Documentation Guidelines¶

Headlines¶

To each webpage of the documentation corresponds a .rst file.

Sections used to structure the text are identified through their title which is underlined (and overlined for the first level). Same level titles must use same character for underline adornment. In QGIS Documentation, you should use following styles for chapter, section, subsection and minisec.

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

Section
=======

Subsection
----------

Minisec
.......

Subminisec
^^^^^^^^^^

Inline tags¶

You can use some tags inside the text to emphasize some items.

• Menu gui: to mark a complete sequence of menu selections, including selecting submenus and choosing a specific operation, or any subsequence of such a sequence.

  :menuselection:`menu --> submenu`
  

• Dialog and Tab title: Labels presented as part of an interactive user interface including window title, tab title and option labels.

  :guilabel:`title`
  

• Button labels

  **[Apply]**
  

• Filename or directory

  :file:`README.rst`
  

• Icon with popup text belonging to Icon

  |icon| :sup:`popup_text`
  

  (see image below).

• Shorcut keyboard

  :kbd:`ctrl B`
  

  will show Ctrl B

• User text

  ``label``
  

Label/reference¶

References are used to place anchors inside the text. It then helps you create and call hyperlinks between sections or page.

The example below creates the anchor of a section (e.g., Label/reference title)

.. _my_anchor:

Label/reference
---------------

To call the reference in the same page, use

see my_anchor_ for more information.

which will return:

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.

Another way to jump to the same place from anywhere in the documentation is to use the :ref: role.

see :ref:`my_anchor` for more information.

which will display the caption instead (in this case the title of this section!):

see Label/reference for more information.

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. Note that you can also use a custom caption to describe the reference

see :ref:`Label and reference <my_anchor>` for more information.

returning:

see Label and reference for more information.

Figure and image¶

Pictures¶

To insert an image, use

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

which returns

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

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

Figure¶

.. _figure_logo:

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

   A caption: A logo I like

The result looks like this:

A caption: A logo I like

To avoid possible conflict with another references, always begin figures anchor with _figure_ and prefer using terms that can easily refer to the figure caption. While only the centered alignment is mandatory for the image, feel free to use any other options for figure (such as width, height, scale...) if needed.

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 using the reference label like this

(see Figure_logo_).

It will show the anchor Figure_logo. You can use uppercase if you want. It can be used in the same .rst document but not in others. You can still use the :ref: role for reference from other files, but keep in mind that this returns the full caption of the image.

see :ref:`figure_logo`

returns:

see A caption: A logo I like

Tables¶

To create 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 references and all

.. _my_drawn_table:

+---------------+--------------------+
| Windows       | macOS              |
+---------------+--------------------+
| |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_.

The result:

Windows	macOS
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.

Index¶

An index is a handy way to help the reader easily find an information in a doc. QGIS documentation provides some essential indices. There are few rules to follow in order to keep a set of indices that are really useful (coherent, consistent and really connected to each other):

• Index should be human readable, understandable and translatable; an index can be made from many words but you should avoid any unneeded _, -... characters to link them i.e., Loading layers instead of loading_layers or loadingLayers.
• Always capitalize only the first letter of the index unless the word has a particular spelling, in which case keep using its spelling e.g., Loading layers, Atlas generation, WMS, pgsql2shp
• Keep an eye on the existing Index list in order to reuse the most convenient expression with the right spelling and avoid wrong duplicates.

Several index tags exist in RST. You can either use the inline :index: tag within the normal text.

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

Or you can use the .. index:: block-level markup which links to the beginning of the next paragraph. Because of the rules mentioned above, it’s advised to use this latter tag as it’s easier to fulfill them.

.. index:: WMS, WFS, Loading layers

It’s also recommanded to use index parameters such as single, pair, see... in order to build a more structured and interconnected table of index. See http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/markup/misc.html#index-generating-markup for more information on index creation.

Special Comments¶

Sometimes, you may want to emphasize some points of the description, either to warn, remind or give some hints to the user. In QGIS Documentation, we use reST special directives such as .. warning::, .. note:: and .. tip:: generating particular frames that highlight your comments. See http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/markup/para.html#paragraph-level-markup for more information. A clear and appropriate title is required for both warnings and tips.

.. tip:: **Always use a meaningful title for tips**

 Begin tips with a title that summarizes what it is about. This helps
 users to quickly overview the message you want to give them, and
 decide on its relevance.

Code snippets¶

You may also want to give examples and insert a code snippet. In this case, write the comment below a line with the :: directive inserted. However, for a better rendering, especially to apply color highlighting to code according to its language, use the code-block directive, e.g. .. code-block:: xml. By default, Python code snippets do not need this reST directive. More details at http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/stable/markup/code.html.

Footnotes¶

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

This is for creating a footnote

blabla [1]_

Which will point to:

[1]	Updates of core plugins

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). We have used Ubuntu with Unity and the default “ambience” theme. For screenshots of QGIS main window and composer we have set it to show menus on the window (not the default in unity).
• 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
• make the top corners transparent if the background is not white
• Set print size resolution to 135 dpi (e.g. in Gimp set the print resolution image ‣ print size and save). This way, images will be at original size in html and at a good print resolution in the PDF. You can also use ImageMagick convert command to do a batch of images

convert -units PixelsPerInch input.png -density 135 output.png

• 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 Data (aka Alaska 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 Data (aka Alaska 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 longer 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 all the 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