1 <chapter id="documentation">
2 <title>Documenting Wine</title>
5 This chapter describes how you can help improve Wines documentation.
9 Like most large scale volunteer projects, Wine is strongest in areas that are rewarding
10 for its volunteers to work in. The majority of contributors send code patches either
11 fixing bugs, adding new functionality or otherwise improving the software components of
12 the distribution. A lesser number contribute in other ways, such as reporting bugs and
13 regressions, creating tests, providing organizational assistance, or helping to document
18 Documentation is important for many reasons, and is often the key to the end user having
19 a successful experience in installing, setting up and using software. Because Wine is a
20 complicated, evolving entity, providing quality up to date documentation is vital to
21 encourage more people to persevere with using and contributing to the project.
22 The following sections describe in detail how to go about adding to or updating Wines
23 existing documentation.
26 <sect1 id="doc-overview">
27 <title>An Overview Of Wine Documentation</title>
30 The Wine source code tree comes with a large amount of documentation in the
31 <filename>documentation/</filename> subdirectory. This used to be a collection
32 of text files culled from various places such as the Wine Weekly News and the wine-devel
33 mailing list, but was reorganized some time ago into a number of books, each of which is
34 marked up using SGML. You are reading one of these books (the
35 <emphasis>Wine Developer's Guide</emphasis>) right now.
39 Since being reorganized, the books have been updated and extended regularly. In their
40 current state they provide a good framework which over time can be expanded and kept
41 up to date. This means that most of the time when further documentation is added, it is
42 a simple matter of updating the content of an already existing file. The books
43 available at the time of writing are:
48 The <emphasis>Wine User Guide</emphasis>. This book contains information for end users
49 on installing, configuring and running Wine.
53 The <emphasis>Wine Developer's Guide</emphasis>. This book contains information and
54 guidelines for developers and contributors to the Wine project.
58 The <emphasis>Winelib User's Guide</emphasis>. This book contains information for
59 developers using Winelib to port Win32 applications to Unix.
63 The <emphasis>Wine Packagers Guide</emphasis>. This book contains information for
64 anyone who will be distributing Wine to end users in a prepackaged format.
68 The <emphasis>Wine FAQ</emphasis>. This book contains frequently asked questions
69 about Wine with their answers.
75 Another source of documentation is the <emphasis>Wine API Guide</emphasis>. This is
76 generated information taken from special comments placed in the Wine source code.
77 When you update or add new API calls to Wine you should consider documenting them so
78 that developers can determine what the API does and how it should be used.
82 The next sections describe how to create Wine API documentation and how to work with
83 SGML so you can add to the existing books.
88 <title>Writing Wine API Documentation</title>
90 <sect2 id="api-docs-intro">
91 <title>Introduction to API Documentation</title>
93 Wine includes a large amount of documentation on the API functions
94 it implements. There are several reasons to want to document the Win32
99 To allow Wine developers to know what each function should do, should
100 they need to update or fix it.
104 To allow Winelib users to understand the functions that are available
105 to their applications.
109 To provide an alternative source of free documentation on the Win32 API.
113 To provide more accurate documentation where the existing documentation
114 is accidentally or deliberately vague or misleading.
121 To this end, a semi formalized way of producing documentation from the Wine
122 source code has evolved. Since the primary users of API documentation are Wine
123 developers themselves, documentation is usually inserted into the source code
124 in the form of comments and notes. Good things to include in the documentation
125 of a function include:
129 The purpose of the function.
133 The parameters of the function and their purpose.
137 The return value of the function, in success as well as failure cases.
141 Additional notes such as interaction with other parts of the system, differences
142 between Wines implementation and Win32s, errors in MSDN documentation,
143 undocumented cases and bugs that Wine corrects or is compatible with.
150 Good documentation helps developers be aware of the effects of making changes. It
151 also allows good tests to be written which cover all of the documented cases.
155 Note that you do not need to be a programmer to update the documentation in Wine.
156 If you would like to contribute to the project, patches that improve the API
157 documentation are welcome. The following describes how to format any documentation
158 that you write so that the Wine documentation generator can extract it and make it
159 available to other developers and users.
163 In general, if you did not write the function in question, you should be wary of
164 adding comments to other peoples code. It is quite possible you may misunderstand
165 or misrepresent what the original author intended! Adding API documentation on
166 the other hand can be done by anybody, since in most cases there is plenty of
167 information about what a function is supposed to do (if it isn't obvious)
168 available in books and articles on the internet.
172 A final warning concerns copyright and must be noted. If you read MSDN or any
173 publication in order to find out what an API call does, you must be aware that
174 the text you are reading is copyrighted and in most cases cannot legally be
175 reproduced without the authors permission. If you copy verbatim any information
176 from such sources and submit it for inclusion into Wine, you open yourself up
177 to potential legal liability. You must ensure that anything you submit is
178 your own work, although it can be based on your understanding gleaned from
179 reading other peoples work.
183 <sect2 id="api-docs-basics">
184 <title>Basic API Documentation</title>
187 The general form of an API comment in Wine is a block comment immediately before a
188 function is implemented in the source code. General comments within a function body or
189 at the top of an implementation file are ignored by the API documentation generator.
190 Such comments are for the benefit of developers only, for example to explain what the
191 source code is doing or to describe something that may not be obvious to the person
192 reading the source code.
196 The following text uses the function <emphasis>PathRelativePathToA()</emphasis> from
197 <filename>SHLWAPI.DLL</filename> as an example. You can find this function in the Wine
198 source code tree in the file <filename>dlls/shlwapi/path.c</filename>.
