zulip/docs

Documentation

Zulip has three major documentation systems:

• Developer and sysadmin documentation: Documentation for people actually interacting with the Zulip codebase (either by developing it or installing it), and written in Markdown.

• Core website documentation: Complete webpages for complex topics, written in HTML, JavaScript, and CSS (using the Django templating system). These roughly correspond to the documentation someone might look at when deciding whether to use Zulip. We don't expect to ever have more than about 10 pages written using this system.

• General user documentation: Our scalable system for documenting Zulip's huge collection of specific features without a lot of overhead or duplicated code/syntax, written in Markdown. We expect to eventually have around 100 pages written using this system. The target audience for this system is individual Zulip users.

These three systems are documented in detail below.

Developer and sysadmin documentation

What you are reading right now is part of the collection of documentation targeted at developers and people running their own Zulip servers. These docs are written in Commonmark Markdown with a small bit of rST. We've chosen Markdown because it is easy to write. The source for Zulip's developer documentation is at docs/ in the Zulip git repository, and they are served in production at zulip.readthedocs.io.

If you want to build the developer documentation locally (e.g. to test your changes), the dependencies are automatically installed as part of Zulip development environment provisioning, and you can build the documentation using:

cd docs/
make html

and then opening file:///path/to/zulip/docs/_build/html/index.html in your browser (you can also use e.g. firefox docs/_build/html/index.html from the root of your Zulip checkout).

If you are adding a new page to the table of contents, you will want to modify docs/index.rst and run make clean before make html, so that other docs besides your new one also get the new entry in the table of contents.

You can also usually test your changes by pushing a branch to GitHub and looking at the content on the GitHub web UI, since GitHub renders Markdown, though that won't be as faithful as the make html approach.

When editing dependencies for the Zulip documentation, you should edit requirements/docs.txt (which is used by ReadTheDocs to build the Zulip developer documentation, without installing all of Zulip's dependencies).

Core website documentation

Zulip has around 10 HTML documentation pages under templates/zerver for specific major topics, like the features list, client apps, integrations, hotkeys, API bindings, etc. These documents often have somewhat complex HTML and JavaScript, without a great deal of common pattern between them other than inheriting from the portico.html template. We generally avoid adding new pages to this collection unless there's a good reason, but we don't intend to migrate them, either, since this system gives us the flexibility to express these important elements of the product clearly.

General user documentation

Our goal is for Zulip to have complete, high-quality user-facing documentation about how to use every feature and how to do common tasks (like setting up a new Zulip organization well). This system is designed to make writing and maintaining such documentation highly efficient.

The user documentation is available under /help/ on any Zulip server; (e.g. https://chat.zulip.org/help/ or http://localhost:9991/help/ in the Zulip development environment). The user documentation is not hosted on ReadTheDocs, since Zulip supports running a server completely disconnected from the Internet, and we'd like the documentation to be available in that environment.

The source for this user documentation is the Markdown files under templates/zerver/help/ in the main Zulip server repository. The file foo.md is automatically rendered by the render_markdown_path function in zerver/templatetags/app_filters.py when the user accesses a URL of the form /help/foo; with special cases for /help/ going to index.md and /help/unknown_article going to missing.md (with a 404 response). Images are usually linked from static/images/help/.

This means that you can contribute to the Zulip user documentation by just adding to or editing the collection of markdown files under templates/zerver/help. If you have the Zulip development environment setup, you simply need to reload your browser on http://localhost:9991/help/foo to see the latest version of foo.md rendered.

Since raw HTML is supported in Markdown, you can include arbitrary HTML in your documentation in order to do fancy things like highlighting an important aspect of your code. We'll likely add a library of common components over time, which will be documented below.

Supported features

• All the usual features of Markdown with raw HTML enabled so you can do custom things with HTML/CSS as needed. The goal is to make reusable markdown syntax for things we need often, though.
• Code blocks with syntax highlighting, similar to Zulip's own markdown.
• Anchor tags for linking to headers in other documents.
• You can create special highlight warning blocks using e.g.:

!!! warn "title of warning"
    Body of warning

to create a special warning block with title "title of warning" to highlight something important. The whitespace is important. Often, we just use "" as the title. !!! tip "title" is useful for less scary tips. See the python-markdown docs on this extension for details on how this extension works; essentially the value warn or tip is an extra CSS class added to the admonition.

Style guide

• Names of buttons, fields, etc. should be bolded (e.g. Settings page, Change Password button, Email field). No quotation marks should be used.

• All multi-step instructions should be formatted as a series of numbered steps. E.g.:

  1. Do something
  2. Do the next thing.
  

  Keep the steps simple — "do X, then Y, then Z" is three steps, not one.

• Images and additional notes or instructions are kept within a single step by indenting them.

• Keep in mind that the UI may change — don't describe it in more detail than is needed.

  • Never refer specifically to button colors.

• All icons should be referenced by their names and images within parentheses, e.g.: "between the A () and eye () icons"

• Guidelines for tips and warnings:

  • A tip is any suggestion for the user that is not part of the main set of instructions. E.g. it may address a common problem users may encounter while following the instructions, or point to an option for power users.
  • A warning is a note on what happens when there is some kind of problem. Tips are more common than warnings.
  • All tips/warnings should appear inside tip/warning blocks. They should not be included as part of the numbered instructions or displayed in plain paragraphs.
  • There should be only one tip/warning inside each block. It is perfectly fine to use multiple consecutive tip boxes.
  • Generally, no title for the tip/warning block is needed.
  • Example tip from the sign-in doc page:

    !!! tip ""
        If you've forgotten your password, see the
        [Change your password](/help/change-your-password) page for
        instructions on how to reset it.
    

  • Other examples of tips:
    • Your topic name can be no longer than 52 characters.
    • If you are unsure of the code for any particular emoji visit Emoji Cheat Sheet for a complete list.
  • Example warning:

    !!! warning ""
        If you attempt to input a nonexistent stream name, an error
        message will appear.
    

• Screenshot guidelines:

  • Only include a screenshot if it will help guide the user. E.g. include a screenshot if the user needs to find a button in the corner. Don't include a screenshot if the element the user needs to interact with is the only thing on the page. Using too many screenshots creates problems:

    • Maintenance: The screen shot has to be updated every time the UI is changed.
    • It makes the instructions look longer and therefore more complicated.

  • Never include the whole Zulip window in a screenshot. Focus on the relevant part of the app.

  • The screenshot should always come after the text that describes it, never before. E.g.:

    1. Click the Sign in with Google button located under the Login button and Forgot your password? link.

    

• Standard formulas for directing users to commonly used pages:

  • There is a macro for directing users to the Subscriptions page: {!subscriptions.md!}

  • The Go to the macro ({!go-to-the.md}) usually precedes the Settings and Administration macros. This macro transforms the following content into a step.

    • The Settings macro ({!settings.md!}) directs users to the Settings page. It is usually preceded by the Go to the macro and a link to a particular section in the Settings page.

    • The Administration macro ({!admin.md!}) directs users to the Administration page. It is usually preceded by the Go to the macro and a link to a particular section in the Administration page.

    • Example:

      {!go-to-the.md!} [Notifications](/#settings/notifications)
      {!settings.md!}
      

      renders as:

      1. Go to the [Notifications](/#settings/notifications) tab on the
      [Settings](/help/edit-settings) page.