Editing this User Guide

This user guide is generated with Sphinx. Sphinx is an open-source Python project designed to make writing software documentation easier. The documentation is written in a reStructuredText (it’s similar to markdown), wh ich Sphinx extends for software documentation. The source for the documentation is the docs/source directory in top-level of the source code.

Quick start

To build this user guide on your local machine, you need to install Sphinx and its dependencies. Sphinx is a Python 3 package and it is available via pip. This user guide uses the Read The Docs theme, so you will also need to install sphinx-rtd-theme. It also uses the sphinxcontrib-bibtex and recommonmark extensions, which you’ll need to install.

$ cd docs
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

To build this user guide locally, navigate to the docs/ directory and make the html target.

$ make html

This will build the user guide in docs/build/html, and you can open index.html in your web-browser. The source files for the user guide are found in docs/source.

Note

You can clean the documentation with make clean.

Learning reST

Writing reST can be tricky at first. Whitespace matters, and some directives can be easily miswritten. Two important things you should know right away are:

  • Indents are 3-spaces

  • “Things” are separated by 1 blank line. For example, a list or code-block following a paragraph should be separated from the paragraph by 1 blank line.

You should keep these in mind when you’re first getting started. Dedicating an hour to learning reST will save you time in the long-run. Below are some good resources for learning reST.

A good starting point would be Eric Holscher’s presentations followed by the reStructuredText primer.

Style guidelines

Important

This user guide is written in semantic markup. This is important so that the user guide remains maintainable. Before contributing to this documentation, please review our style guidelines (below). When editing the source, please refrain from using elements with the wrong semantic meaning for aesthetic reasons. Aesthetic issues can be addressed by changes to the theme.

For titles and headers:

  • Section headers should be underlined by # characters

  • Subsection headers should be underlined by - characters

  • Subsubsection headers should be underlined by ^ characters

  • Subsubsubsection headers should be avoided, but if necessary, they should be underlined by " characters

File paths (including directories) occuring in the text should use the :file: role.

Program names (e.g. cmake) occuring in the text should use the :program: role.

OS-level commands (e.g. rm) occuring in the text should use the :command: role.

Environment variables occuring in the text should use the :envvar: role.

Inline code or code variables occuring in the text should use the :code: role.

Code snippets should use .. code-block:: <language> directive like so

.. code-block:: python

   import gcpy
   print("hello world")

The language can be “none” to omit syntax highlighting.

For command line instructions, the “console” language should be used. The $ should be used to denote the console’s prompt. If the current working directory is relevant to the instructions, a prompt like $~/path1/path2$ should be used.

Inline literals (e.g. the $ above) should use the :literal: role.