Typographical Guidelines

There are separate pages explaining Page Layout and syntax with example code.

Important

Adhering to these typographic guidelines will ensure that your documentation can be accurately and easily exported for translation purposes. Some guidelines may not be applicable for non-English languages. These should be noted on specific language pages, linked from Translation Workflow. If no such page exists for your language, please add one and make guidelines there.

Bold Text

Use bold text to highlight

• Window titles
• Common labels that are not user-configurable
• Icon captions
• Program names

For example:

• Highlighting a selection of text will copy it to Klipper.

Italic Text

Use italic text to emphasise

• Words or phrases as in general writing.
• Titles when referencing other works.
• The first use of an unfamiliar word.

Some examples:

• Save your work at this point.
• Details can be found in Samba 3 by Example....
• KDE Manuals are in Docbook format.

Tip

Programs are launched by users, components are used by programs

Combined Bold and Italic Text

Use this combination for replaceable or variable text.

Some examples:

• To connect to your remote server, type ssh username@domain.name in Konsole.
• In rpm-based distributions, the command rpm -q packagename will result in package-version-release.

Mono-spaced Text

Code should be presented in mono-spaced text, usually boxed, as shown below. Input text will be on a pale yellow background. For output text, the background colour will be violet-grey.

• Code, whether single lines or blocks, use templates to ensure consistency

• Use the Input template like this:

  {{Input|1=<nowiki>
  qdbus org.kde.NepomukServer /nepomukserver org.kde.NepomukServer.quit
  rm -r ~/.kde/share/apps/nepomuk
  rm -r ~/.kde4/share/apps/nepomuk
  nepomukserver</nowiki>}}

  This will display like this:

  qdbus org.kde.NepomukServer /nepomukserver org.kde.NepomukServer.quit
  rm -r ~/.kde/share/apps/nepomuk
  rm -r ~/.kde4/share/apps/nepomuk
  nepomukserver

• Output works the same way:

  {{Output|1=<nowiki>terminal output 
  is also shown as code, 
  but on a grey background</nowiki>}}

  which displays as

  terminal output 
  is also shown as code, 
  but on a grey background

Note

Note the use of 1=<nowiki> some text </nowiki>. Occationally, parts of literal displays may confuse the wiki parser. The <nowiki>...</nowiki> block protects against that. Also if something like n= appears in the literal body, the template parser may get confused. The initial 1= protects against that. Otherwise this markup has no effect. In short: it can't hurt, and it protects against the possibility of some nasty side effects.

• Starting an Input or Output template on a new line will break the display format if it is within lists. Simply continue on the same line if you need to correct this.

• You can also combine input/output areas with GeSHi syntaxhiglighting. An input area like this

  {{Input|<syntaxhighlight lang="php" line>
  # Initialise common code
  $preIP = dirname( __FILE__ );
  require_once( "$preIP/includes/WebStart.php" );
  </syntaxhighlight>}}

  will result in

  # Initialise common code
  $preIP = dirname( __FILE__ );
  require_once( "$preIP/includes/WebStart.php" );
  

• Single code words can be kept in-line by using

  <code></code>

  It will display like this. Note, that if the <code> tag is immediately preceded by a newline character, it will not display properly.

• File names and paths should use the Path template (see below).

Warning

In-line code markup should be short! It looks strange - and ugly - if a string of code words is split between lines. And remember: even if it looks good in your browser, not everyone uses the same screen size! And even if your text looks good on all screen sizes translations may still suffer. It is best to use the Input template for code unless it is really short.

Note

Please avoid using shell commands or other code words as verbs. This does not translate well. Always treat code words as proper names.

Block Quotes

The tags <blockquote> and </blockquote> should be used when quoting other works or other pages. This produces a proportional italic font, with some padding.

Here is an example of the display that you get by using the blockquote tags.

Text in Section Headers

Even though the criteria above may be met, do not use Bold text in section headers or in links.

Text in Information, Note, Tip or Warning Templates

Bold text should be avoided in the text within these templates. Italic text for emphasis may still be used - use sparingly for maximum effect.

Lists

You can have various kinds of lists in your pages — bulleted, numbered or itemized. Find details on the Toolbox page.

Keeping things together

After your text is written some markup is automatically added by the translation system. This means that whenever it sees a blank line, it starts a new unit. When your text is presented to translators, they typically see it one unit at a time, so it is important not to leave a blank lines in the middle of something that should be treated as a unit. Normally an entire paragraph should be kept in a single unit; and under no circumstance should a sentence be split between units!

If you need a linebreak in the middle of a section, the preferred way to achieve this without breaking units is to use <br /> at the end of the line where you want to break to occur (not on a new line). If you need space between the lines add <br /><br />.

Unbalanced brackets

The translation system marks any translated unit as incompletely translated if it contains any kind of unbalanced brackets. If you need to have unbalanced brackets in your text, please add a balancing bracket in a comment tag, like this:

<!-- }} -->{{ A line 

Another line}}<!-- {{ -->

This goes for all kinds of brackets, even ordinary parentheses. (Of course it is normally better to avoid blank lines within a mark up unit - see Keeping things together.)

Special Tags

Key presses and menu selections

• <keycap> and </keycap> denote (keyboard) key names e.g. Enter
• <keycap></keycap> can also be used around groups of keys to be used concurrently, e.g. Ctrl + Alt + F1 to launch a virtual terminal. (Note that "(space)+(space)" is used to link keys to be pressed concurrently).
• Sequences of menu choices should use <menuchoice> and </menuchoice> for example View -> Message List -> Aggregation -> Standard Mailing List
• In general, if the user needs to choose an element, even if it is not in a menu, the <menuchoice></menuchoiсe> markup should be used.
• If you are contributing to a manual page, you should always use the markup describes above. For other pages, though, there is a template to enter menu selections: {{Menu|Top|sub|...}}. Fx, {{Menu | View | Message List | Aggregation | Standard Mailing List}} yields View → Message List → Aggregation → Standard Mailing List
• If you want to use the <menuchoice> but use → in stead of ->, you write & rarr; (without a space between '&' and r!) as in <menuchoice> View</menuchoice> & rarr; <menuchoice>Message List</menuchoice> which yields View → Message List. (Note, that the → character has to be outside of the menuchoice tags to be shown properly

Files and file paths

Traditionally, file names and paths have been marked up between <tt>...</tt> tags.

<tt>~/.kde/share</tt>

yields

~/.kde/share

There is now also a template for this, which should be preferred in new content for ordinary UserBase pages (but not for manual pages, please!):

{{Path | ~/.kde/share }}

yields

 ~/.kde/share 

The Problematic Pipe

In some situations the pipe symbol can't be used - for instance when adding parameters into a template. In any such case, please use {{!}} which will display as a pipe symbol. For example, if you want to display a command line containing the pipe character using the {{Input|...}} template, the simplest way to do it is this: {{Input|1=cmd1 {{!}} cmd2}} which displays

cmd1 | cmd2

If you just write {{Input|cmd1 | cmd2}} you get instead

cmd1 

the problem being, that cmd2 is seen as a second parameter to the template, which in this case is not used.

In many cases, you can also enclose the text containing the pipe character between <nowiki>... </nowiki> tags, like this {{Input|1=<nowiki>cmd1 | cmd2</nowiki>}}, which also displays

cmd1 | cmd2

Translatable Content

Everything that is translatable is contained within <translate> and </translate> tags. In most cases any images should be contained within the translatable section, as it is sometimes necessary to use localised versions of the images to explain a point. The rule of thumb is "If in doubt, include it!".