Documentation Guidelines¶

Introduction¶

These are guidelines about general use of rst in QGIS documentation. The documentation will be build automatically on the server 0, 8am, 4pm PDT (Pacific Daylight Time). The current status is available at http://docs.qgis.org.

See also: http://sphinx.pocoo.org/markup/inline.html or convention.rst file.

In general, when creating rst documentation for the QGIS project, please follow the Python documentation style guide lines.

Using headlines¶

Adding new haedlines, you should use following styles for chapter, section, subsection and minisec.

headlines

********
Chapter
********

Section
=======

Subsection
----------

Minisec
.......

Inline tags¶

Shorcut keyboard:
```
:kbd:`ctrl B`
```
will show Ctrl B
Menu gui
```
:menuselection:`menu --> submenu`
```
Filename
```
:file:`README.rst`
```
Icon with popup text belonging to Icon
```
|icon| :sup:`popup_text`
```
(see image below).
Dialog and Tab title
```
:guilabel:`title`
```
User text
```
``label``
```

Footnotes¶

Please note: Footnotes are not recognized by any translation software and it is also not converted to pdf format properly. So, if don’t use footnotes within any documentation.

This is for creating a footnote

blabla [1]_

Which will point to:

[1] Updates of core plugins

Label/reference¶

This is used to create a reference somewhere

.. _my_anchor:

Label/reference
===============

This will call the reference in the same page

see my_anchor_ for more information. Notice how it will jump to
the following line/thing following the 'anchor'.
Normally to declare this label you do not need to use apastroph's but
you do need to use empty lines before and after the anchor. If you use
:ref:`my_anchor` it will display the caption instead
(In this case the title of this section!)

So reference 1 (my_anchor) and reference 2 Label/reference

Because the reference often displays a full caption, there is not really the need to use the word section

see :ref:`my_anchor`

Figure and image¶

Figure

.. _figure_readme_1:

.. only:: html

   **Figure Readme 1:**

.. figure:: /static/common/qgislogo.png
   :width: 20 em
   :align: center

   A caption: A logo I like

The result looks like this:

Figure Readme 1:

A caption: A logo I like

Use .. only:: html to make the number to the figure (Figure Readme 1) visible only in the html files. The scripts will insert an automatical generated number before the caption of the figure in pdf.

To use a caption (see My caption) just insert indented text after a blank line in the figure block.

Referencing to the figure can be done in two ways first using the reference label like this

(see Figure_Readme_1_).

It will show the anchor Figure_Readme_1. You can use uppercase if you want. It can be used in the same .rst document but not in other .rst documents.

You can not use the reference like this anymore, because in html the reference to the caption is lost (it now refers to the place before Figure Readme 1:

see :ref:`figure_readme_1`, does not work due to the lost reference to
the caption of the figure, this is not a 'bug' but a choice we made!

Tables¶

a simple table

=======  =======  =======
x        y        z
=======  =======  =======
1        2        3
2        4
=======  =======  =======

Use a \ followed by an empty space ‘ ‘ to leave an empty space.

You can also use more complicated tables by drawing them using refences and all

.. _my_drawn_table_1:

+---------------+--------------------+
| Windows       | Mac OSX            |
+---------------+--------------------+
| |win|         | |osx|              |
+---------------+--------------------+
| and of course not to forget |nix|  |
+------------------------------------+

My drawn table, mind you this is unfortunately not regarded a caption

You can reference to it like this my_drawn_table_1_.

The result:

Windows	Mac OSX

and of course not to forget

My drawn table, mind you this is unfortunately not regarded a caption

You can reference to it like this my_drawn_table_1.

Pictures¶

Image

.. image:: /static/common/qgislogo.png
   :width: 10 em

Replacement¶

You can put an image inside text or add an alias to use everywhere. To use an image inside a paragraph, just create an alias somewhere

.. |nice_logo| image:: /static/common/qgislogo.png
               :width: 2 em

and call it in your paragraph

my paragraph begins here with a nice logo |nice_logo|.

Here is how this example become:

my paragraph begins here with a nice logo .

Index¶

Several index tag exists in RST. To be able to translate the index, it is necessary to integrate it into the normal text. In this case use this syntax:

QGIS allows to load several :index:`Vector formats` supported by GDAL/OGR ...

If the term does not have to be translated, please use this syntax:

.. index:: WMS, WFS, WCS, CAT, SFS, GML, ...

Add new Screenshots¶

Here are some hints to create new, nice looking screenshots. For the user guide they go into ./resources/en/user_manual/

same environment for all the screen caps (same OS, same decoration, same font size)
reduce the window to the minimal space needed to show the feature (taking the all screen for a small modal window > overkill)
the less clutter, the better (no need to activate all the toolbars)
don’t resize them in an image editor, the size will be set into the rst files if necessary (downscaling the dimensions without properly upping the resolution > ugly)
cut the background
Set print size resolution to 135 dpi (this way, if no size is set in the rst files, images will be at original size in html and at a good print resolution in the PDF)
save them in png (no jpeg artifacts)
the screenshot should show the content according to what is described in the text
you can find some prepared QGIS -projects that were used before to create screenshots in ./qgis-projects. This makes it easier to reproduce screenshots for the next version of QGIS. These projects use the QGIS sample dataset which should be placed in the same folder as the QGIS-Documentation Repository.
Use the following command to remove the global menu function in Ubuntu to create smaller application screens with menu’s.

sudo apt-get autoremove appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt

Translate Screenshots¶

Here are some hints to create screenshots for your translated user guide. They will go into ./resources/<your language>/user_manual/

same environment for all the screen caps (same OS, same decoration, same font size)
use the QGIS -projects included in QGIS-Documentation repository (in ./qgis_projects ). These were used to produce the ‘original’ screenshots in the manual. The QGIS Sample dataset should be placed in the same folder as the QGIS-Documentation Repository.
same size as the english ‘original’ screenshots, otherwise they will be stretched and look ugly. If you need to have a different size due to longuer ui strings, don’t forget to change the dimension in the rst code of your language.
reduce the window to the minimal space needed to show the feature (taking the all screen for a small modal window > overkill)
the less clutter, the better (no need to activate all the toolbars)
don’t resize them in an image editor, the size will be set into the rst files (downscaling the dimensions without properly upping the resolution > ugly)
cut the background
save them in png (no jpeg artifacts)
the screenshot should show the content according to what is described in the text

Documenting Processing alorithms¶

If you want to write documenation for Processing algorithm consider this guidelines:

don’t overwrite existing help files by files from other sources (e.g. QGIS source tree or Processing-Help repository), this files have different formats
Processing algorithm help files are part of QGIS User Guide, so use same formatting as User Guide and other documentation
avoid use “This algoritm does this and that...” as first sentence in algorithm description. Try to use more general words like in TauDEM or GRASS algoritms help
add images if needed. Use PNG format and follow general guidelines for documentation.
if necessary add links to additional information (e.g. publications or web-pages) to the “See also” section
give clear explanation for algorithm parameters and outputs (again GRASS and TauDEM are good examples).
don’t edit parameter or output names. If you found typo or wrong spelling — report this in bugracker, so developers can fix this in Processing code too
don’t list availbale options in algortihm description, options already listed in parameter description.
don’t add information vector geometry type in algorithm or parameter description without compelling reason as this information already available in parameter description

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