README.md

Bonita BPM documentation resources

This repository contains the new Bonita BPM documentation site & tools.
It is using markdown to create documentation content.

Contribute

Syntax

Current conversion to html is done with markdown-it with the Github-flavored Markdown. Checkout the cheatsheet for more information.

Add images

.

So far, we don't use the caption, so we leave the square brackets empty.

Anchors

In the page to navigate to, add the following: <a id="section-Name" />

In the page to navigate from, use the following: [textToDescribeTheLink](pageName.md#section-Name)

Fontawesome

The markdown-it-fontawesome plugin has been activated and you can use fontawesome icon with their name surrounded by colon: :fa-flag: that will produce

<i class="fa fa-flag"></i>

Bootstrap Alert

In order to reproduce bootstrap alerts that were present in former documentation site, we introduced the markdown-it-alerts. It allows to recreate a div block with custom classes.

We added 5 types of container :

• danger
• warning
• info
• success

To use them create a block surrounded with 3 colons:

::: danger
Beware of this important thing !
:::

Decorate

if you want to decorate the md elements with html attributes like classes or title, we added the markdown-it-decorator to do so.
Using <!--{}--> pattern at the end of a block will convert the content of {} to html attributes. Use CSS notation to decorate with classes :

This is some text.
<!--{.center}-->

will be converted to

<p class='center'>This is some text.</p>

Smart arrows

We added the use of the markdown-it-smart-arrows plugin to convert arrows to html entities :

--> →
<-- ←
<--> ↔
==> ⇒
<== ⇐
<==> ⇔

Quick note on "howtos"

When you create howtos, make sure that:

• In the taxonomy, their titles start with verbs, so it finishes the sentence "how to...", like "Manage multiple references in Business Objects".
• In the file itself, the title includes the "how to" phrase, like "How to manage multiple references in Business Objects".
• You reference the how to page in other descriptive pages of the existing taxonomy, to optimize its discoverability.

Process

Build project

The project contains several task to generate the documentation

HTML

use npm run build to have the html files generated to build/html.
It reads the version to generate from the command line arguments via the -v option or if left blank, reading the varVersion attribute from the variables.json file.

Taxonomy

Once the html has been generated, the taxonomy json file can be generated from the build/html/taxonomy.html file.
use the npm run taxonomy to do so.

PDF

The PDF file gathering all the markdown content can be generated using the npm run pdf command.

Update existing file

In this case, a simple edit of the md file in the appropriate branch (one per version) is enough, the building process will do the rest.
For instance, to edit the actors.html page in the 7.3 version, checkout the versions/7.3 branch and edit the md/actors.md file.

Adding new pages

Select the version you want this page to be available in and create the md file in the appropriate folder.
Example: to add a new tutorial about the form control in the UI Designer in 7.3, checkout the version/7.3 and open the md folder.

You can check its content once committed in the github site (simple view) or using the web server (advanced view).

Currently, this page has no links that point to it, so would be able to find it unless you know the address.
You need to edit the taxonomy to be able to find it the taxonomy tree.

The taxonomy is created from the taxonomy.md file in each site version.
In our case, we also want to add a Howto section in the taxonomy tree, so we first create a new item inside the taxonomy.md. Then we create a entry point for our new tutorial inside the Howto section:

* [Howtos](howtos.md)
  * [Manage form control/validation](manage-control-in-forms.md)

Note: Each link must be relative to the versions it is into (for resources too).

We need to create the howtos.md to have the list of items of this section in a dedicated page:

* [Manage form control/validation](manage-control-in-forms.md)

Now, starting from the visualization of the taxonomy.md page, we can browse to the manage-control-in-forms.md page.

Resources (Images)

All images must be placed in the md/images folder, whatever the version is. It is due to the fact that the application site resolve images from the root folder.

Variables

During markdown to HTML conversion, some predefined variables located in the variables.json file are replaced.

Currently, only the varVersion exists and match the current documentation version.

Table of content

A table of content is automatically added on each page. It will be place right before the first h2 title.

Automatically generated ToC includes links to h2 and h3 titles.

Simple view

Using the Github Markdown Format format allows to check the documentation directly in the github repository.
So a simple way to contribute is to add/edit your content inside the md folder, commit and push it and see online via the github web site.

Advanced view

A more industrialized process is possible.
The project uses JavaScripts scripts to manage and deploy content.
Therefore, you must first install your favourite node version to be able to build the project (nvm is the best place to start).

Then run in the root folder:

npm install

Then run

npm run watch

A web server will be launched which convert the requested md file to the html version (currently without any style).
A livereload is also set up and allows any change to the md file to reload its html version in the browser.