mirror of https://github.com/GNOME/gimp.git
129 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
129 lines
4.7 KiB
Plaintext
Developers documentation using gtk-doc
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--------------------------------------
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The goal is to provide useful source documentation. Right now this is
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limited to libgimp since that is the part that is used by third-party
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coders (plug-in developers). Other parts of the code may follow later,
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but not before libgimp is properly documented.
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Principle
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---------
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The documentation is extracted out of the source using gtk-doc (see
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http://www.gtk.org/gtk-doc/). We use a combination of comment blocks
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embedded into the source and additional information added manually
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into SGML template files.
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Requirements
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------------
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GIMP release tarballs contain a complete set of precompiled HTML files
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as well as DocBook XML files to create other formats. You only need
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gtk-doc if you want to work on the documentation itself. In that case
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you will need the following utilities:
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Perl v5 - Most of the scripts used are written in Perl.
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libxslt & libxml2 (version >= 2.3.6)
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This is used to convert the XML templates to HTML.
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http://xmlsoft.org/
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DocBook XML DTD v4.1.2
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http://www.docbook.org/
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gtk-doc (version >= 1.0)
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This package automatically generates DocBook documentation from
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source and is able to convert it into HTML (and other formats).
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ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk-doc/
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You need to have all this properly setup. This includes the
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availability of an XML catalog (/etc/xml/catalog) that tells the
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XSLT processor where to look for locally installed DTDs. If that
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file is missing, the XSLT processor will try to access the DTDs
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online which will either fail or take forever. For this reason,
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the docs are not built by default. If you think you have a working
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setup, pass '--enable-gtk-doc' to configure.
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How it works
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------------
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The following lines will only give you hints about how our system
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works. You should have understood the principles of gtk-doc before you
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touch it.
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The system is already set up, so unless there are substantial changes
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to the source e.g. new files were added, functions were added, renamed
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or removed or parameters changed, there is no need to touch the
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Makefile or any other files in the toplevel directory.
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In most cases you will work on the documentation by adding or editing
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comment blocks in the C source and by editing the template XML files
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in the tmpl directory.
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After you've done any changes to the documentation, running 'make'
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should rebuild the documentation. This will however only work if
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configure was called with the option '--enable-gtk-doc' and gtk-doc
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was successfully found. If everything was set up correctly, running
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'make' should do the trick and generate the XML and HTML files for
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you. Since the dependencies are not perfect, you sometimes need to
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call 'make clean; make' to force regeneration.
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How to write proper gtk-doc comments
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------------------------------------
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Here are some hints on writing proper gtk-doc comments. They are based
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on the gtk-doc documentation which comes with the gtk-doc source tree:
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These are the comment blocks used in GIMP source files to document
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functions (and macros, signals and properties, if you want).
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/**
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* function_name:
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* @par1: description of parameter 1. These can extend over more than
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* one line.
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* @par2: description of parameter 2
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*
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* The function description goes here. You can use @par1 to refer to
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* parameters so that they are highlighted in the output. You can also
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* use %constant for constants, function_name2() for functions and
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* #GtkWidget for links to other declarations (which may be documented
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* elsewhere).
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*
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* Returns: an integer.
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**/
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The block starts with '/**'.
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Each line starts with ' * '.
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The second line is the function name, followed by a ':'. In order to
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document signals in inline comments, use a name of the form
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class::signal, e.g. GtkWidget::notify-child. For properties, use a
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name of the form class:property, e.g. GtkAlignment:top-padding. Note
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that gtk-doc expects the signal and property names to be spelled with
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hyphens, not underlines.
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Following the function name are the parameters, e.g. '@par1:' above.
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A blank line MUST be used to separate parameter descriptions from the
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main description (otherwise it is assumed to be a continuation of the
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parameter description.)
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After the main description is a 'Return value:' line to describe the
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returned value of the function (if it is not void).
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More information
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----------------
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Using the system as described above, you can write documentation
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without any knowledge of DocBook XML, but when editing the templates
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you will sometimes want to do a little extra structuring or
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markup. The best source for information about DocBook seems to be
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"DocBook: The Definitive Guide" which is available online at
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http://www.docbook.org/tdg/html/.
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