202 The first line of the comment gives the name of the function, the DLL that the
203 function is exported from, and its export ordinal number. This is the simplest
204 (and most common type of) comment:
208 /*************************************************************************
209 * PathRelativePathToA [SHLWAPI.@]
214 The functions name and the DLL name are obvious. The ordinal number takes one of
215 two forms: Either <command>@</command> as in the above, or a number if the export
216 is exported by ordinal. You can see which to use by looking at the DLL's
217 <filename>.spec</filename> file. If the line on which the function is listed begins
218 with a number, use it, otherwise use the <command>@</command> symbol, which indicates
219 that this function is imported only by name.
223 Note also that round or square brackets can be used, and whitespace between the name
224 and the DLL/ordinal is free form. Thus the following is equally valid:
228 /*************************************************************************
229 * PathRelativePathToA (SHLWAPI.@)
234 This basic comment will not get processed into documentation, since it
235 contains no information. In order to produce documentation for the function,
236 We must add some of the information listed above.
240 First we add a description of the function. This can be as long as you like, but
241 typically contains only a brief description of what the function is meant to do
242 in general terms. It is free form text:
246 /*************************************************************************
247 * PathRelativePathToA [SHLWAPI.@]
249 * Create a relative path from one path to another.
254 To be truly useful however we must document the parameters to the function.
255 There are two methods for doing this: In the comment, or in the function
260 Parameters documented in the comment should be formatted as follows:
264 /*************************************************************************
265 * PathRelativePathToA [SHLWAPI.@]
267 * Create a relative path from one path to another.
270 * lpszPath [O] Destination for relative path
271 * lpszFrom [I] Source path
272 * dwAttrFrom [I] File attribute of source path
273 * lpszTo [I] Destination path
274 * dwAttrTo [I] File attributes of destination path
280 The parameters section starts with <command>PARAMS</command> on its own line.
281 Each parameter is listed in the order they appear in the functions prototype,
282 first with the parameters name, followed by its input/output status, followed
283 by a free form text description of the comment.
287 The input/output status tells the programmer whether the value will be modified
288 by the function (an output parameter), or only read (an input parameter). The
289 status must be enclosed in square brackets to be recognized, otherwise, or if it
290 is absent, anything following the parameter name is treated as the parameter
291 description. This field is case insensitive and can be any of the following:
292 <command>[I]</command>, <command>[In]</command>, <command>[O]</command>,
293 <command>[Out]</command>, <command>[I/O]</command>, <command>[In/Out]</command>.
297 Parameters documented in the prototype should be formatted as follows:
301 /*************************************************************************
302 * PathRelativePathToA [SHLWAPI.@]
304 * Create a relative path from one path to another.
307 BOOL WINAPI PathRelativePathToA(
308 LPSTR lpszPath, /* [O] Destination for relative path */
309 LPCSTR lpszFrom, /* [I] Source path */
310 DWORD dwAttrFrom, /* [I] File attribute of source path */
311 LPCSTR lpszTo, /* [I] Destination path */
312 DWORD dwAttrTo) /* [I] File attributes of destination path */
316 The choice of which style to use is up to you, although for readability it
317 is suggested you stick with the same style within a single source file.
321 Following the description and parameters come a number of optional sections, all
322 in the same format. A section is defined as the section name, which is an all upper
323 case section name on its own line, followed by free form text. You can create any
324 sections you like, however for consistency it is recommended you use the following
329 <command>NOTES</command>. Anything that needs to be noted about the function
330 such as special cases and the effects of input arguments.
334 <command>BUGS</command>. Any bugs in the function that exist 'by design', i.e.
335 those that will not be fixed or exist for compatibility with Windows.
339 <command>TODO</command>. Any unhandled cases or missing functionality in the Wine
340 implementation of the function.
344 <command>FIXME</command>. Things that should be updated or addressed in the implementation
345 of the function at some future date (perhaps dependent on other parts of Wine). Note
346 that if this information is only relevant to Wine developers then it should probably
347 be placed in the relevant code section instead.
353 Following or before the optional sections comes the <command>RETURNS</command> section
354 which describes the return value of the function. This is free form text but should include
355 what is returned on success as well as possible error return codes. Note that this
356 section must be present for documentation to be generated for your comment.
360 Our final documentation looks like the following:
364 /*************************************************************************
365 * PathRelativePathToA [SHLWAPI.@]
367 * Create a relative path from one path to another.
370 * lpszPath [O] Destination for relative path
371 * lpszFrom [I] Source path
372 * dwAttrFrom [I] File attribute of source path
373 * lpszTo [I] Destination path
374 * dwAttrTo [I] File attributes of destination path
377 * TRUE If a relative path can be formed. lpszPath contains the new path
378 * FALSE If the paths are not relative or any parameters are invalid
381 * lpszTo should be at least MAX_PATH in length.
382 * Calling this function with relative paths for lpszFrom or lpszTo may
383 * give erroneous results.
385 * The Win32 version of this function contains a bug where the lpszTo string
386 * may be referenced 1 byte beyond the end of the string. As a result random
387 * garbage may be written to the output path, depending on what lies beyond
388 * the last byte of the string. This bug occurs because of the behaviour of
389 * PathCommonPrefix() (see notes for that function), and no workaround seems
390 * possible with Win32.
391 * This bug has been fixed here, so for example the relative path from "\\"
392 * to "\\" is correctly determined as "." in this implementation.
397 <sect2 id="api-docs-advanced">
398 <title>Advanced API Documentation</title>
401 There is no markup language for formatting API comments, since they should
402 be easily readable by any developer working on the source file. A number of
403 constructs are treated specially however, and are noted here. You can use these
404 constructs to enhance the usefulness of the generated documentation by making it
405 easier to read and referencing related documents.
