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<h1><a href="../../index.html">Django 1.6.7 documentation</a></h1>
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<div class="yui-g" id="internals-contributing-writing-documentation">
<div class="section" id="s-writing-documentation">
<span id="writing-documentation"></span><h1>Writing documentation<a class="headerlink" href="#writing-documentation" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h1>
<p>We place a high importance on consistency and readability of documentation.
After all, Django was created in a journalism environment! So we treat our
documentation like we treat our code: we aim to improve it as often as
possible.</p>
<p>Documentation changes generally come in two forms:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li>General improvements: typo corrections, error fixes and better
explanations through clearer writing and more examples.</li>
<li>New features: documentation of features that have been added to the
framework since the last release.</li>
</ul>
<p>This section explains how writers can craft their documentation changes
in the most useful and least error-prone ways.</p>
<div class="section" id="s-getting-the-raw-documentation">
<span id="getting-the-raw-documentation"></span><h2>Getting the raw documentation<a class="headerlink" href="#getting-the-raw-documentation" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Though Django’s documentation is intended to be read as HTML at
<a class="reference external" href="https://docs.djangoproject.com/">https://docs.djangoproject.com/</a>, we edit it as a collection of text files for
maximum flexibility. These files live in the top-level <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">docs/</span></tt> directory of a
Django release.</p>
<p>If you’d like to start contributing to our docs, get the development version of
Django from the source code repository
(see <a class="reference internal" href="../../topics/install.html#installing-development-version"><em>Installing the development version</em></a>). The development version has the
latest-and-greatest documentation, just as it has latest-and-greatest code.
We also backport documentation fixes and improvements, at the discretion of the
committer, to the last release branch. That’s because it’s highly advantageous
to have the docs for the last release be up-to-date and correct (see
<a class="reference internal" href="../../intro/whatsnext.html#differences-between-doc-versions"><em>Differences between versions</em></a>).</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-getting-started-with-sphinx">
<span id="getting-started-with-sphinx"></span><h2>Getting started with Sphinx<a class="headerlink" href="#getting-started-with-sphinx" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Django’s documentation uses the <a class="reference external" href="http://sphinx.pocoo.org/">Sphinx</a> documentation system, which in turn
is based on <a class="reference external" href="http://docutils.sourceforge.net/">docutils</a>. The basic idea is that lightly-formatted plain-text
documentation is transformed into HTML, PDF, and any other output format.</p>
<p>To actually build the documentation locally, you’ll currently need to install
Sphinx – <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">sudo</span> <span class="pre">pip</span> <span class="pre">install</span> <span class="pre">Sphinx</span></tt> should do the trick.</p>
<div class="admonition note">
<p class="first admonition-title">Note</p>
<p class="last">Building the Django documentation requires Sphinx 1.0.2 or newer. Sphinx
also requires the <a class="reference external" href="http://pygments.org">Pygments</a> library for syntax highlighting; building the
Django documentation requires Pygments 1.1 or newer (a new-enough version
should automatically be installed along with Sphinx).</p>
</div>
<p>Then, building the HTML is easy; just <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">make</span> <span class="pre">html</span></tt> (or <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">make.bat</span> <span class="pre">html</span></tt> on
Windows) from the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">docs</span></tt> directory.</p>
<p>To get started contributing, you’ll want to read the <em class="xref std std-ref">reStructuredText
Primer</em>. After that, you’ll want to read about the
<em class="xref std std-ref">Sphinx-specific markup</em> that’s used to manage
metadata, indexing, and cross-references.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-commonly-used-terms">
<span id="commonly-used-terms"></span><h2>Commonly used terms<a class="headerlink" href="#commonly-used-terms" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Here are some style guidelines on commonly used terms throughout the
documentation:</p>
<ul class="simple">
<li><strong>Django</strong> – when referring to the framework, capitalize Django. It is
lowercase only in Python code and in the djangoproject.com logo.</li>
<li><strong>email</strong> – no hyphen.</li>
<li><strong>MySQL</strong>, <strong>PostgreSQL</strong>, <strong>SQLite</strong></li>
<li><strong>SQL</strong> – when referring to SQL, the expected pronunciation should be
“Ess Queue Ell” and not “sequel”. Thus in a phrase like “Returns an
SQL expression”, “SQL” should be preceded by “an” and not “a”.</li>
<li><strong>Python</strong> – when referring to the language, capitalize Python.</li>
<li><strong>realize</strong>, <strong>customize</strong>, <strong>initialize</strong>, etc. – use the American
“ize” suffix, not “ise.”</li>
<li><strong>subclass</strong> – it’s a single word without a hyphen, both as a verb
(“subclass that model”) and as a noun (“create a subclass”).</li>
<li><strong>Web</strong>, <strong>World Wide Web</strong>, <strong>the Web</strong> – note Web is always
capitalized when referring to the World Wide Web.</li>
<li><strong>Web site</strong> – use two words, with Web capitalized.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-django-specific-terminology">
<span id="django-specific-terminology"></span><h2>Django-specific terminology<a class="headerlink" href="#django-specific-terminology" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<ul class="simple">
<li><strong>model</strong> – it’s not capitalized.</li>
<li><strong>template</strong> – it’s not capitalized.</li>
<li><strong>URLconf</strong> – use three capitalized letters, with no space before
“conf.”</li>
<li><strong>view</strong> – it’s not capitalized.</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-guidelines-for-restructuredtext-files">
