Tips for writing and formatting documentation

How to contribute to the project's documentation

Index

This page is included in an attempt to provide some standard guidelines for the naming and formatting used in the development of Geronimo's documentation. This will help us all to maintain a consistent look and feel throughout the entire documentation and Geronimo spaces.

First of all, get familiar with Confluence markup, see the Notation Help. You may also find this guide useful.

For comments and/or concern, please join our mailing list and post your inquires there.

Tips

Use {scrollbar}

Every time you create a new page add at the top the {scrollbar} macro unless that page is (and will remain that way) the only child of it's parent.

Installation Paths

For installation paths use something like this:

<geronimo_home>/
<sampleApp_home>/
<JBoss_home>/
<WAS_home>/
<WLS_home>/
...

Versions

For versions use:

Apache Geronimo v1.0
Apache Geronimo v1.1
Apache Geronimo v1.1.1
ultimately v1.0 or v1.1, the lower case "v" always precede the number.
JBoss v4
Tomcat v5.5.9

File Extensions

For reference to file extensions use:

*.zip*
*.tar*
*.gz*
*.gzip*
*.jar*
*.war*

(include the ".")

Images

To display an image proceed this way:

• Attach the image file first.
• Avoid blank spaces in the file name.
• in a new line reference the image !file_name.gif! optionally for flow charts you can use center alignment !file_name.gif|align=center!.

To create the diagram you could use any presentation software such as OpenOffice (http://www.openoffice.org) and export the slide as JPG and then attach it to the documentation page. THIS IS THE PREFERRED METHOD.

Alternatively you could use the "Add Diagram" option to build one chart online. This option depends on a plugin and uses a web based interface to create the various diagrams. For additional information on this plugin visit:

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/CONFEXT/Gliffy+Plugin+for+Confluence+-+Diagram+and+draw+in+Confluence

Command Samples

For command samples, as in a command line window use:

{{sample command}}

Use a new line when possible.

Unformated Plain Text

For unformatted, plain text samples use:

XML Samples

For XML samples use:

{code:xml|borderStyle=solid|title=file_name}
text
{code}

Java Samples

For Java samples use:

{code:java|borderStyle=solid|title=file_name}
text
{code}

Command Samples and Results

For command samples and results as a command line screen capture use:

Commands in Paragraph

For commands or code within a paragraph use:

sample text in the paragraph {{command}} sample text in the paragraph {{some java code}}.

Special Notes

For special notes to bring reader's attention use the already existing standard macros such as:

{note}Message goes here.{note}
{warning}Warning message goes here.{warning}
{info}Info message goes here.{info}
{tip}Tips goe here.{tip}

When necessary you can also add a title to these boxes, for example:

{warning:title=Warning}Warning message goes here.{warning}

Spell checking:

Currently, Confluence does not provide spell check so you should use the method of your choice to perform spell checking.