David Brownell <david-b@pacbell.net>:

Take a whack at providing some texinfo style docs.
Mostly it's just basic "how 2 write sane dox" stuff.


git-svn-id: svn://svn.berlios.de/openocd/trunk@2270 b42882b7-edfa-0310-969c-e2dbd0fdcd60
__archive__
zwelch 2009-06-18 00:29:33 +00:00
parent 1a400f8b8e
commit 8ab9b6d39e
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@ -3,7 +3,7 @@
This page provides an introduction to OpenOCD's documentation processes.
OpenOCD presently produces several kinds of documentation:
- The Guide:
- The User's Guide:
- Focuses on using the OpenOCD software.
- Details the installation, usage, and customization.
- Provides descriptions of public Jim/TCL script commands.
@ -31,13 +31,15 @@ contribute new or updated documentation to the OpenOCD project.
*/
/** @page primertexinfo Texinfo Primer
The OpenOCD User Guide presently exists entirely within the
The OpenOCD User's Guide presently exists entirely within the
doc/openocd.texi document. That file contains documentation with
mark-up suitable for being parsed by the GNU Texinfo utilities
(http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/).
This section needs to be expanded to provide an overview to new
developers.
When you add a new command, driver, or driver option, it needs to be
documented in the User's Guide. Use the existing documentation for
models, but feel free to make better use of Texinfo mechanisms. See
the Texinfo web site for the Texinfo manual and more information.
OpenOCD style guidelines for Texinfo documentation can be found on the
@ref styletexinfo page.

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@ -213,8 +213,102 @@ For an example, the Doxygen source for this Style Guide can be found in
*/
/** @page styletexinfo Texinfo Style Guide
This page needs to provide style guidelines for Texinfo, the mark-up
language used by The Guide for OpenOCD Users.
The User's Guide is there to provide two basic kinds of information. It
is a guide for how and why to use each feature or mechanism of OpenOCD.
It is also the reference manual for all commands and options involved
in using them, including interface, flash, target, and other drivers.
At this time, it is the only user-targetted documentation; everything
else is addressing OpenOCD developers.
There are two key audiences for the User's Guide, both developer based.
The primary audience is developers using OpenOCD as a tool in their
work, or who may be starting to use it that way. A secondary audience
includes developers who are supporting those users by packaging or
customizing it for their hardware, installing it as part of some software
distribution, or by evolving OpenOCD itself. There is some crossover
between those audiences. We encourage contributions from users as the
fundamental way to evolve and improve OpenOCD. In particular, creating
a board or target specific configuration file is something that many
users will end up doing at some point, and we like to see such files
become part of the mainline release.
General documentation rules to remember include:
- Be concise and clear. It's work to remove those extra words and
sentences, but such "noise" doesn't help readers.
- Make it easy to skim and browse. "Tell what you're going to say,
then say it". Help readers decide whether to dig in now, or
leave it for later.
- Make sure the chapters flow well. Presentations should not jump
around, and should move easily from overview down to details.
- Avoid using the passive voice.
- Address the reader to clarify roles ("your config file", "the board you
are debugging", etc.); "the user" (etc) is artificial.
- Use good English grammar and spelling. Remember also that English
will not be the first language for many readers. Avoid complex or
idiomatic usage that could create needless barriers.
- Use examples to highlight fundamental ideas and common idioms.
- Don't overuse list constructs. This is not a slide presentation;
prefer paragraphs.
When presenting features and mechanisms of OpenOCD:
- Explain key concepts before presenting commands using them.
- Tie examples to common developer tasks.
- When giving instructions, you can \@enumerate each step both
to clearly delineate the steps, and to highlight that this is
not explanatory text.
- When you provide "how to use it" advice or tutorials, keep it
in separate sections from the reference material.
- Good indexing is something of a black art. Use \@cindex for important
concepts, but don't overuse it. In particular, rely on the \@deffn
indexing, and use \@cindex primarily with significant blocks of text
such as \@subsection. The \@dfn of a key term may merit indexing.
- Use \@xref (and \@anchor) with care. Hardcopy versions, from the PDF,
must make sense without clickable links (which don't work all that well
with Texinfo in any case). If you find you're using many links,
read that as a symptom that the presentation may be disjointed and
confusing.
- Avoid font tricks like \@b, but use \@option, \@file, \@dfn, \@emph
and related mechanisms where appropriate.
For technical reference material:
- It's OK to start sections with explanations and end them with
detailed lists of the relevant commands.
- Use the \@deffn style declarations to define all commands and drivers.
These will automatically appear in the relevant index, and those
declarations help promote consistent presentation and style.
- It's a "Command" if it can be used interactively.
- Else it's a "Config Command" if it must be used before the
configuration stage completes.
- For a "Driver", list its name.
- Use BNF style regular expressions to define parameters:
brackets around zero-or-one choices, parentheses around
exactly-one choices.
- Use \@option, \@file, \@var and other mechanisms where appropriate.
- Say what output it displays, and what value it returns to callers.
- Explain clearly what the command does. Sometimes you will find
that it can't be explained clearly. That usually means the command
is poorly designed; replace it with something better, if you can.
- Be complete: document all commands, except as part of a strategy
to phase something in or out.
- Be correct: review the documentation against the code, and
vice versa.
- Alphabetize the \@defn declarations for all commands in each
section.
- Keep the per-command documentation focussed on exactly what that
command does, not motivation, advice, suggestions, or big examples.
When commands deserve such expanded text, it belongs elsewhere.
Solutions might be using a \@section explaining a cluster of related
commands, or acting as a mini-tutorial.
- Details for any given driver should be grouped together.
The User's Guide is the first place most users will start reading,
after they begin using OpenOCD. Make that investment of their time
be as productive as possible. Needing to look at OpenOCD source code,
to figure out how to use it is a bad sign, though it's OK to need to
look at the User's guide to figure out what a config script is doing.
*/
/** @page stylelatex LaTeX Style Guide