409 Any valid c identifier that ends with <command>()</command> is taken to
410 be an API function and is formatted accordingly. When generating documentation,
411 this text will become a link to that API call, if the output type supports
412 hyperlinks or their equivalent.
416 Similarly, any interface name starting with a capital I and followed by the
417 words "reference" or "object" become a link to that objects documentation.
421 Where an Ascii and Unicode version of a function are available, it is
422 recommended that you document only the Ascii version and have the Unicode
423 version refer to the Ascii one, as follows:
426 /*************************************************************************
427 * PathRelativePathToW [SHLWAPI.@]
429 * See PathRelativePathToA.
433 Alternately you may use the following form:
436 /*************************************************************************
437 * PathRelativePathToW [SHLWAPI.@]
439 * Unicode version of PathRelativePathToA.
444 You may also use this construct in any other section, such as <command>NOTES</command>.
448 Any numbers and text in quotes (<command>""</command>) are highlighted.
452 Words in all uppercase are assumed to be API constants and are highlighted. If
453 you want to emphasize something in the documentation, put it in a section by itself
454 rather than making it upper case.
458 Blank lines in a section cause a new paragraph to be started. Blank lines
459 at the start and end of sections are ignored.
463 Any comment line starting with (<command>"*|"</command>) is treated as raw text and
464 is not pre-processed before being output. This should be used for code listings,
465 tables and any text that should remain unformatted.
469 Any line starting with a single word followed by a colon (<command>:</command>)
470 is assumed to be case listing and is emphasized and put in its own paragraph. This
471 is most often used for return values, as in the example section below.
475 * Success: TRUE. Something happens that is documented here.
476 * Failure: FALSE. The reasons why this call can fail are listed here.
480 Any line starting with a (<command>-</command>) is put into a paragraph by itself.
481 this allows lists to avoid being run together.
485 If you are in doubt as to how your comment will look, try generating the API
486 documentation and checking the output.
490 <sect2 id="api-docs-extra">
491 <title>Extra API Documentation</title>
494 Simply documenting the API calls available provides a great deal of information to
495 developers working with the Win32 API. However additional documentation is needed
496 before the API Guide can be considered truly useful or comprehensive. For example,
497 COM objects that are available for developers use should be documented, along with
498 the interface(s) that those objects export. Also, it would be helpful to document
499 each dll, to provide some structure to the documentation.
503 To facilitate providing extra documentation, you can create comments that provide
504 extra documentation on functions, or on keywords such as the name of a COM interface
505 or a type definition.
509 These items are generated using the same formatting rules as described earlier. The
510 only difference is the first line of the comment, which indicates to the generator
511 that the documentation is supplemental and does not describe an export from the dll
516 Lets assume you have implemented a COM interface that you want to document; we'll
517 use the name <command>IExample</command> as an example here. Your comment would
518 look like the following (assuming you are exporting this object from
519 <filename>EXAMPLE.DLL</filename>):
521 /*************************************************************************
524 * The IExample object provides lots of interesting functionality.
531 Format this documentation exactly as you would a standard export. The only
532 difference is the use of curly brackets to mark this documentation as supplemental.
533 The generator will output this documentation using the name given before the
534 DLL name, and will link to it from the main DLL page. In addition, if you have
535 referred to the comment name in other documentation using "IExample interface",
536 "IExample object", or "IExample()", those references will point to this documentation.
540 If you document you COM interfaces this way then all following extra comments that
541 follow in the same source file that begin with the same document title will be added
542 as references to this comment before it is output. For an example of this see
543 <filename>dlls/oleaut32/safearray.c</filename>. This uses an extra comment to document
544 The SafeArray functions and link them together under one heading.
548 As a special case, if you use the DLL name as the comment name, the comment will
549 be treated as documentation on the DLL itself. When the documentation for the DLL
550 is processed, the contents of the comment will be placed before the generated
551 statistics, exports and other information that makes up a DLL's documentation page.
555 <sect2 id="api-docs-generating">
556 <title>Generating API Documentation</title>
559 Having edited or added new API documentation to a source code file, you
560 should generate the documentation to ensure that the result is what you
561 expected. Wine includes a tool (slightly misleadingly) called
562 <command>c2man.pl</command> in the <filename>tools/</filename> directory
563 which is used to generate the documentation from the source code.
567 You can run <command>c2man.pl</command> manually for testing purposes; it is
568 a fairly simple perl script which parses <filename>.c</filename> files
569 to create output in several formats. If you wish to try this you may want
570 to run it with no arguments, which will cause it to print usage information.
574 An easier way is to use Wines build system. To create man pages for a given
575 dll, just type <command>make man</command> from within the dlls directory
576 or type <command>make manpages</command> in the root directory of the Wine
577 source tree. You can then check that a man page was generated for your function,
578 it should be present in the <filename>documentation/man3w</filename> directory
579 with the same name as the function.
583 Once you have generated the man pages from the source code, running
584 <command>make install</command> will install them for you. By default they are
585 installed in section 3w of the manual, so they don't conflict with any existing
586 man page names. So, to read the man page you should use
587 <command>man -S 3w {name}</command>. Alternately you can edit
588 <filename>/etc/man.config</filename> and add 3w to the list of search paths
589 given in the variable <emphasis>MANSECT</emphasis>.
593 You can also generate HTML output for the API documentation, in this case the
594 make command is <command>make doc-html</command> in the dll directory,
595 or <command>make htmlpages</command> from the root. The output will be
596 placed by default under <filename>documentation/html</filename>. Similarly
597 you can create SGML source code to produce the <emphasis>Wine Api Guide</emphasis>
598 with the command <command>make sgmlpages</command>.
