Each VIVO document consists of a large number of wiki pages. These pages must work well together, both on the wiki and when exported to a PDF file. Here are some suggestions to help that happen.

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Keep Pages to Manageable Size

Keep each page to a manageable size, and focused on a particular topic. If you find that the page is too complex or too diverse, break it into smaller pages. Within each group of pages, the parent should contain introductory material or an overview, while the child pages explore individual topics.

Use an Info block to indicate a page is draft

The Confluence info macro should be used to put an info block at the very top of your page while you are drafting.  Having a page in draft  in the wiki is good practice – others can begin to use the content and may be able to help you complete it.

Start with a Table of Contents

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When the document is exported to a PDF file, the "Table of Contents" macros are not included. Instead, the file begins with a table of contents for the full document.

Follow with an Excerpt

If a page has a parent, the parent will show the child's excerpt text in its "Children Display" macro.

Confluence will only show the first sentence of an excerpt, so the excerpt should ideally be a one-sentence summary of the page.

Starting a page with a summary can seem odd. Enclosing the excerpt in a panel sets it off nicely from the main body of the page.

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End with a Children Display macro

If a page has children, end the page with the "Children Display" macro. This will show the title of each child page, with its excerpt, and the next generation of pages as well. This combines with the excerpts on each page to provide easy navigation around the document.

Click on the "Children Display" macro to edit it, and set the options like this:

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The macro will appear like this in edit mode:

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And like this when the page is displayed.

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When the document is exported to a PDF file, the "Children Display" macros are not included.

Use all heading levels

Use all heading levels

The major headings on all pages should be Heading 1.  The second headings on all pages should be Heading 2.  Use the Heading styles only – do not format headings using bold, italics, etc.  When Sometimes it is tempting to use only level 1 headings and level 3 headings, for appearance. Try to avoid this. When the pages are combined into a PDF file, the heading levels will be restructured.displayed properly and numbered correctly in the table of contents and in the document.

Pagination in the PDF document is controlled by the PDF template, not by the author.  Use page titles and page headings consistently.  The resulting PDF document will then be consistentIn the PDF file, the title of each child page becomes a level 1 heading. So if the Table of Contents in the PDF file shows three level 1 headings, they may be three child pages, or three actual headings within a single page, or any combination.

Headings within the child pages are demoted accordingly, to keep the organization intact. So a level 2 heading in the Table of Contents might represent:

• a level 2 heading in the parent page,
• a level 1 heading in a chile child page,
• the title of a grandchild page.

Linking within the document

It's good to include links on the wiki pages, pointing to other areas of the document. However, these links will not be active in the PDF file. The text of the link should be sufficient to find its target.

Focus on the current version

The technical documentation is version specific.  The text you write should focus on the current version.  Historical notes regarding how things were done in earlier versions are mostly out of place in the technical documentation.  Pages introducing new features may have historical notes that indcate how things were done in previous versions.

Use Code Block Macros

Use a code block macro to represent code.  A title for the code block is optional.

Use monospace in sentences to represent code.

Be Careful with Links

Links in the technical documentation wiki need to be checked to make sure they are referring to other parts of the tech doc, or external sources.  Links to pages in the project wiki are “okay” but need to be done carefully -- such links are often red flags that the tech doc is drifting into content better suited for the project wiki.  Links to the archive should be avoided.  Content from the archive that is relevant for the current version should be copied into the documentation wiki.

End with a Children Display macro

The documentation wiki for VIVO includes a child display at the end of every page.  There is no need to include a children display macro explicitly.  It will be added for youWhen linking, don't link to a section number within the document. The section numbers are not available in the wiki pages, and a small change to the structure of the document could make the section numbers incorrect in the PDF.