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# Documentation Conventions

## Guiding Principles

Follow the Documentation Principles described by Write The Docs

In addition:

- We have gone to great lengths to retain compatibility with the standard library `cmd`, the documentation should make it easy for developers to understand how to move from `cmd` to `cmd2`, and what benefits that will provide
- We should provide both descriptive and reference documentation.
- API reference documentation should be generated from docstrings in the code
- Documentation should include rich hyperlinking to other areas of the documentation, and to the API reference

## Style Checker

We strongly encourage all developers to use Prettier for formatting all Markdown and YAML files. The easiest way to do this is to integrate it with your IDE and configure your IDE to format on save. You can also install `prettier` either using `npm` or OS package manager such as `brew` or `apt`.

## Naming Files

All source files in the documentation must:

- have all lower case file names
- if the name has multiple words, separate them with an underscore
- end in '.md'

## Indenting

In Markdown all indenting is significant. Use 4 spaces per indenting level.

## Wrapping

Hard wrap all text so that line lengths are no greater than 100 characters. It makes everything easier when editing documentation, and has no impact on reading documentation because we render to html.

## Titles and Headings

Reference the Markdown Basic Syntax for syntax basics or The Markdown Guide for a more complete reference.

## Inline Code

Code blocks can be created in two ways:

- Indent the block - this will show as a monospace code block, but won't include highighting
- use the triple backticks followed by the code language, e.g. `python` and close with triple backticks

If you want to show non-Python code, like shell commands, then use a different language such as `javascript`, `shell`, `json`, etc.

## Links

See the Links Markdown syntax documentation.

## API Documentation

The API documentation is mostly pulled from docstrings in the source code using the Zensical mkdocstrings plugin.

When using `mkdocstrings`, it must be preceded by a blank line before and after, i.e.:

    ::: cmd2.history.History

    ::: cmd2.history.HistoryItem

### Links to API Reference

To reference a class, method, or function, use block quotes around the name of the full namespace path for it followed by empty block quotes. So to reference `cmd2.Cmd`, you use `[cmd2.Cmd][]`.

If you want to change the name to use something shorter than the full namespace resolution you can put the full path in the 2nd set of block quotes instead of leaving it empty and put the shorter name in the one on the left. So you could also use `[Cmd][cmd2.Cmd]` to link to the API documentation for `cmd2.Cmd`.

## Referencing cmd2

Whenever you reference `cmd2` in the documentation, enclose it in backticks. This indicates to Markdown that this words represents code and will stand out when rendered as HTML.