Open Dental Software - Prototype

Introductory Sentence

This optional sentence comes first on the page. It is nearly always omitted on pages in the Setup section of the manual, because those pages are self-explanatory. If this page is for a special audience, this is the place to state it. The intro sentence should not contain links, because those would confuse the reader about whether it was an uplink or not. Any necessary links would belong in the longer intro below the screenshot.

Uplink

Every page requires an uplink to its parent. All approved patterns are listed in Uplinks.

Screenshot

After the uplink, it is strongly recommended, if at all possible, to show a screenshot representing this topic. There is almost always one single manual page matching up with each single window in the UI. This one-to-one relationship guides the decision on when to create new manual pages and how to name them.

Within the page, there should be outgoing Links and Redirects to each child page. There should also be cross Links to any far-flung related pages.

Programming

All requests and current jobs for the manual and website are tracked on a dedicated page. See Programming

Special XML Characters

There are only three characters that need special treatment in the xml:

< must be written in xml as < (less than)
must be written in xml as > (greater than)
& must be written in xml as & (ampersand)

Extended characters cannot be expected to work. This includes ellipsis and smart/curvy quotes. If apostrophes or quotes are causing a problem in a document, erase the character and type in a replacement from your keyboard.

Whitespace elements like carriage returns, tabs, and spaces are meaningless in xml. They are used by us to format the layout to make it more readable. For consistency, the Manual Publisher always adjusts whitespace upon saving.

xref

The xref (cross reference) element links to another page or website.

Internal links to other manual xml pages can be written with or without the text display element:

Simple empty element uses Nav Title from target page for display: Payment
Text element can be included when small changes are needed in the display text for sentence flow:

Allocate Unearned Income test Allocate Unearned Income test

External links refer to truly external links, as well as to links to other pages on our website that are not xml manual pages. They should all be fully valid URLs, including the leading http:

To launch target in new tab or window, include target="_blank".

p, br, sp

The most common element is a p (paragraph). Our css creates some whitespace after each p to visually separate the paragraphs. If you would like to start a new line without the whitespace, then use an empty br (break) tag at the end, like this:

Then type some more, still within the same paragraph. Br is also used to drop an image to the next line without adding whitespace. But this is rare, since images are usually between paragraphs and whitespace is desirable.

The tag gives you the ability to force a space to remain.

Here are examples of a series of forced spaces in the middle of a sentence,

and a forced space between two elements: uicontrol italics (because Microsoft removes it for some reason).

image

Images are usually placed between paragraphs, like this:

Paragraph after the image.

Images can also be within the paragraph, and dropped to the next line with a br, like this:

Continuation of same paragraph. Both of the above approaches should look identical to the reader.

Also, small images can be inline with a sentence like this. Images normally have 10 pixels of whitespace at the bottom, so an inline image needs to be set to zero pixels like this:

Lists

The following tags are used to create lists:

1. - (list item) elements are the items within ol or ul elements.
  The use of lists should be a bit restrained. Try p and/or br tags, instead. An ordered list would not typically be used to organize a large section because it shifts everything to the right, makes the xml harder to read, doesn't leave space between list items, doesn't support sub-paragraphs, and adds complexity. Sometimes, you might use a list for a large section that is an actual sequence of steps. The uplink would not be included in the list.
  
  White space rules:
  - Our css does not add any white space above or below a list.
  - For a short list, white space can instead be created by surrounding with
    tags.
  - For a long list where it's too confusing, a simple
    tag at the end solves the spacing.
  - These example lists all happen to use p elements because they are short, but a
    is fine, too.
  Here is an example of a series of forced spaces in the middle of a sentence,
  
  and a forced space between two elements: uicontrol italics (because Microsoft removes it for some reason).
  
  Tables
  
  Simple table:
  
  We use simpletable which looks like this
  
  1 A
  
  2 B
  
  3 C
  
  To edit an existing table in the XML, ensure that no error messages are displaying and simply double-click anywhere inside the table while in the edit page window. Tables do not need to have headers. If a table does have headers, then the headers will always be bold and centered.
  
  Help
  
  Let's hold off on this for now. We might do it differently.
  
  The help tag behaves just like a p tag, but it also allows our tools to extract the text and display it to users in OD. Within the help tag, there should be a uicontrol tag followed by some text. Lists are ok within help tags. Nested p tags should not exist; use br tags instead.
  
  Red text
  
  In an emergency, red text can be put on a page like this. But this is only a temporary solution, and should not be used without asking Jordan. It only works within a single paragraph.
  
  Some text in this sentence is in red, but not all of it.
  
  Some text in this sentence is in red, but not all of it.
  
  Some text in this sentence is in red and bold, but not all of it.

We use simpletable	which looks like this
1	A
2	B
3	C