h2. Ruby on Rails Guides Guidelines

This guide documents guidelines for writing guides. This guide follows itself in a gracile loop.

endprologue.

h3. Textile

Guides are written in "Textile":http://www.textism.com/tools/textile/. There's comprehensive documentation "here":http://redcloth.org/hobix.com/textile/ and a cheatsheet for markup "here":http://redcloth.org/hobix.com/textile/quick.html.

h3. Prologue

Each guide should start with motivational text at the top (that's the little introduction in the blue area.) The prologue should tell the reader what the guide is about, and what they will learn. See for example the "Routing Guide":routing.html.

h3. Titles

The title of every guide uses +h2+, guide sections use +h3+, subsections +h4+, etc.

Capitalize all words except for internal articles, prepositions, conjunctions, and forms of the verb to be:

<plain>
h5. Middleware Stack is an Array
h5. When are Objects Saved?
</plain>

Use the same typography as in regular text:

<plain>
h6. The +:content_type+ Option
</plain>

h3. API Documentation Guidelines

The guides and the API should be coherent where appropriate. Please have a look at these particular sections of the "API Documentation Guidelines":api_documentation_guidelines.html:

* "Wording":api_documentation_guidelines.html#wording
* "Example Code":api_documentation_guidelines.html#example-code
* "Filenames":api_documentation_guidelines.html#filenames
* "Fonts":api_documentation_guidelines.html#fonts

Those guidelines apply also to guides.

h3. HTML Generation

To generate all the guides, just +cd+ into the +railties+ directory and execute:

<plain>
bundle exec rake generate_guides
</plain>

(You may need to run +bundle install+ first to install the required gems.)

To process +my_guide.textile+ and nothing else use the +ONLY+ environment variable:

<plain>
bundle exec rake generate_guides ONLY=my_guide
</plain>

By default, guides that have not been modified are not processed, so +ONLY+ is rarely needed in practice.

To force process of all the guides, pass +ALL=1+.

It is also recommended that you work with +WARNINGS=1+. This detects duplicate IDs and warns about broken internal links.

If you want to generate guides in languages other than English, you can keep them in a separate directory under +source+ (eg. <tt>source/es</tt>) and use the +GUIDES_LANGUAGE+ environment variable:

<plain>
bundle exec rake generate_guides GUIDES_LANGUAGE=es
</plain>

h3. HTML Validation

Please validate the generated HTML with:

<plain>
bundle exec rake validate_guides
</plain>

Particularly, titles get an ID generated from their content and this often leads to duplicates. Please set +WARNINGS=1+ when generating guides to detect them. The warning messages suggest a way to fix them.

h3. Changelog

* March 31, 2011: grammar tweaks by "Josiah Ivey":http://twitter.com/josiahivey
* October 5, 2010: ported from the docrails wiki and revised by "Xavier Noria":credits.html#fxn
