Introduction

The OpenCPN Manuals seen by the user is HTML produced from files which use the asciidoc markup. The git repository for the plugins manual framework is at https://github.com/opencpn-manuals/plugins

Each plugin manual is maintained in the source repository, by convention in a manual top-level directory. For example, the shipdriver manual is maintained in the manual directory in https://github.com/Rasbats/shipdriver_pi

When the overall plugins manual is generated it collects the different plugin manuals from their git repositories and generates a complete manual form these. This means that the responsibility for maintaining each plugin manual lies with the plugin developer.

The manual in the manual directory is using asciidoc to format the pages. Most manuals are just a single page named modules/ROOT/pages/index.adoc. An example is available https://github.com/Rasbats/shipdriver_pi/blob/master/manual/modules/ROOT/pages/index.adoc

The asciidoc files are easily edited with a text editor or something like VS Code. When edited they can be viewed with Firefox with the asciidoc extension. One can also do a local build and inspect the generated HTML

Formally, the plugin manual is an Antora page. While backwards- compatible with asciidoc Antora adds some additions on top of this syntax, notably links to other pages. However, these additions are usually not useful in a plugin manual (although they are heavily used in the overall manual framwork). If these additions are used, the best way to inspect the result is to make a local build.

Visit the Tools page for more details.

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