How to build the Ghostscript documentation
==========================================


Welcome to the Ghostscript documentation. This documentation relies on Sphinx (https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/) to publish HTML & PDF docs from markdown files written with restructured text / RST (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ReStructuredText).


Installing Sphinx & dependencies
--------------------------------

1. You should follow the instructions on the Sphinx website to install Sphinx on your system.

2. Ensure you have Latex (https://www.latex-project.org/get/) installed

	This ensures that you can build a PDF of the documentation.

3. The Sphinx documentation files also rely on the "readthedocs" theme to be installed, follow the instructions here: https://sphinx-rtd-theme.readthedocs.io/en/stable/installing.html

4. Once you have installed the "readthedocs" theme, depending on your OS, it will also have installed a `docutils` (http://docutils.sourceforge.net/) Python package.

   This should be okay, however if you have issues with building docs for PDF ensure that the `docutils` version works for you.

   To see what version you have do:

   python3 -m pip show docutils

   On Windows the required version was 0.18.1 to build PDF docs (pip install docutils=0.18.1), however on other systems lower versions were fine.



Editing the documentation
-------------------------

Within this `src` folder update the associated `.rst` files which are in restructured text format. These files represent the corresponding document pages.


Some notes on syntax
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

- Use ``for inline code`` or ``computer/technical terminology``

- Use tab indented code for code blocks with, e.g. .. code-block:: bash

- For device names use :title:`deviceName` , e.g. :title:`pdfwrite`

- For headers underline text with ==== for h1 level, ---- for h2, ~~~~ for h3 & """" for h4


For full details on RST syntax, see: https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/restructuredtext/



Building HTML documentation
---------------------------

From the `doc` location run:


sphinx-build -b html src build


This then creates the HTML documentation within `doc/build` for your review, you can then run `build/index.html` to check out the results.


Building PDF documentation
--------------------------

Ensure that `pdflatex` is on your PATH, test with:

pdflatex --help


Then create the latex build from the `doc` location:

sphinx-build -b latex src build/latex


Once done do:

cd build/latex
make


If there any warnings then hit return to pass through them to continue building ( also decide if you need to fix them or not ).

Now you should have Ghostscript.pdf ready within `build/latex`.

Move the Ghostscript.pdf file into the root of "doc" and replace the existing PDF as required.


Updating the documentation
--------------------------

- Make your edits as required in the relevant RST files ( see above: Editing the documentation )

- Test locally by building and running in local browser ( see above "Building HTML documentation" )

- Ensure to update the version of Ghostscript cited in `conf.py` line 52 ( e.g. release = "10.0.0" )

- Ensure that News.htm reflects the latest release and had any further "news"

- Once changes are pushed to golden master then readthedocs.io should pick up the changes, build & deploy the docs!

- Visit ghostscript.readthedocs.io once built and deployed to check



---


For more see: Using Sphinx (https://www.sphinx-doc.org/en/master/usage/index.html)