Stellar Docs

This repository is home to the Stellar documentation. These docs feed into the Stellar developers site builder and is on display at stellar.org/developers.

How to write docs

There are a few conventions when writing docs that go into the Stellar Developers site. Most the docs are written in markdown format. For an introduction of what Markdown is, take a look at Github's Mastering Markdown Guide.

Headers

Lines that start with a hash tag (#) are considered headers. Below is an example of a few and the name of the header:

# h1
## h2
### h3
#### h4

• DO NOT use h1 since that is reserved for the page title generated from front matter.
• DO NOT skip a header size (don't go from h2 to h4).
• DO use smaller headers (more hash tags) to represent that a section is nested under a parent one with a larger header.
• DO add a space after the hash tags. Some markdown parsers will not render the text as a header without the space.

Front matter

At the top of most documents are something called "front matter". This is metadata for the file written in YAML format.

Here is an example of front matter in action:

---
title: Horizon Reference
---

The currently used keys in the front matter are:

• title

Document title

Do not start a page with a markdown header (# Title). Instead, leave it in the front matter. The developers site will take the title from the front matter.

Links

Use inline links and not reference links.

There are three different kind of links, and each different kind of link has a significant meaning. Some of these links are transformed in the generation of the developers site.

link type	where to use	markdown link example	resulting link (after dev portal processing)
Relative	links within same repository	../reference/accounts-all.md	../reference/accounts-all.html
Root relative	when you want to use the github file viewer (like for source files)	/src/ledger/AccountFrame.cpp	https://github.com/stellar/CURRENT-REPOSITORY/tree/master/src
Absolute links	cross repository links (should link to the dev portal at www.stellar.org/developers/) links to external sites (like https://www.google.com/)	https://www.stellar.org/developers/js-stellar-base/learn/building-transactions.html	https://www.stellar.org/developers/js-stellar-base/learn/building-transactions.html

Non-markdown files

Sometimes we want to include other types of content such as .pdf's. To add front matter to the pdf, create a sibling file with the pdf file name and an added extension of .metadata. This file can then define metadata for the title of the .pdf.

An example can be seen in stellar-core's software folder.

Contributing

Your contributions to the Stellar network will help improve the world’s financial infrastructure, faster.

We want to make it as easy as possible to contribute changes that help the Stellar network grow and thrive. There are a few guidelines that we ask contributors to follow so that we can merge your changes quickly. Please read our Contribution Guide and sign our Contributor License Agreement.