Revision as of 18:13, 2 April 2012

DocBook markup conventions

This page offers conventions for DocBook markup. Please modify this page as you come across more markup you need for the docs.openstack.org site.

General style conventions

• Use "OpenStack", not Openstack or openstack.
• Wrap lines to 70 characters.

euca2ools documentation

Since Nova exposes both its own API and an EC2-compatible API, many tasks can be executed using either the nova CLI or euca2ools. Documentation related to euca2ools should generally be limited to:

• Describing euca2ools commands that don't yet have a nova CLI equivalent (e.g., euca-get-console-output)
• Describing how to get credentials to work with euca2ools
• Describing differences between how Amazon's EC2 endpoint behaves and how an OpenStack endpoint behaves when accessing via EC2.

Information or configuration files that the user has to type or read

Do not indent the text (open/close tags may be indented)

    <programlisting>
config-file-example=asdf
foo=bar
hello=world
    </programlisting>

Inline configuration information (option name or value)

<literal>--use_deprecated_auth</literal>

Configuration information when part should be replaced

<literal>http://<replaceable>IP_ADDRESS</replaceable>/foo/bar</literal>

Inline mention of a specific command

<command>nova-manage</command>

Command to type into a shell

Do not indent the text (open/close tags may be indented)

    <screen>
<prompt>$</prompt> <userinput>command as a regular usre</userinput>
    </screen>

    <screen>
<prompt>#</prompt> <userinput>command as root</userinput>
    </screen>

    <screen>
<prompt>(mysql)</prompt> <userinput>command to type</userinput>
    </screen>

Result of the command

Do not indent the text (open/close tags may be indented)

    <screen>
<computeroutput>result output goes here</computeroutput>
    </screen>

Note that this can be combined with a prompt and input:

    <screen>
<prompt>$</prompt> <userinput>command to type</userinput>
<computeroutput>result output goes here</computeroutput>
    </screen>

File names

<filename>/my/file/is/here</filename>

File contents

<programlisting>
contents
of a
file
</programlisting>

Ordered procedure to follow (where step 2 needs to be done after step 1)

<orderedlist>
       <listitem><para>...</para></listitem>
</orderedlist>

Instructions to follow with no critical dependency across steps

<itemizedlist>
      <listitem><para>...</para></listitem>
</itemizedlist>

A list in key/value form

<variablelist>
  <varlistentry>
    <term>key</term>
    <listitem>value</listitem>
  </varlistentry>
  <varlistentry>
    <term>key</term>
    <listitem>value</listitem>
  </varlistentry>
</variablelist>