Contributing to the Documentation

The Tripal documentation is written in **Restructured Text**, compiled with Sphinx, and built/hosted with ReadTheDocs. The docs directory, when compiled, is hosted at https://tripal.readthedocs.io/en/latest/.

For minor changes, you can simply Edit the file using the Github editor, which will allow you to make a Pull Request. Once approved, your changes will be reflected in the documentation automatically!

Guide

Install Sphinx

For minor changes, you don’t need to build the documentation! If you want to see how your changes will look on the built site, however, you will need Sphinx installed.

For more information, please see the Sphinx setup guide: http://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/quickstart.html

Building your changes

For more extensive edits, or when contributing new guides, you should build the documentation locally. From the docs root (eg /var/www/html/sites/all/modules/tripal/docs/, execute make html. The built site will be in docs/_build/html/index.html.

Tripal conventions

Please follow these guidelines when updating our docs. Let us know if you have any questions or something isn’t clear.

Please place images in the same folder as the guide text file, following the convention [file_name].[n].[optional description].[extension]. For example, configuring_page_display.3.rearrange.png or configuring_page_display.1.png are both located in docs/user_guide/ and are part of the configuring_page_display.rst guide.

We currently use the following syntax:

Title of File (using title case)
=================================

Introduction text.

Section Title
-------------

We use double backticks to indicate ``inline-code`` including file names, function and method names, paths, etc.

Longer code-blocks should begin with the ``.. code-block:: [type]`` directive and should be indented at least one
level. There should also be a blank line before and after it as shown below.

.. code-block:: sql
  if ($needs_documentation) {
      use $these_guidelines;
      $contribute_docs = $appreciated;
  }

Section 1.1 Title
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

The use of appropriate sections makes reading documentation and later specific details easier. Sub sections such
as this one will be hidden unless the main section is already selected.
```