- Created by Robert Reiner, last modified on 19. Apr 2019
projectdoc Toolbox
A description of a given topic. A topic may describing or explaining a concept, a task to accomplish or a reference. There are a couple of topic types that set the expectations for the reader. Instances of the topic doctype usually have independent lifetimes from any referencing documents.
- ID
topic- Suite
- Documentation Type
- Categories
- Tags
Description
A topic is a document that provides specific information. While topics share a basic structure, they are quite different in nature.
The topic type defines the type of content to be expected in the document. Typical topic types are
- tutorial
- howto
- article
Fragments, like examples, boxes, or other modular snippets designed for reuse are also topic documents.
Properties
The document type topic provides the following properties:
Please note that only information about specific properties is provided here. Common document property used by all document types are documented by Document Properties.
Level of Experience
Help for the reader to estimate, if her knowledge matches the required level of experience with the subject of this document.
Expected Duration
The duration expected by the author of the document, readers require to work through the topic document.
Type
The topic type of the document. This helps the user to estimate, which kind of information on the topic will be expected.
Sections
Description
The description section of a document informs about its content and intention. This is a descriptive abstract, similar to a table of contents, and a longer form of the Short Description document property.
The description helps potential readers to decide, whether or not relevant information can be found in the document.
Some document types may interpret this property different. A Glossary Item for instance, puts the definition of the term in the description section. A Role describes the role instead of describing what the intention of a particular role document instance is.
Since the location of this section typically makes the intention of the text obvious, the section title may be hidden. For more information please refer to No need to render the Section Title in Tips.
Summary
Summarize the key findings or essential information of the document. This is the informative abstract, while a Description contains the descriptive abstract.
The summary helps readers to get informed about the key points in a short section. It is also a tool to help readers of the document to recall the contents without scanning the whole document.
This section has formally been called 'Abstract', but has changed for 'Summary' to be used by different doctypes.
Prerequisites
Expected knowledge of the user or a list of documents suggested to be read before this one.
The title is not very inviting for readers. You may change the title to something like "Before you start" or "Check this out first", whatever best matches the tone your audience expects. To select this topic with transclusions you may still define an identifier of tag 'Prerequisites' in case you have to show topics for different audiences in an overview, using the Display Table Macro.
Subordinate Topics
A larger topic may be broken down into individual subtopics.
Other than Section documents, subtopics may have an independent lifespan and may recognized as relevant standing on their own. If the subtopics do not satisfy this requirement, you may choose to break the topics into sections instead of subtopics.
Notes
These are internal notes that are usually not exported and only visible to team members with write access.
But this is not a safe place to store sensible information. It is just a convenience for the reader to not be bothered with notes stored here for the authors for later use. The security level is about suppressing the representation by a CSS style. Therefore consider this as a convenience for the reader, not as a security tool.
The text of notes sections is also indexed.
References
For a document the references section contains pointers to resources that prove the statements of the document.
Often these proofs are not easily distinguishable from further information. In this case you may want to skip the reference section in favour for the resource list.
For further information please refer to References and Resources.
Resources
The resources section provides references to further information to the topic of the document.
This may be information on the internet provided by the resource or information in the team's information systems. Anything the reader of the resource might want to know, may be listed here.
For further information please refer to References and Resources.
Related Doctypes
Tours
Tours are used to aggregate other document instances, especially topics. They are of a means to take an alternative walk through the documentation.
Section
Sections do not stand for their own. That is, if the parent document is removed, section documents are also removed (or their information is moved to other documents where the fit better according to recent understanding).
Module
Modules help to create modular content for single sourcing. These modules are transcluded by topics (and instances of other document types).