<span id="guidelines-for-restructuredtext-files"></span><h2>Guidelines for reStructuredText files<a class="headerlink" href="#guidelines-for-restructuredtext-files" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>These guidelines regulate the format of our reST (reStructuredText)
documentation:</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">In section titles, capitalize only initial words and proper nouns.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Wrap the documentation at 80 characters wide, unless a code example
is significantly less readable when split over two lines, or for another
good reason.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">The main thing to keep in mind as you write and edit docs is that the
more semantic markup you can add the better. So:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>Add ``django.contrib.auth`` to your ``INSTALLED_APPS``...</pre>
</div>
<p>Isn’t nearly as helpful as:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>Add :mod:`django.contrib.auth` to your :setting:`INSTALLED_APPS`...</pre>
</div>
<p>This is because Sphinx will generate proper links for the latter, which
greatly helps readers. There’s basically no limit to the amount of
useful markup you can add.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Use <tt class="xref py py-mod docutils literal"><span class="pre">intersphinx</span></tt> to reference Python’s and Sphinx’
documentation.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-django-specific-markup">
<span id="django-specific-markup"></span><h2>Django-specific markup<a class="headerlink" href="#django-specific-markup" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Besides the <a class="reference external" href="http://sphinx.pocoo.org/markup/desc.html">Sphinx built-in markup</a>, Django’s docs defines some extra
description units:</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">Settings:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>.. setting:: INSTALLED_APPS</pre>
</div>
<p>To link to a setting, use <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:setting:`INSTALLED_APPS`</span></tt>.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Template tags:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>.. templatetag:: regroup</pre>
</div>
<p>To link, use <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:ttag:`regroup`</span></tt>.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Template filters:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>.. templatefilter:: linebreaksbr</pre>
</div>
<p>To link, use <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:tfilter:`linebreaksbr`</span></tt>.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Field lookups (i.e. <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">Foo.objects.filter(bar__exact=whatever)</span></tt>):</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>.. fieldlookup:: exact</pre>
</div>
<p>To link, use <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:lookup:`exact`</span></tt>.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first"><tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">django-admin</span></tt> commands:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>.. django-admin:: syncdb</pre>
</div>
<p>To link, use <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:djadmin:`syncdb`</span></tt>.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first"><tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">django-admin</span></tt> command-line options:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>.. django-admin-option:: --traceback</pre>
</div>
<p>To link, use <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:djadminopt:`--traceback`</span></tt>.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Links to Trac tickets (typically reserved for minor release notes):</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>:ticket:`12345`</pre>
</div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-documenting-new-features">
<span id="s-id5"></span><span id="documenting-new-features"></span><span id="id5"></span><h2>Documenting new features<a class="headerlink" href="#documenting-new-features" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>Our policy for new features is:</p>
<blockquote>
<div>All documentation of new features should be written in a way that
clearly designates the features are only available in the Django
development version. Assume documentation readers are using the latest
release, not the development version.</div></blockquote>
<p>Our preferred way for marking new features is by prefacing the features’
documentation with: “<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">..</span> <span class="pre">versionadded::</span> <span class="pre">X.Y</span></tt>”, followed by a mandatory
blank line and an optional content (indented).</p>
<p>General improvements, or other changes to the APIs that should be emphasized
should use the “<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">..</span> <span class="pre">versionchanged::</span> <span class="pre">X.Y</span></tt>” directive (with the same format
as the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">versionadded</span></tt> mentioned above.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-an-example">
<span id="an-example"></span><h2>An example<a class="headerlink" href="#an-example" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>For a quick example of how it all fits together, consider this hypothetical
example:</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">First, the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ref/settings.txt</span></tt> document could have an overall layout
like this:</p>
<div class="highlight-rst"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="gh">========</span>
<span class="gh">Settings</span>
<span class="gh">========</span>
<span class="cp">...</span>
<span class="p">..</span> <span class="nt">_available-settings:</span>
<span class="gh">Available settings</span>
<span class="gh">==================</span>
<span class="cp">...</span>
<span class="p">..</span> <span class="nt">_deprecated-settings:</span>
<span class="gh">Deprecated settings</span>
<span class="gh">===================</span>
<span class="cp">...</span>
</pre></div>
</div>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Next, the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">topics/settings.txt</span></tt> document could contain something like
this:</p>
<div class="highlight-rst"><div class="highlight"><pre>You can access a :ref:`listing of all available settings
<span class="nt"><available-settings></span>`. For a list of deprecated settings see
<span class="na">:ref:</span><span class="nv">`deprecated-settings`</span>.
