Documentation should be formatted with a single sentence or clause per line. This results in diffs that are easier to read, making documentation maintenance easier.
Note
Most of the existing documentation doesn’t follow this policy. When making changes, new sections should follow the above policy, and existing changed paragraphs be reformatted.
Multi-line code snippets should be delimited with a <pre> tag, with a mandatory “class” attribute. The conventionalized classes are “python” , “python-interpreter” , and “shell” . For example:
Original markup:
<p> For example, this is how one defines a Resource: </p> <pre class="python"> from twisted.web import resource class MyResource(resource.Resource): def render_GET(self, request): return "Hello, world!" </pre>
Rendered result:
For example, this is how one defines a Resource:
from twisted.web import resource class MyResource(resource.Resource): def render_GET(self, request): return "Hello, world!"
Note that you should never have leading indentation inside a <pre> block – this makes it hard for readers to copy/paste the code.
Original markup:
<pre class="python-interpreter"> >>> from twisted.web import resource >>> class MyResource(resource.Resource): ... def render_GET(self, request): ... return "Hello, world!" ... >>> MyResource().render_GET(None) "Hello, world!" </pre>
Rendered result:
>>> from twisted.web import resource >>> class MyResource(resource.Resource): ... def render_GET(self, request): ... return "Hello, world!" ... >>> MyResource().render_GET(None) "Hello, world!"
Original markup:
<pre class="shell"> $ twistd web --path /var/www </pre>
Rendered result:
$ twistd web --path /var/www
For single-line code-snippets and attribute, method, class, and module names, use the <code> tag, with a class of “API” or “python” . During processing, module or class-names with class “API” will automatically be looked up in the API reference and have a link placed around it referencing the actual API documents for that module/classname. If you wish to reference an API document, then make sure you at least have a single module-name so that the processing code will be able to figure out which module or class you’re referring to.
You may also use the base attribute in conjunction
with a class of “API” to indicate the module that should be prepended
to the module or classname. This is to help keep the documentation
clearer and less cluttered by allowing links to API docs that don’t
need the module name.
Original markup:
<p> To add a <code class="API">twisted.web.static.File</code> instance to a <code class="API" base="twisted.web.resource">Resource</code> instance, do <code class="python">myResource.putChild("resourcePath", File("/tmp"))</code>. </p>
Rendered result:
To add a twisted.web.static.File instance to a Resource instance, do
myResource.putChild("resourcePath", File("/tmp")).
It goes without mentioning that you should use <hN> in a sane way – <h1> should only appear once in the document, to specify the title. Sections of the document should use <h2>, sub-headers <h3>, and so on.
XHTML is mandatory. That means tags that don’t have a
closing tag need a “/” ; for example, <hr />
. Also, tags which have “optional” closing tags in HTML
need to be closed in XHTML; for example,
<li>foo</li>
All tags will be done in lower-case. XHTML demands this, and so do I. :-)
Footnotes are enclosed inside
<span class="footnote"></span> . They must not
contain any markup.
Use lore -o lint to check your documentation
is not broken. lore -o lint will never change
your HTML, but it will complain if it doesn’t like it.
Don’t use tables for formatting. ‘nuff said.
__all__ is a module level list of strings, naming
objects in the module that are public. Make sure publically exported classes,
functions and constants are listed here.