603 <sect1 id="wine-docbook">
604 <title>The Wine DocBook System</title>
606 <sect2 id="writing-docbook">
607 <title>Writing Documentation with DocBook</title>
610 DocBook is a flavour of <acronym>SGML</acronym>
611 (<firstterm>Standard Generalized Markup
612 Language</firstterm>), a syntax for marking up the contents
613 of documents. HTML is another very common flavour of SGML;
614 DocBook markup looks very similar to HTML markup, although
615 the names of the markup tags differ.
618 <title>Getting Started</title>
620 <title>Why SGML?</title>
622 The simple answer to that is that SGML allows you
623 to create multiple formats of a given document from a single
624 source. Currently it is used to create HTML, PDF and PS
625 (PostScript) versions of the Wine books.
630 <title>What do I need?</title>
632 You need the SGML tools. There are various places where you
633 can get them. The most generic way of getting them is from their
634 source as discussed below.
639 <title>Quick instructions</title>
641 These are the basic steps to create the Wine books from the SGML source.
648 Go to <ulink url="http://www.sgmltools.org">http://www.sgmltools.org</ulink>
652 Download all of the sgmltools packages
656 Install them all and build them (<command>./configure; make; make install</command>)
660 Switch to your toplevel Wine directory
664 Run <command>./configure</command> (or <command>make distclean && ./configure</command>)
668 Switch to the <filename>documentation/</filename> directory
672 run <command>make html</command>
676 View <filename>wine-user.html</filename>, <filename>wine-devel.html</filename>, etc in your favorite browser
684 <title>Getting SGML for various distributions</title>
686 Most Linux distributions have everything you need already
687 bundled up in package form. Unfortunately, each
688 distribution seems to handle its SGML environment
689 differently, installing it into different paths, and
690 naming its packages according to its own whims.
694 <title>SGML on Red Hat</title>
696 The following packages seem to be sufficient for Red Hat 7.1. You
697 will want to be careful about the order in which you install the
722 docbook-style-dsssl-*.rpm
741 You can also use ghostscript to view the ps format output and
742 Adobe Acrobat 4 to view the pdf file.
747 <title>SGML on Debian</title>
749 This is not a definitive listing yet, but it seems
750 you might need the following packages:
813 <title>Terminology</title>
816 SGML markup contains a number of syntactical elements that
817 serve different purposes in the markup. We'll run through
818 the basics here to make sure we're on the same page when
819 we refer to SGML semantics.
822 The basic currency of SGML is the
823 <firstterm>tag</firstterm>. A simple tag consists of a
824 pair of angle brackets and the name of the tag. For
825 example, the <sgmltag>para</sgmltag> tag would appear in
826 an SGML document as <sgmltag
827 class="starttag">para</sgmltag>. This start tag indicates
828 that the immediately following text should be classified
829 according to the tag. In regular SGML, each opening tag
830 must have a matching end tag to show where the start tag's
831 contents end. End tags begin with
832 <quote><literal></</literal></quote> markup, e.g.,
833 <sgmltag class="endtag">para</sgmltag>.
836 The combination of a start tag, contents, and an end tag
837 is called an <firstterm>element</firstterm>. SGML
838 elements can be nested inside of each other, or contain
839 only text, or may be a combination of both text and other
840 elements, although in most cases it is better to limit
841 your elements to one or the other.
844 The <acronym>XML</acronym> (<firstterm>eXtensible Markup
845 Language</firstterm>) specification, a modern subset of
846 the SGML specification, adds a so-called <firstterm>empty
847 tag</firstterm>, for elements that contain no text
848 content. The entire element is a single tag, ending with
849 <quote><literal>/></literal></quote>, e.g.,
850 <sgmltag><xref/></sgmltag>. However, use of this
851 tag style restricts you to XML DocBook processing, and
852 your document may no longer compile with SGML-only
855 <!-- *** Note: We could normally use the "emptytag"
856 attribute for XML empty tags, but that's only a recent
857 addition, and we don't want to screw up documents
858 generated against older stylesheets.
861 Often a processing system will need more information about
862 an element than you can provide with just tags. SGML
863 allows you to add extra <quote>hints</quote> in the form
864 of SGML <firstterm>attributes</firstterm> to pass along
865 this information. The most common use of attributes in
866 DocBook is giving specific elements a name, or an ID, so
867 you can refer to it from elsewhere. This ID can be used
868 for many things, including file-naming for HTML output,
869 hyper-linking to specific parts of the document, and even
870 pulling text from that element (see the <sgmltag
871 class="starttag">xref</sgmltag> tag).
874 An SGML attribute appears inside the start tag, between
875 the < and > brackets. For example, if you wanted to
876 set the <sgmltag class="attribute">id</sgmltag> attribute
877 of the <sgmltag class="starttag">book</sgmltag> element to
878 <quote>mybook</quote>, you would create a start tag like
879 this: <programlisting><book id="mybook"></programlisting>
882 Notice that the contents of the attribute are enclosed in
883 quote marks. These quotes are optional in SGML, but
884 mandatory in XML. It's a good habit to use quotes, as it
885 will make it much easier to migrate your documents to an
886 XML processing system later on.
889 You can also specify more than one attribute in a single
890 tag: <programlisting><book id="mybook" status="draft"></programlisting>
893 Another commonly used type of SGML markup is the
894 <firstterm>entity</firstterm>. An entity lets you
895 associate a block of text with a name. You declare the
896 entity once, at the beginning of your document, and can
897 invoke it as many times as you like throughout the
898 document. You can use entities as shorthand, or to make
899 it easier to maintain certain phrases in a central
900 location, or even to insert the contents of an entire file
904 An entity in your document is always surrounded by the
905 <quote>&</quote> and <quote>;</quote> characters. One
906 entity you'll need sooner or later is the one for the
907 <quote><</quote> character. Since SGML expects all
908 tags to begin with a <quote><</quote>, the
909 <quote><</quote> is a reserved character. To use it in
910 your document (as I am doing here), you must insert it
911 with the <literal>&lt;</literal> entity. Each time
912 the SGML processor encounters <literal>&lt;</literal>,
913 it will place a literal <quote><</quote> in the output
914 document. Similarly you must use the <literal>&gt;</literal>
915 and <literal>&amp;</literal> entities for the
916 <quote>></quote> and <quote>&</quote> characters.