You can find both in the :doc:`settings reference document
<span class="nt"></ref/settings></span>`.
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>We use the Sphinx <tt class="xref rst rst-role docutils literal"><span class="pre">doc</span></tt> cross reference element when we want to
link to another document as a whole and the <tt class="xref rst rst-role docutils literal"><span class="pre">ref</span></tt> element when
we want to link to an arbitrary location in a document.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Next, notice how the settings are annotated:</p>
<div class="highlight-rst"><div class="highlight"><pre><span class="p">..</span> <span class="ow">setting</span><span class="p">::</span> ADMIN_FOR
<span class="gh">ADMIN_FOR</span>
<span class="gh">---------</span>
Default: <span class="s">``()``</span> (Empty tuple)
Used for admin-site settings modules, this should be a tuple of
settings modules (in the format <span class="s">``'foo.bar.baz'``</span>) for which this site
is an admin.
The admin site uses this in its automatically-introspected
documentation of models, views and template tags.
</pre></div>
</div>
<p>This marks up the following header as the “canonical” target for the
setting <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ADMIN_FOR</span></tt> This means any time I talk about <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">ADMIN_FOR</span></tt>,
I can reference it using <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:setting:`ADMIN_FOR`</span></tt>.</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>That’s basically how everything fits together.</p>
</div>
<div class="section" id="s-improving-the-documentation">
<span id="s-id6"></span><span id="improving-the-documentation"></span><span id="id6"></span><h2>Improving the documentation<a class="headerlink" href="#improving-the-documentation" title="Permalink to this headline">¶</a></h2>
<p>A few small improvements can be made to make the documentation read and
look better:</p>
<ul>
<li><p class="first">Most of the various <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">index.txt</span></tt> documents have <em>very</em> short or even
non-existent intro text. Each of those documents needs a good short
intro the content below that point.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">The glossary is very perfunctory. It needs to be filled out.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Add more metadata targets. Lots of places look like:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>``File.close()``
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</pre>
</div>
<p>... these should be:</p>
<div class="highlight-python"><pre>.. method:: File.close()</pre>
</div>
<p>That is, use metadata instead of titles.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Add more links – nearly everything that’s an inline code literal
right now can probably be turned into a xref.</p>
<p>See the <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">literals_to_xrefs.py</span></tt> file in <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">_ext</span></tt> – it’s a shell script
to help do this work.</p>
<p>This will probably be a continuing, never-ending project.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Add <a class="reference external" href="http://sphinx.pocoo.org/markup/desc.html#info-field-lists">info field lists</a> where appropriate.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Whenever possible, use links. So, use <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:setting:`ADMIN_FOR`</span></tt> instead
of <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">``ADMIN_FOR``</span></tt>.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Use directives where appropriate. Some directives
(e.g. <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">..</span> <span class="pre">setting::</span></tt>) are prefix-style directives; they go <em>before</em>
the unit they’re describing. These are known as “crossref” directives.
Others (e.g. <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">..</span> <span class="pre">class::</span></tt>) generate their own markup; these should go
inside the section they’re describing. These are called
“description units”.</p>
<p>You can tell which are which by looking at in
<tt class="file docutils literal"><span class="pre">_ext/djangodocs.py</span></tt>; it registers roles as one of the other.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">Add <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">..</span> <span class="pre">code-block::</span> <span class="pre"><lang></span></tt> to literal blocks so that they get
highlighted.</p>
</li>
<li><p class="first">When referring to classes/functions/modules, etc., you’ll want to use
the fully-qualified name of the target
(<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:class:`django.contrib.contenttypes.models.ContentType`</span></tt>).</p>
<p>Since this doesn’t look all that awesome in the output – it shows the
entire path to the object – you can prefix the target with a <tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">~</span></tt>
(that’s a tilde) to get just the “last bit” of that path. So
<tt class="docutils literal"><span class="pre">:class:`~django.contrib.contenttypes.models.ContentType`</span></tt> will just
display a link with the title “ContentType”.</p>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
</div>
</div>
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<h3><a href="../../contents.html">Table Of Contents</a></h3>
<ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#">Writing documentation</a><ul>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#getting-the-raw-documentation">Getting the raw documentation</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#getting-started-with-sphinx">Getting started with Sphinx</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#commonly-used-terms">Commonly used terms</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#django-specific-terminology">Django-specific terminology</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#guidelines-for-restructuredtext-files">Guidelines for reStructuredText files</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#django-specific-markup">Django-specific markup</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#documenting-new-features">Documenting new features</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#an-example">An example</a></li>
<li><a class="reference internal" href="#improving-the-documentation">Improving the documentation</a></li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>
<h3>Browse</h3>
<ul>
<li>Prev: <a href="writing-code/working-with-git.html">Working with Git and GitHub</a></li>
<li>Next: <a href="localizing.html">Localizing Django</a></li>
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