Documentation/Rules for writing Help pages contents

Introduction
These rules are meant to help content creators and editors of the help files contents. They have been written by the past and then lost, but have been followed anyway by writers. Now that we have more contributors, it's time to have them set again in the wiki to preserve the consistency of the whole content. Be aware that when you introduce a change in the original content in English, it will be reflected in all the languages LibreOffice is translated on, so be cautious when you take the decision to modify the content.

Help XML (XHP) Reference
The complete list of XHP tags is described in details in this page.

Checking XML consistency
XHP files will be verified for compliance to the DTD by gerrit before merging and at build time. Therefore you must ensure that your changes in the XHP files are good for building the Help contents. The DTD file is located in helpcontent2/helpers/xmlhelp.dtd To verify the DTD conformance of your XHP editings in the file source/text/module/myfile.xhp, issue cd helpcontent2/ xmllint --dtdvalid helpers/xmlhelp.dtd source/text/module/myfile.xhp If all is OK, the xmllint command will print the XHP file in the terminal with no error, otherwise it will stop complaining either malformed XML - for example a tag not closed - or a DTD violation - for example, a XHP tag located where it should not be.

Formatting

 * Keyboard Shortcuts:
 * First letter of the shortcut key is capitalized: Ctrl
 * There is no space between key combinations: Ctrl+Shift+O


 * Paragraphs:
 * Do not add  to break a sentence (length is language dependent) instead add a new paragraph.

New XML tags
Since the patch [63954] was merged, the following tags can now be used as replacement some XHP tags

Tips for XML Tags

 * bookmark_value: do not add space between elements separated by semicolon, this is only a mark to delimiter the index entries


 * On writing BASIC code, PYTHON code or Starmath code, please evaluate if the contents must be translated. If the contents does not need to be translated, please add attribute localize = "false" to the paragraph. Examples: