What is the documentation builder?

Often, good documentation is what can make or break a product or service.

For developers, who have spent weeks, or more often than not months, working hard on something though it can be extremely tiresome and draining to organise said information, especially if you want it to be available in multiple formats!

Features:

• Outputs to MD, txt and HTML formats.
• Ability to include headings, subheadings, sections, lists, links and text
• Easy error correction.
• Turns the long process of documentation formatting into a breeze.
• The ability to go back and add extra information, then output it globally across all your formats.

How does it work?

The first thing you will want to do, and perhaps most obvious, is open up a new project from the main menu. This time though, you need to open it as a documentation project.

This being done you will be placed in the root.

The root is the top level of your document. you can organise your documentation into sections, or simply leave it as one large page.

What are sections?

Sections are exactly what they sound like.

They break down your documentation into smaller chunks.

Take this documentation for instance. This is the documentation builder section of the manual.

In that regard, when you create sections it tells the builder that those sections should be pages of their own if exported into HTML.

In text version, sections are denoted by two plus signs which allows for easy navigation.

Building it out

once you have your new project open in front of you, you now want to begin building it out with information.

In this regard there are a couple of things you can add.

• Headings: A heading is exactly what it sounds like! You can add a heading before your current position with
• Subheading: A subheading is much the same as a heading, but can be used to divide up bigger blocks of text. Add a subheading before your position with control s, and add it after your position with shift s.
• Link: A link can go to any other part of the documentation or even an external resource for credits. For more on links, see the subheading below. To add a link before your position press control L. To add a link after press Shift L.
• Plain text: This is just where you can write your paragraphs of text. Press control t to add the text before your current position and press shift t to add it after.
• Section: See the above explanation for what a section is. press control c to add a section before your current position. Press shift c to add one after.
• Separator: A separator is a line of dashes to divide up your document. press control y to add it before your position, and shift y to add it after.
• List: A list can be used to organise several items. You can add links or just plain text to lists. Press control i to add it before your position and shift i to add it after.

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More about links:

Links can go to three places:

1. External: this would be for instance, a website. Make sure when you paste this to include the http of your link. For instance: http://nathantech.net.

2. Other pages: These would be other pages of the project, such as the sections. for these, simply enter the name of the section followed by .html, for example: "program description.html".

3. Internal. If you wanted to make a link that would jump you to a certain heading, you could do this by entering a number sign in front of the ID. What is the ID I hear you ask? Notice how, in the builder, before each item there is a number in brackets, such as this?

(1) heading: Hello.

In this example, the ID is 1.

To link to this heading, you would type: #1

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Other keystrokes:

Find below the full keystroke list, not including those spoken of above.

• Control R: Rename an item:
• alt up; Shift an item up,
• Alt down: Shift an item down.
• return: Edit an item.
• Backspace: Go back a section.

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How do sections and links relate to each other?

If you wish to link to a section of your documentation you should assume that your section is a new HTML file. So if you had a section called "The Main Menu" then in the link target you should put: "The Main Menu.html".

The program will automatically adjust these to point to internal sections when it outputs to single html documents.

The menu.

Since 3.4, Sunrise has changed the button interface into a more menu based approach.
Access the menu by pressing your alt key.
There are two menus:
File: This contains functions to run the link checker, save, import a prewritten text files and close the builder.
Export: This allows you to export your project to the various formats the builder allows which are:

• single HTML file.
• Multiple HTML files.
• A plain text file.
• A markdown file.

Built with thanks using Sunrise Waterfall by Nathan Tech.