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Manual Formatting Guidelines

The manual now uses the reStructuredText (rST) format, which is similar to Markdown markup but considerably more powerful. A helpful reference to reStructuredText is available here:

http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/rst/quickref.html

In addition, the new manual also uses the Sphinx documentation generator. Sphinx does many useful things such as:

A full Sphinx reference is available here:

http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/contents.html

This section provides some markup style guidelines, as well as information about how we use both built-in and custom tools.

Section Titles

Section titles are very fluid in rST and there are many different ways to make them. To keep things as consistent as possible, try to use the following: 

Page titles get underlined with the = symbol
============================================

Section titles get underlined with the - symbol
-----------------------------------------------

Subsection titles get underlined with the ' symbol
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''

Indentation

The rST format is very sensitive to indentation. Paragraphs and other blocks of text are expected to be left-aligned. Indenting a block by any amount of whitespace (compared to the preceding block) causes it to get indented. 

This is a top-level block of text. It will appear aligned to the left-most side of the page.

 This paragraph is indented by one space. Even though it's only a single space,
 it will render as a full first-level indent.

  This paragraph is indented by one more space than the one above it. As a
  result it will render as a second-level indent.

    This time I've indented a block by two more spaces the one above it. It
    doesn't matter that this is inconsistent with the single-space indents
    above. This block will render as a third-level indent.

Back to the top level!

            This block is indented by 12 spaces. However, as with the previous
            examples, the amount of whitespace doesn't matter. Because it's the
            first indented block compared to the preceding block, it will only
            render as a first-level indent.

Linking to gittrac tickets

Use the following syntax to automatically link to a gittrac ticket, where #### is the number of the ticket: 

:ticket:`####`

Adding index entries

To add a basic index entry, use the following syntax: 

:index:`Name of index entry`

If you want your index entry to appear under a parent entry, the syntax is a little more complicated: 

:index:`Name of index entry <single: Name of index entry; Name of parent entry>`

Linking to internal documents

To add a link to an internal document, the syntax looks like :doc:`/path/to/page-title`. For example, to link to the Overview > Exceptional Features section, add the following: 

:doc:`/overview/exceptional-features`

By default, the link text will be the name of the page. If you want to add custom text, it looks something like the following: 

:doc:`Here is my custom text link </overview/exceptional-features>`

Linking to subsections within documents

You can also easily add links to subsections within documents. Whenever a section or subsection is defined using the correct section title syntax (see "Section Titles" above), Sphinx will automatically make the an HTML anchor so you can link directly to it. Use the following syntax: 

:ref:`path/to/document:section title`

For example, to link to the "Start an Annex" subsection on the Annex User's Guide page, use the following: 

:ref:`cloud-computing/annex-users-guide:start an annex`

By default, Sphinx will use the name of the section as the link text. You can override this with the following syntax: 

:ref:`My custom link text goes here<path/to/document:section title>`