2. Document layout
Prev |  | Next

## 2. Document layout

The GHC documentation is written using DocBook XML V4.2, so the first few lines should look like this:

    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
    <!DOCTYPE article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.2//EN"
       "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.2/docbookx.dtd">

The encoding can of course be chosen according to taste.

This guide is not meant to teach you how to write DocBook; read the DocBook book for that. It is more of a reference than a tutorial, so see the DocBook home page for other links.

However, by popular demand, here are some useful points:

- Remember to use `<para>` inside `<listitem>`s.

The rest of this section outlines the use of several tags which may not be obvious (DocBook is rather scholastic in style: it has tags for many things from C function prototypes to keyboard bindings; at the same time it has many omissions and oddities). The current scheme has many infelicities, partly because it was dreamt up in a hurry while the author was learning DocBook and converting the documentation thereto, and partly because DocBook is rather C-centric.

Comments

  Comments in XML look like this: `<!--This is a comment-->`.

`<command>`

  Used for commands typed into interactive sessions (e.g. cp foo bar and the names of programs such as gmake.

`<constant>`

  Used for system constants such as `U_MAXINT` and `Makefile` variables like `SRC_FILES` (because they are usually constant for a given run of make, and hence have a constant feel to them).

`<email>`

  For email addresses. This is a tag that's easy to overlook if you don't know it's there.

`<filename>`

  Used for paths, filenames, file extensions.

`<function>`

  Used for functions and constructors.

`<indexterm>`

  The normal way to mark up an index term is `<indexterm><primary>term</primary></indexterm>`.

`<keycap>`, `<keycombo>`

  Some more tags you may miss. Used for combinations such as Control+D.

`<literal>`

  Used for everything that should appear in typewriter font that has no other obvious tag: types, monads, small snippets of program text that are formatted inline, and the like.

`<option>`

  Used for compiler options and similar.

`<programlisting>`

  For displayed program listings (including shell scripts).

`<screen>`

  For displayed screen dumps, such as portions of shell interaction. It's easy to tell the difference between these and shell scripts: the latter lack a shell prompt.

`<varname>`

  Used for variables, but not type variables.

Prev |  | Next
Using DocBook to write GHC documentation | Home | 3. Tables