919 The final term you'll need to know when writing simple
920 DocBook documents is the <acronym>DTD</acronym>
921 (<firstterm>Document Type Declaration</firstterm>). The
922 DTD defines the flavour of SGML a given document is written
923 in. It lists all the legal tag names, like <sgmltag
924 class="starttag">book</sgmltag>, <sgmltag
925 class="starttag">para</sgmltag>, and so on, and declares
926 how those tags are allowed to be used together. For
927 example, it doesn't make sense to put a <sgmltag
928 class="starttag">book</sgmltag> element inside a <sgmltag
929 class="starttag">para</sgmltag> paragraph element -- only
933 The DTD thus defines the legal structure of the document.
934 It also declares which attributes can be used with which
935 tags. The SGML processing system can use the DTD to make
936 sure the document is laid out properly before attempting
937 to process it. SGML-aware text editors like <link
938 linkend="emacs-psgml">Emacs</link> can also use the DTD to
939 guide you while you write, offering you choices about
940 which tags you can add in different places in the
941 document, and beeping at you when you try to add a tag
942 where it doesn't belong.
945 Generally, you will declare which DTD you want to use as
946 the first line of your SGML document. In the case of
947 DocBook, you will use something like this:
948 <programlisting><!doctype book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD
949 DocBook V3.1//EN" []> <book> ...
950 </book></programlisting>
953 Note that you must specify your toplevel element inside
954 the doctype declaration. If you were writing an article
955 rather than a book, you might use this declaration instead:
956 <programlisting><!doctype article PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" []>
959 </article></programlisting>
963 <sect3 id="sgml-document">
964 <title>The Document</title>
966 Once you're comfortable with SGML, creating a DocBook
967 document is quite simple and straightforward. Even
968 though DocBook contains over 300 different tags, you can
969 usually get by with only a small subset of those tags.
970 Most of them are for inline formatting, rather than for
971 document structuring. Furthermore, the common tags have
972 short, intuitive names.
975 Below is a (completely nonsensical) example to illustrate
976 how a simple document might be laid out. Notice that all
977 <sgmltag class="starttag">chapter</sgmltag> and <sgmltag
978 class="starttag">sect1</sgmltag> elements have <sgmltag
979 class="attribute">id</sgmltag> attributes. This is not
980 mandatory, but is a good habit to get into, as DocBook is
981 commonly converted into HTML, with a separate generated
982 file for each <sgmltag class="starttag">book</sgmltag>,
983 <sgmltag class="starttag">chapter</sgmltag>, and/or <sgmltag
984 class="starttag">sect1</sgmltag> element. If the given
985 element has an <sgmltag class="attribute">id</sgmltag>
986 attribute, the processor will typically name the file
987 accordingly. Thus, the below document might result in
988 <filename>index.html</filename>,
989 <filename>chapter-one.html</filename>,
990 <filename>blobs.html</filename>, and so on.
993 Also notice the text marked off with <quote><!--
994 </quote> and <quote> --></quote> characters. These
995 denote SGML comments. SGML processors will completely
996 ignore anything between these markers, similar to
997 <quote>/*</quote> and <quote>*/</quote> comments in C
1001 <!-- Encase the following SGML excerpt inside a CDATA
1002 block so we don't have to bother converting all
1003 brackets to entities
1007 <!doctype book PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook V3.1//EN" []>
1010 <title>A Poet's Guide to Nonsense</title>
1013 <chapter id="chapter-one">
1014 <title>Blobs and Gribbles</title>
1016 <!-- This section contains only one major topic -->
1018 <title>The Story Behind Blobs</title>
1020 Blobs are often mistaken for ice cubes and rain
1025 <!-- This section contains embedded sub-sections -->
1026 <sect1 id="gribbles">
1027 <title>Your Friend the Gribble</title>
1029 A Gribble is a cute, unassuming little fellow...
1032 <sect2 id="gribble-temperament">
1033 <title>Gribble Temperament</title>
1035 When left without food for several days...
1039 <sect2 id="gribble-appearance">
1040 <title>Gribble Appearance</title>
1042 Most Gribbles have a shock of white fur running from...
1048 <chapter id="chapter-two">
1049 <title>Phantasmagoria</title>
1051 <sect1 id="dretch-pools">
1052 <title>Dretch Pools</title>
1055 When most poets think of Dretch Pools, they tend to...
1065 <title>Common Elements</title>
1067 Once you get used to the syntax of SGML, the next hurdle
1068 in writing DocBook documentation is to learn the many
1069 DocBook-specific tag names, and when to use them. DocBook
1070 was created for technical documentation, and as such, the
1071 tag names and document structure are slanted towards the
1072 needs of such documentation.
1075 To cover its target audience, DocBook declares a wide
1076 variety of specialized tags, including tags for formatting
1077 source code (with somewhat of a C/C++ bias), computer
1078 prompts, GUI application features, keystrokes, and so on.
