Mapbender Documentation

This is the Mapbender documentation repository.

You can find the compiled pages of the latest released version at https://doc.mapbender.org/. Other versions of the documentation are also available at https://docs.mapbender.org/.

The sources are on Github.

The website code is generated using Sphinx, therefore the documentation source is written in Restructured Text.

To build the website locally, you need to install Sphinx first. Install it in Debian-based distributions via

sudo apt-get install sphinx-common python3-sphinx
sudo apt-get install pip3
sudo pip3 install sphinxcontrib-phpdomain
sudo pip3 install sphinx-rtd-theme
sudo pip install sphinx-notfound-page
sudo pip install sphinx_copybutton

You can then build the documentation by running:

make

How to build the documentation

cd /data
git clone git@github.com:mapbender/mapbender-documentation
cd mapbender-documentation
git checkout master

sphinx-build . _build -A version=3.3

ln -s /data/mapbender-documentation/_build/ /var/www/html/mb-doc

http://localhost/mb-doc/

If you want rebuild the documentation, delete the old version before
rm -rf _build

How to participate in the documentation

To participate in the documentation, create a fork and submit a pull request with your changes. In your fork, write new content, e.g.:

  cd /mapbender-documentation/en/elements/basic # Let's assume that you want to create a docs page that is part of the Mapbender CoreBundle. Switch to the folder where your file should be located.
  cp overview.rst basic/add_wms.rst  # Create a rst-file. E.g., copy the overview.rst as template for your add_wms.rst documentation file.
  # Write the documentation: keep it short and simple. Use the structure of the document.
  sphinx-build . _build -A version=3.3.0 # Build the documentation locally to see how your documentation looks like. Adjust the version number (if necessary).
  ln -s /data/mapbender-documentation/_build/ /var/www/html/mb-doc # Create a symlink from your Sphinx build folder to your Apache web server to test the documentation locally.

Now, take a look at the documentation page in your browser. Is everything ok? Are any changes needed? If not, you can create a pull request to add your reviewed changes into the documentation.

Rules

Below you'll find some basic conventions about documentation writing.

Crosslinks

Create crosslinks to refer to another documentation page with a label. Labels that refer to a page are always in the first line of the file. Feel free to add labels above headings, if you want to refer to these instead.

    .. _activity_indicator:

Add the crosslink to your documentation text section like this:

    After this text is a link to :ref:`activity_indicator`.

Note that German labels always use the _de suffix.

Images (figures)

Images for the documentation are located at mapbender-documentation/figures

• Create images with size 800 x 600px
• Have a look at quickstart.rst to learn about image referring
• For elements, use elementname.png and elementname_configuration.png as name. If you also provide german image files, please keep the names and create two more images in the de folder.

Languages

The two fully supported languages (i.e.: en - english, de - german) should have the same file structure, that is:

  /mapbender-documentation
    index.rst          # refers to the different languages
    /figures           # images that are included in the documentation
    /de                # German file locations
      ...
    /en                # English file locations
      index.rst        # refers to TheBook, Developer's Book & the Bundle Documentation
      bundles.rst      # lists the chapters of this category - refers to rst files
      development.rst  # lists the chapters of this category - refers to rst files
      /architecture
      /development
          ....
      /elements
          /backend
          /basic
          ....

Have fun!