Page History

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A related goal is to design the documentation so that it is easy to maintain, so that it tends to remain internally consistent with the framework itself.

Do it now. Do it once. Do it well.

Overall, there are three goals for the documentation system.

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Third, the documentation should be text-book quality; if not in the first draft, then in the next. Don't hesitate to hack in a new page. Better that we have the page than we don't. (See Job One!) But, as time allows, we should try to make each page the best that it can be. A lot of people access the documentation, and it's worth the effort to make the "documentation experience" productive and enjoyable.

Capitalization of common terms

• Java
• Javadoc
• HTML
• XML

General Punctuation and Grammar

Good online resources for punctuation, grammar, and text style include

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• The Elements of Style
• Associated Press Stylebook

Quick Tips

• Use as few words as possible. Instead of "but there are some quirks about it" try "but there are quirks".
• If a list of items includes both a term and an explanation, consider using a table instead of bullets.
• Avoid using "This" by itself. Instead of "This lets us" try "This strategy lets us".
  • Ask yourself: "This what?"
• References to other wiki pages can be unqualified. Instead of "See Documentation Style Guide page", try "See Documentation Style Guide."

Don't be smurfy!

A lot of API members use the term "action". We have

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• Use "the framework" or "SAF2" to refer to Struts Action 2 as a whole, including any frameworks we use internally, like XWork and OGNL.
• Use "Action class" to refer to the Java class incorporated by the action element.
• Use "action mapping" to refer to the object created by the action element.

About Headings

This section refers to: Notation Guide >> Headings.

About h1

Don't use h1. at the top of each page. The page title serves as the "top level header". This is not as obvious online, but it is very apparent when the documentation is exported to HTML or PDF.

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Likewise, try to have some content between all page headings. Avoid placing headings one after the other.

Document sections

Headings can help you divide your document in sections, subsections, sub-subsections and so forth.

Advantages

Your document becomes more organized.

Disadvantages

If you exaggerate you could fragment your text too much.

Headings capitalization

Try to use intial capitals for h1 and h2 headers.

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By using different capilazation sytles, we emphasize the importance of bigger headings.

Avoid skipping headers

The headers form an outline for the page. It is not good practice to skip outline levels, and it is not a good practice to skip heading levels either. Try not to skip from a h2 to a h4.

More on Text Effects

This section refers to: Notation Guide >> Text Effects.

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The color fonts should be avoided or used only with great care. Some people have difficulty seeing some colors, and the colors may not be apparent if the page is printed.

Text Breaks

This section refers to: Notation Guide >> Text Breaks.

Text breaks should not be used to format blocks ont he screen. If there is an issue with the way paragraphs or headings are being rendered, we should customize the stylesheet.

Lists

This section refers to: Notation Guide >> Lists.

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• This is an unordered list in star notation;
• Items can have sub-items
  • That can have sub-items
    • That can have sub-items...
      • What is the limit?
• Mixing ordered and unordered lists is possible:
  1. One;
  2. Two;
  3. Three.

Images

This section refers to: Notation Guide >> Images and Notation Guide >> Misc.

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Always observe copyright issues. Do not annex images unless it an orginal or public domain work, or the author has donated the image to the foundation.

Example:

Icons

Use , , , and to bullet important one-liners. Use to highlight cross references.

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Casual icons like and should be used with care or avoided.

Tables

This section refers to: Notation Guide >> Tables.

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Advanced Formatting

This section refers to: Notation Guide >> Advanced Formatting.

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$ javac HelloWorld.java

$ java HelloWorld
Hello, World!

Change Happens

Anyone who has worked with databases knows the value of normalizing the schema. Ideally, we want to store each fact exactly once, and then use query system to retrieve that fact whereever it is needed. If we store a fact once, we only need to update it once, and we avoid inconsistencies in our data set.

To the extent possible, we want to "normalize" our technical documentation. Like a database, all technical documentation is subject to change. When change happens, we want the documentation to be as easy to update as possible. One way to do that is to try and minimize redudency (without sacrificing ease of use).

Single sourcing with snippets

The "holy grail" of technical documentation is single sourcing. One way we try to single-source documentation is to pull content directly from the Javadocs and source code into the documentation.

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All snippets are marked off by the pattern START SNIPPET: XXX and END SNIPPET: XXX where XXX is the name of the snippet that is assigned in the id attribute of the macro. The URL is typically a location that points to the project's source control contents.

About URLs

As you probably noticed in the examples, there are several formats for URL patterns. A fully-qualified URL is always allowed, though that is often not practical. We've customized the macro to be a bit more intelligent with the URL attribute.

• If the URL appears to be a class, we assume it lives in src/java, convert all the dots to slashes, and then append .java to it.
• If the URL doesn't start with "http", then it is assumed to start with _https://opensymphony.dev.java.net/source/browse/*checkout*/_, as you saw in the third example.

About snippet markers

When possible, all snippet markers should be in comment blocks. How they are commented depends on where the snippet is being embedded.

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* <pre>
 * <!-- START SNIPPET: example -->
 * &lt;!-- records only the action's execution time --&gt;
 * &lt;action name="someAction" class="com.examples.SomeAction"&gt;
 *     &lt;interceptor-ref name="completeStack"/&gt;
 *     &lt;interceptor-ref name="timer"/&gt;
 *     &lt;result name="success"&gt;good_result.ftl&lt;/result&gt;
 * &lt;/action&gt;
 * <!-- END SNIPPET: example -->

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