is to make a file in both mainnet and testnet, which includes the shared content using the include directive.

.. include:: /../shared/path/to/file.rst

Install python3 and the python package manager pip3.

To install the python dependencies run:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Install graphviz:

• Ubuntu: sudo apt install graphviz

On macOS

brew install python3 graphviz
pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Install python3 and select a python installer, e.g. this one. Download and run the launcher. Make sure to select "Add Python to PATH" at the bottom before proceeding with the install.

After that from a terminal run

pip3 install -r requirements.txt

from the root of this repository.

If you want the graphs to render properly you also need to install the dot tool, which is part of the graphviz package.

To watch the doc files and automate the build run:

Mainnet

make dev-mainnet

and navigate to localhost:8000/mainnet.

Testnet

make dev-testnet

and navigate to localhost:8000/testnet.

Before committing, make sure to run the linter and fix all the errors reported:

make lint

Mainnet

make.bat dev-mainnet

and navigate to localhost:8000/mainnet.

Testnet

make.bat dev-testnet

and navigate to localhost:8000/testnet.

Before committing, make sure to try to build and fix any warnings that are reported.

./make.bat html

Note: When working on changes to the design it can be benefitial to disable caching, as it can cause UI problems. To disable it, add the -E flag to the dev command in the appropriate make file.

Run the build script from project root:

./script/build.sh

To check for dead links (can also be done by the CI), run:

make linkcheck-mainnet

or

make linkcheck-testnet

The source/testnet directory is used for documentation for future releases, and documentation for new features should be done here.

The source/mainnet directory contains documentation for the current Mainnet, and should always be compatible with the current Mainnet.

• For a user guide, prefer second person and imperative ("click on X").
• Keep sentences short.
• Prefer present continuous ("is") over future ("will be").
• Prefer active voice ("the baker adds a block") over passive voice ("a block is added").

Use sentence-style capitalization, i.e., only capitalize the first letter of a header.

Be consistent in the use of characters for creating headers; use the following for each level of header:

========
Header 1
========

Header 2
========

Header 3
--------

Header 4
^^^^^^^^

Header 5
~~~~~~~~

Use code-block:: console to show content from a terminal and prepend commands with $ without a space in between.

A space is added between $ and the command through CSS. This solution makes only the command itself copyable, thereby improving the user-experience.

Example:

.. code-block:: console

   $echo Hello, world!
   Hello, world!

Use bold to highlight keyboard buttons and clickable elements (e.g., "Press Enter", "Select Next").

• Use italics for text emphasis (e.g., when introducing a new term: "Obtain an identity from an identity provider.").
• After the term is introduced avoid emphasising it again in the same text.

Use three spaces for indentation. This aligns the directive name (note::) with the content of the directive (This line...).

Add an empty line between a directive and its content.

Example that follows both rules:

.. note::

   This line has three spaces in front of it and it has an empty line above it.

Use variables when it makes sense.

Add new variables in the file source/variables.rst.

Use the variables by:

• Including a relative path to variables.rst, for example ../../variables.rst.
• Then using the variable net, for example |Net|.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.