.. _documentation-guidelines: ===================== Writing Documentation ===================== High-quality, consistent documentation for astronomy code is one of the major goals of the Astropy project. Hence, we describe our documentation procedures and rules here. For the astropy core project we try to keep to these as closely as possible, while the standards for affiliated packages are somewhat looser. (These procedures and guidelines are still recommended for affiliated packages, as they encourage useful documentation, a characteristic often lacking in professional astronomy software.) Building the Documentation from source -------------------------------------- For information about building the documentation from source, see the :ref:`builddocs` section in the installation instructions. Astropy Documentation Rules and Guidelines ------------------------------------------ This section describes the standards for documentation format affiliated packages that must follow for consideration of integration into the core module, as well as the standard Astropy docstring format. * All documentation should be written use the Sphinx documentation tool. * The template package will provide a recommended general structure for documentation. * Docstrings must be provided for all public classes, methods, and functions. * Docstrings will be incorporated into the documentation using a version of numpydoc included with Astropy, and should follow the :doc:`docrules`. * Examples and/or tutorials are strongly encouraged for typical use-cases of a particular module or class. * Any external package dependencies aside from NumPy_, SciPy_, or Matplotlib_ must be explicitly mentioned in the documentation. * Configuration options using the :mod:`astropy.config` mechanisms must be explicitly mentioned in the documentation. The details of the docstring format are described on a separate page: .. toctree:: docrules Sphinx Documentation Themes --------------------------- A custom Sphinx HTML theme is included in the `astropy-helpers`_ package (it is also included in Astropy's source package, but this will be removed after v0.4 and subsequently only be available through astropy-helpers). This allows the theme to be used by both Astropy and affiliated packages. This is done by setting the theme in the global Astropy sphinx configuration, which is imported in the sphinx configuration of both Astropy and affiliated packages. Using a different theme for ``astropy`` or affiliated packages ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ A different theme can be used by overriding a few sphinx configuration variables set in the global configuration. * To use a different theme, set ``'html_theme'`` to the name of a desired builtin Sphinx theme or a custom theme in ``package-name/docs/conf.py`` (where ``'package-name'`` is "astropy" or the name of the affiliated package). * To use a custom theme, additionally: place the theme in ``package-name/docs/_themes`` and add ``'_themes'`` to the ``'html_theme_path'`` variable. See the Sphinx_ documentation for more details on theming. Adding more custom themes to astropy ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ Additional custom themes can be included in the astropy source tree by placing them in the directory ``astropy/astropy/sphinx/themes``, and editing ``astropy/astropy/sphinx/setup_package.py`` to include the theme (so that it is installed). Sphinx extensions ----------------- Astropy-helpers includes a number of sphinx extensions that are used in Astropy and its affiliated packages to facilitate easily documenting code in a homogeneous and readable way. .. note:: These extensions are also included with Astropy itself in v0.4 and below, to facilitate backwards-compatibility for existing affiliated packages. The versions actually in astropy will not receive further updates, however, and will likely be removed in a future version. So we strongly recommend using the astropy-helper versions instead. automodapi Extension ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ .. automodule:: astropy_helpers.sphinx.ext.automodapi automodsumm Extension ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ .. automodule:: astropy_helpers.sphinx.ext.automodsumm edit_on_github Extension ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ .. automodule:: astropy_helpers.sphinx.ext.edit_on_github numpydoc Extension ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ This extension (and some related extensions) are a port of the `numpydoc `_ extension written by the NumPy_ and SciPy_, projects, with some tweaks for Astropy. Its main purposes is to reprocess docstrings from code into a form sphinx understands. Generally, there's no need to interact with it directly, as docstrings following the :doc:`docrules` will be processed automatically. Other Extensions ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ``astropy_helpers.sphinx.ext`` includes a few other extensions that are primarily helpers for the other extensions or workarounds for undesired behavior. Their APIs are not included here because we may change them in the future. .. _NumPy: http://numpy.scipy.org/ .. _numpydoc: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/numpydoc/0.3.1 .. _Matplotlib: http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/ .. _SciPy: http://www.scipy.org .. _Sphinx: http://sphinx.pocoo.org .. _astropy-helpers: https://github.com/astropy/astropy-helpers