1079 DocBook also includes tags for universal formatting needs,
1080 like headers, footnotes, tables, and graphics.
1083 We won't cover all of these elements here (over 300
1084 DocBook tags exist!), but we will cover the basics. To
1085 learn more about the other tags, check out the official
1086 DocBook guide, at <ulink
1087 url="http://docbook.org">http://docbook.org</ulink>. To
1088 see how they are used in practice, download the SGML
1089 source for this manual (the Wine Developer Guide) and
1090 browse through it, comparing it to the generated HTML (or
1094 There are often many correct ways to mark up a given piece
1095 of text, and you may have to make guesses about which tag
1096 to use. Sometimes you'll have to make compromises.
1097 However, remember that it is possible to further customize
1098 the output of the SGML processors. If you don't like the
1099 way a certain tag looks in HTML, that doesn't mean you
1100 should choose a different tag based on its output formatting.
1101 The processing stylesheets can be altered to fix the
1102 formatting of that same tag everywhere in the document
1103 (not just in the place you're working on). For example,
1104 if you're frustrated that the <sgmltag
1105 class="starttag">systemitem</sgmltag> tag doesn't produce
1106 any formatting by default, you should fix the stylesheets,
1107 not change the valid <sgmltag
1108 class="starttag">systemitem</sgmltag> tag to, for example,
1109 an <sgmltag class="starttag">emphasis</sgmltag> tag.
1112 Here are the common SGML elements:
1116 <title>Structural Elements</title>
1118 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">book</sgmltag></term>
1121 The book is the most common toplevel element, and is
1122 probably the one you should use for your document.
1127 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">set</sgmltag></term>
1130 If you want to group more than one book into a
1131 single unit, you can place them all inside a set.
1132 This is useful when you want to bundle up
1133 documentation in alternate ways. We do this with
1134 the Wine documentation, using
1135 <sgmltag class="starttag">book</sgmltag> to
1136 put each Wine guide into a separate directory (see
1137 <filename>documentation/wine-devel.sgml</filename>,
1143 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">chapter</sgmltag></term>
1146 A <sgmltag class="starttag">chapter</sgmltag>
1147 element includes a single entire chapter of the
1153 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">part</sgmltag></term>
1156 If the chapters in your book fall into major
1157 categories or groupings (as in the Wine Developer
1158 Guide), you can place each collection of chapters
1159 into a <sgmltag class="starttag">part</sgmltag>
1165 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">sect?</sgmltag></term>
1168 DocBook has many section elements to divide the
1169 contents of a chapter into smaller chunks. The
1170 encouraged approach is to use the numbered section
1171 tags, <sgmltag class="starttag">sect1</sgmltag>,
1172 <sgmltag class="starttag">sect2</sgmltag>, <sgmltag
1173 class="starttag">sect3</sgmltag>, <sgmltag
1174 class="starttag">sect4</sgmltag>, and <sgmltag
1175 class="starttag">sect5</sgmltag> (if necessary).
1176 These tags must be nested in order: you can't place
1177 a <sgmltag class="starttag">sect3</sgmltag> directly
1178 inside a <sgmltag class="starttag">sect1</sgmltag>.
1179 You have to nest the <sgmltag
1180 class="starttag">sect3</sgmltag> inside a <sgmltag
1181 class="starttag">sect2</sgmltag>, and so forth.
1182 Documents with these explicit section groupings are
1183 easier for SGML processors to deal with, and lead to
1184 better organized documents. DocBook also supplies a
1185 <sgmltag class="starttag">section</sgmltag> element
1186 which you can nest inside itself, but its use is
1187 discouraged in favor of the numbered section tags.
1192 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">title</sgmltag></term>
1195 The title of a book, chapter, part, section, etc.
1196 In most of the major structural elements, like
1197 <sgmltag class="starttag">chapter</sgmltag>,
1198 <sgmltag class="starttag">part</sgmltag>, and the
1199 various section tags, <sgmltag
1200 class="starttag">title</sgmltag> is mandatory. In
1201 other elements like <sgmltag
1202 class="starttag">book</sgmltag> and <sgmltag
1203 class="starttag">note</sgmltag>, it's optional.
1208 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">para</sgmltag></term>
1211 The basic unit of text is the paragraph, represented
1212 by the <sgmltag class="starttag">para</sgmltag> tag.
1213 This is probably the tag you'll use most often. In
1214 fact, in a simple document, you can probably get
1215 away with using only <sgmltag
1216 class="starttag">book</sgmltag>, <sgmltag
1217 class="starttag">chapter</sgmltag>, <sgmltag
1218 class="starttag">title</sgmltag>, and <sgmltag
1219 class="starttag">para</sgmltag>.
1224 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">article</sgmltag></term>
1227 For shorter, more targeted documents, like topic
1228 pieces and whitepapers, you can use <sgmltag
1229 class="starttag">article</sgmltag> as your toplevel
1237 <title>Inline Formatting Elements</title>
1239 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">filename</sgmltag></term>
1242 The name of a file. You can optionally set the
1243 <sgmltag class="attribute">class</sgmltag> attribute
1244 to <literal>Directory</literal>,
1245 <literal>HeaderFile</literal>, and
1246 <literal>SymLink</literal> to further classify the
1252 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">userinput</sgmltag></term>
1255 Literal text entered by the user.
1260 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">computeroutput</sgmltag></term>
1263 Literal text output by the computer.
1268 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">literal</sgmltag></term>
1271 A catch-all element for literal computer data. Its
1272 use is somewhat vague; try to use a more specific
1273 tag if possible, like <sgmltag
1274 class="starttag">userinput</sgmltag> or <sgmltag
1275 class="starttag">computeroutput</sgmltag>.
