This section describes how to contribute documentation to the project. It also describes the formatting conventions that are used by the pages in the ONOS documentation set.


Overview

The ONOS documentation set contains the following major items:

There are more sections, but the above set are the sections that a contributors are usually interested in. Except for the use cases, which are maintained by the members of the use cases, most everything else is contributed by the general ONOS community.

Where should <TOPIC> go?

Often, someone has something that they would like to write about, but isn't sure about where to add their topic(s). The following rules can be followed to get an idea about where to place a certain item:

Communication channels

Have questions or want to talk with us about docs?  Join us on one of these channels:

Procedure

Like everything else for the project, prominent documentation-related tasks are tracked on the ONOS Project JIRA in the Documentation epic. Anyone interested in contributing should register for an account for the project Wiki and JIRA. To register, go here and follow the 'Join ONOS' button.

Working on existing tasks

A potential contributor should take ownership of a ticket if they see a task that they're interested in. A current maintainer will review the changes, and provide feedback if needed.  Find a list of documentation tasks that need someone to drive on Jira (and once one of these documentation tasks is done, we're happy to thank you with some ONOS swag).

Adding new content

A contributor interested in adding new content (tutorials, sections in the guides, etc.) should check if a JIRA ticket exists for the task in mind. If not, they should create a new ticket for the task, and take ownership of it. Messages should be sent to onos-discuss:

There may be several feedback cycles before the new pages are formally linked into the tutorials page or the documentation set.

Formatting Conventions

The ONOS Guides and tutorials are written using the Confluence Wiki markup interface. In order to lower the curve required to add or edit information, and to introduce consistency, the Guides avoid the usage of raw HTML and Wiki Notation (the exceptions being some of the Appendix pages), instead relying on formatting and macros provided by the default Confluence interface.

Several conventions are used within the documents, and any new material should conform to them to keep a uniform look. 

For an introduction to the basics of editing the wiki, refer to Getting Started with Wiki Contents.

For a sample template page implementing the conventions described here, refer to Sample Document Template.

Section Headings

Each section in a page should have a terse title in one of the Heading levels under the Paragraph dropdown. The convention for (sub)section headings are:

To apply a heading format, simply place the cursor on a line, and select the heading from the dropdown.

Table of Contents (TOC)

Code blocks

Code blocks are used instead of inlined monotype for multi-word/line commands and sample shell/CLI output. Code blocks may be added by:

  1. Navigating to Insert >  Other Macros
  2. Choosing Code Block from the "Select Macro" popup window

This brings up the prompt for configuring the code block. If copying terminal output, syntax highlighting should be turned off by selecting "Plain Text" in the Syntax Highlighting option before hitting "Create". Otherwise, select the appropriate language scheme.

Links 

It is good to link to the appropriate pages/sections whenever they are mentioned. 

Whenever a new page is added to a Guide, corresponding links should also be added to the top-level TOC.

Diagrams and Figures

These are usually in PNG format, though others are acceptable. To add a figure, select Insert > Image > Upload images and browse to the image to add.  

A figure's size is also usually adjusted to about 650px wide by entering a custom size:


Tables

The default tables available from the GUI have borders. If borders are not wanted, or more than 20 rows are needed, consider using a combination of the Section and Column macros.

To access these macros, select Insert > Other Macros  and search for "Section".

The above will appear as an line of text across three invisible columns:

The leftmost column

 Middle column

Rightmost column

Page Naming

Choose a name that describes the contents. Some special characters, such as '/' should be avoided, as this can have unexpected results e.g. unresolved links. 

Content for Appendices

The Appendices of the ONOS Guides contain information that is fairly painful to collect and/or format by hand. A small set of scripts have been written that either generate content that can be pasted into the wiki markup dialogue, or scrape the source code for relevant information.

The markup dialogue is accessed from the Confluence editor with ctrl-shift-d. The dialogue box displayed in the editor is shown below:

 

More information about Confluence Markup can be found here.

 


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