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Guide to FreeMarker Manual for Editors
======================================
Non-technical
-------------
- The Template Author's Guide is for Web designers. Assume that a
designer is not a programmer, (s)he doesn't even know what is Java.
Forget that FM is implemented in Java when you edit the Template
Author's Guide. Try to avoid technical writing.
- In the Guide chapters, be careful not to mention things that were
not explained earlier. The Guide chapters should be understandable
if you read them continuously.
- If you add a new topic or term, don't forget to add it to the Index.
Also, consider adding entries for it to the Glossary.
- Don't use too sophisticated English. Use basic words and grammar.
Technical
---------
- For the editing use XXE (XMLmind XML Editor), with its default XML
*source* formatting settings (identation, max line length and like).
You should install the "DocBook 5 for Freemarker" addon, which you can
find inside the "docgen" top-level SVN module.
- The HTML is generated with Docgen (docgen.jar), which will check some
of the rules described here. To invoke it, issue "ant manual" from
the root of the "freemarker" module. (Note: you may need to check out
and build "docgen" first.)
- Understand all document conventions in the Preface chapter. Note that
all "programlisting"-s should have a "role" attribute with a value that
is either: "template", "dataModel", "output", "metaTemplate" or
"unspecified". (If you miss this, the XXE addon will show the
"programlisting" in red.)
- Verbatim content in flow text:
* In flow text, all data object names, class names, FTL fragments,
HTML fragments, and all other verbatim content is inside "literal"
element.
* Use replaceable element inside literal element for replaceable
parts and meta-variables like:
<literal&lt;if <replaceable>condition</replaceable>></literal>
<literal><replaceable>templateDir</replaceable>/copyright.ftl</literal>
- Hierarchy:
* The hierarchy should look like:
book -> part -> chapter -> section -> section -> section -> section
where the "part" and the "section"-s are optional.
Instead of chapter you may have "preface" or "appendix".
* Don't use "sect1", "sect2", etc. Instead nest "section"-s into each other,
but not deeper than 3 levels.
* Use "simplesect" if you want to divide up something visually, but
you don't want those sections to appear in the ToC, or go into their own
HTML page. "simplesect"-s can appear under all "section" nesting
levels, and they always look the same regardless of the "section"
nesting levels.
- Lists:
* When you have list where the list items are short (a few words),
you should give spacing="compact" to the "itemizedlist" or
"orderedlist" element.
* Don't putting listings inside "para"-s. Put them between "para"-s instead.
- Xrefs, id-s, links:
* id-s of parts, chapters, sections and similar elements must
contain US-ASCII lower case letters, US-ASCII numbers, and
underscore only. id-s of parts and chapters are used as the
filenames of HTML-s generated for that block.
When you find out the id, deduce it from the position in the ToC
hierarchy. The underscore is used as the separator between the path
steps.
* All other id-s must use prefix:
- example: E.g.: id="example.foreach"
- ref: Reference information...
* directive: about a directive. E.g.: "ref.directive.foreach"
* builtin
- gloss: Term in the Glossary
- topic: The recommended point of document in a certain topic
* designer: for designers.
E.g.: id="topic.designer.methodDataObject"
* programmer: for programmers
* or omit the secondary category if it is for everybody
- misc: Anything doesn't fit in the above categories
* When you refer to a part, chapter or section, often you should use
xref, not link. The xreflabel attribute of the link-end should not be set;
then it's deduced from the titles.
- The "book" element must have this attribute: conformance="docgen"
- It sometimes happens that you want to change some content that you see in
the generated output, which you can't find in the DocBook XML. In such case,
check the contents docgen.cjson, which should be in the same directory as
the XML. If it's not there either, it's perhaps hard-wired into the
templates in docgen.