1280 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">quote</sgmltag></term>
1283 An inline quotation. This tag typically inserts
1284 quotation marks for you, so you would write <sgmltag
1285 class="starttag">quote</sgmltag>This is a
1286 quote<sgmltag class="endtag">quote</sgmltag> rather
1287 than "This is a quote". This usage may be a little
1288 bulkier, but it does allow for automated formatting
1289 of all quoted material in the document. Thus, if
1290 you wanted all quotations to appear in italic, you
1291 could make the change once in your stylesheet,
1292 rather than doing a search and replace throughout
1293 the document. For larger chunks of quoted text, you
1295 class="starttag">blockquote</sgmltag>.
1300 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">note</sgmltag></term>
1303 Insert a side note for the reader. By default, the
1304 SGML processor usually prefixes the content with
1305 "Note:". You can change this text by adding a
1306 <sgmltag class="starttag">title</sgmltag> element.
1307 Thus, to add a visible FIXME comment to the
1308 documentation, you might write:
1313 <title>EXAMPLE</title>
1314 <para>This is an example note...</para>
1316 ]]></programlisting>
1318 The results will look something like this:
1321 <title>EXAMPLE</title>
1322 <para>This is an example note...</para>
1327 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">sgmltag</sgmltag></term>
1330 Used for inserting SGML tags, etc., into a SGML
1331 document without resorting to a lot of entity
1332 quoting, e.g., &lt;. You can change the
1333 appearance of the text with the <sgmltag
1334 class="attribute">class</sgmltag> attribute. Some
1335 common values of this are
1336 <literal>starttag</literal>,
1337 <literal>endtag</literal>,
1338 <literal>attribute</literal>,
1339 <literal>attvalue</literal>, and even
1340 <literal>sgmlcomment</literal>. See this SGML file,
1341 <filename>documentation/documentation.sgml</filename>,
1347 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">prompt</sgmltag></term>
1350 The text used for a computer prompt, for example a
1351 shell prompt, or command-line application prompt.
1356 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">replaceable</sgmltag></term>
1359 Meta-text that should be replaced by the user, not
1360 typed in literally, e.g., in command descriptions
1361 and <parameter>--help</parameter> outputs.
1366 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">constant</sgmltag></term>
1369 A programming constant, e.g.,
1370 <constant>MAX_PATH</constant>.
1375 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">symbol</sgmltag></term>
1378 A symbolic value replaced, for example, by a
1379 pre-processor. This applies primarily to C macros,
1380 but may have other uses. Use the <sgmltag
1381 class="starttag">constant</sgmltag> tag instead of
1382 <sgmltag class="starttag">symbol</sgmltag> where
1388 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">function</sgmltag></term>
1391 A programming function name.
1396 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">parameter</sgmltag></term>
1399 Programming language parameters you pass with a
1405 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">option</sgmltag></term>
1408 Parameters you pass to a command-line executable.
1413 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">varname</sgmltag></term>
1416 Variable name, typically in a programming language.
1421 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">type</sgmltag></term>
1424 Programming language types, e.g., from a typedef
1425 definition. May have other uses, too.
1430 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">structname</sgmltag></term>
1433 The name of a C-language <type>struct</type>
1434 declaration, e.g., <structname>sockaddr</structname>.
1439 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">structfield</sgmltag></term>
1442 A field inside a C <type>struct</type>.
1447 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">command</sgmltag></term>
1450 An executable binary, e.g., <command>wine</command>
1451 or <command>ls</command>.
1456 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">envar</sgmltag></term>
1459 An environment variable, e.g, <envar>$PATH</envar>.
1464 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">systemitem</sgmltag></term>
1467 A generic catch-all for system-related things, like
1468 OS names, computer names, system resources, etc.
1473 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">email</sgmltag></term>
1476 An email address. The SGML processor will typically
1477 add extra formatting characters, and even a
1478 <literal>mailto:</literal> link for HTML pages.
1480 class="starttag">email</sgmltag>user@host.com<sgmltag
1481 class="endtag">email</sgmltag>
1486 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">firstterm</sgmltag></term>
1489 Special emphasis for introducing a new term. Can
1490 also be linked to a <sgmltag
1491 class="starttag">glossary</sgmltag> entry, if
1499 <title>Item Listing Elements</title>
1501 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">itemizedlist</sgmltag></term>
1504 For bulleted lists, no numbering. You can tweak the
1505 layout with SGML attributes.
1510 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">orderedlist</sgmltag></term>
1513 A numbered list; the SGML processor will insert the
1514 numbers for you. You can suggest numbering styles
1516 class="attribute">numeration</sgmltag> attribute.
1521 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">simplelist</sgmltag></term>
1524 A very simple list of items, often inlined. Control
1525 the layout with the <sgmltag
1526 class="attribute">type</sgmltag> attribute.
1531 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">variablelist</sgmltag></term>
1534 A list of terms with definitions or descriptions,
1535 like this very list!
1542 <title>Block Text Quoting Elements</title>
1544 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">programlisting</sgmltag></term>
1547 Quote a block of source code. Typically highlighted
1548 in the output and set off from normal text.
1553 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">screen</sgmltag></term>
1556 Quote a block of visible computer output, like the
1557 output of a command or chunks of debug logs.
1564 <title>Hyperlink Elements</title>
1566 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">link</sgmltag></term>
1569 Generic hypertext link, used for pointing to other
1570 sections within the current document. You supply
1571 the visible text for the link, plus the name of the <sgmltag
1572 class="attribute">id</sgmltag> attribute of the
1573 element that you want to link to. For example:
1574 <programlisting><link linkend="configuring-wine">the section on configuring wine</link>
1576 <sect2 id="configuring-wine">
1577 ...</programlisting>
1582 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">xref</sgmltag></term>
1585 In-document hyperlink that can generate its own
1586 text. Similar to the <sgmltag
1587 class="starttag">link</sgmltag> tag, you use the
1588 <sgmltag class="attribute">linkend</sgmltag>
1589 attribute to specify which target element you want
1593 <programlisting><xref linkend="configuring-wine">
1595 <sect2 id="configuring-wine">
1596 ...</programlisting>
1599 By default, most SGML processors will auto generate
1600 some generic text for the <sgmltag
1601 class="starttag">xref</sgmltag> link, like
1602 <quote>Section 2.3.1</quote>. You can use the
1603 <sgmltag class="attribute">endterm</sgmltag>
1604 attribute to grab the visible text content of the
1605 hyperlink from another element:
1608 <programlisting><xref linkend="configuring-wine" endterm="config-title">
1610 <sect2 id="configuring-wine">
1611 <title id="config-title">Configuring Wine</title>
1612 ...</programlisting>
1615 This would create a link to the
1616 <symbol>configuring-wine</symbol> element,
1617 displaying the text of the
1618 <symbol>config-title</symbol> element for the
1619 hyperlink. Most often, you'll add an <sgmltag
1620 class="attribute">id</sgmltag> attribute to the
1621 <sgmltag class="starttag">title</sgmltag> of the
1622 section you're linking to, as above, in which case
1623 the SGML processor will use the target's title text
1627 Alternatively, you can use an <sgmltag
1628 class="attribute">xreflabel</sgmltag> attribute in
1629 the target element tag to specify the link text:
1631 <programlisting><sect1 id="configuring-wine" xreflabel="Configuring Wine"></programlisting>
1634 <sgmltag class="starttag">xref</sgmltag> is an
1635 empty element. You don't need a closing tag for
1636 it (this is defined in the DTD). In SGML
1637 documents, you should use the form <sgmltag
1638 class="starttag">xref</sgmltag>, while in XML
1639 documents you should use
1640 <sgmltag><xref/></sgmltag>.
1646 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">anchor</sgmltag></term>
1649 An invisible tag, used for inserting <sgmltag
1650 class="attribute">id</sgmltag> attributes into a
1651 document to link to arbitrary places (i.e., when
1652 it's not close enough to link to the top of an
1658 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">ulink</sgmltag></term>
1661 Hyperlink in URL form, e.g., <ulink
1662 url="http://www.winehq.com">http://www.winehq.com</ulink>.
1667 <term><sgmltag class="starttag">olink</sgmltag></term>
1670 Indirect hyperlink; can be used for linking to
1671 external documents. Not often used in practice.
1679 <title>Multiple SGML files</title>
1681 How to split an SGML document into multiple files...
1686 <sect2 id="sgml-environment">
1687 <title>The SGML Environment</title>
1690 You can write SGML/DocBook documents in any text editor you
1691 might find (although as we'll find in <xref
1692 linkend="emacs-psgml">, some editors are more friendly for
1693 this task than others). However, if you want to convert
1694 those documents into a more friendly form for reading, such
1695 as HTML, PostScript, or PDF, you will need a working SGML
1696 environment. This section attempts to lay out the various
1697 SGML rendering systems, and how they are set up on the
1698 popular Linux distributions.
1702 <title>DSSSL Environment</title>
1704 Explain tools and methodologies..
1709 <title>XSLT Environment</title>
1711 Explain tools and methodologies...
1717 <sect2 id="emacs-psgml">
1718 <title>PSGML Mode in Emacs</title>
1720 Although you can write SGML documentation in any simple text
1721 editor, some editors provide extra support for entering SGML
1722 tags, and for verifying that the SGML you create is valid.
1723 SGML has been around for a long time, and many commercial
1724 editors exist for it; however, until recently open source
1725 SGML editors have been scarce.
1728 <title>FIXME</title>
1730 List the available commercial and open source SGML
1735 The most commonly used open source SGML editor is Emacs,
1736 with the PSGML <firstterm>mode</firstterm>, or extension.
1737 Emacs does not supply a GUI or WYSIWYG (What You See Is What
1738 You Get) interface, but it does provide many helpful
1739 shortcuts for creating SGML, as well as automatic
1740 formatting, validity checking, and the ability to create
1741 your own macros to simplify complex, repetitive actions.
1742 We'll touch briefly on each of these points.
1745 The first thing you need is a working installation of Emacs
1746 (or XEmacs), with the PSGML package. Most Linux
1747 distributions provide both as easy-to-install packages.
1750 Next, you'll need a working SGML environment. See <xref
1751 linkend="sgml-environment"> for more info on setting that
1756 <!--sect2 id="docbook-build">
1757 <title>The DocBook Build System</title>
1759 <sect3 id="docbook-infrastructure">
1760 <title>Basic Infrastructure</title>
1762 FIXME: How the build/make system works (makefiles, db2html,
1767 <sect3 id="docbook-tweaking">
1768 <title>Tweaking the DSSSL stylesheets</title>
1770 FIXME: Things you can tweak, and how to do it (examples from
1771 default.dsl and print.dsl).
1775 <sect3 id="docbook-generating">
1776 <title>Generating docs for Wine web sites</title>
1778 FIXME: Explain make, rsync, etc.
1785 <!-- Keep this comment at the end of the file
1788 sgml-parent-document:("wine-devel.sgml" "set" "book" "part" "chapter" "")