Configuration of the rendering - guides.xml

This XML file contains meta information and configuration used during rendering of a manual.

Example:
Documentation/guides.xml 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<guides xmlns="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides ../vendor/phpdocumentor/guides-cli/resources/schema/guides.xsd"
        links-are-relative="true"
        default-code-language="php"
>
    <extension class="\T3Docs\Typo3DocsTheme\DependencyInjection\Typo3DocsThemeExtension"
               project-home="https://extensions.typo3.org/extension/news/"
               project-contact="https://typo3.slack.com/archives/C03TG7QJT"
               project-repository="https://github.com/georgringer/news"
               project-issues="https://github.com/georgringer/news/issues"
               edit-on-github-branch="main"
               edit-on-github="georgringer/news"
               typo3-core-preferred="11.5"
               interlink-shortcode="georgringer/news"
    />
    <project title="News system" release="main (development)" version="main (development)"
             copyright="since 2010 by Georg Ringer &amp; Contributors"/>
    <inventory id="t3extbasebook" url="https://docs.typo3.org/m/typo3/book-extbasefluid/10.4/en-us/"/>
</guides>
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Table of Contents:

The <guides> tag

The <guides> tag is the root tag of the Documentation/guides.xml. It is used for general configuration during parsing and rendering.

The following settings can be relevant for TYPO3 themed documentation:

default-code-language

default-code-language
Type
string

Can be used to set the code-language that should be used for code-blocks if no language is set.

We advice to set the language to be used in each code-block however.

Example: Use typoscript as default language for code-blocks

EXT:my_extension/Documentation/guides.xml (excerpt) 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<guides xmlns="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides ../vendor/phpdocumentor/guides-cli/resources/schema/guides.xsd"
        default-code-language="typoscript"
>
    <!-- [...] -->
</guides>
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max-menu-depth

max-menu-depth
Type
integer
Default
PHP_INT_MAX

Limits the main menu to a certain amount of levels. As level creation is one of the main bottle-necks that can slow down rendering it can be helpful to limit the levels in the menu in some use cases.

Example: Limit the menu to 2 levels

The changelog (documentation of the extension "core") consists of several thousands of pages. The reason is that very long lists of changelog entries in the menu are not helpful to the user and slow down the search.

EXT:core/Documentation/guides.xml (excerpt) 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<guides xmlns="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides ../vendor/phpdocumentor/guides-cli/resources/schema/guides.xsd"
        max-menu-depth="2"
>
    <!-- [...] -->
</guides>
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The <project> tag

The <project> tag is located directly in the guides tag. There can be 0 or 1 tag of that name.

This tag can contain the following meta information:

Project title

title
Type
string

The project tag contains the title of the project and is displayed in the left sidebar (desktop) or the top (mobile) of the theme and in the title meta tag.

For TYPO3 extensions we suggest to use the extension name in a readable format:

  • Import / Export tool
  • News
  • Mask

Common values are in the official TYPO3 manuals

  1. <Topic> Guide, e.g. "Frontend Localization Guide", for collections of articles on a specific topic
  2. <Topic> Reference, e.g. "TSconfig Reference", for a complete reference
  3. <Topic> Tutorial, e.g. "Editors Tutorial", for collections of tutorials on a specific topic

Version and release

version
Type
string

When documentation is rendered in the GitHub action for deployment onto https://docs.typo3.org the version is set automatically to the extension's version derived from the Git tag. Setting the version in the guides.xml only affects local rendering.

The attributes version and release both contain the version of the manual and mostly correspond to the version of the TYPO3 LTS or TYPO3 extension to which the documentation refers.

The version is shown below the title in the theme's release switch and in the title meta tag, the release is not shown currently - but it should be kept anyway to satisfy internal requirements.

version
The major project version, used as the replacement for |version|. For example this may be something like 12.4.
release
The full project version, used as the replacement for |release| For example 12.4.15-dev.

If you do not need the separation provided between version and release, just set them both to the same value.

TYPO3 Theme settings

The <extension> tag is located directly in the guides tag.

TYPO3 Theme specific settings can be made in the tag <extension class="\T3Docs\Typo3DocsTheme\DependencyInjection\Typo3DocsThemeExtension">.

There can be 0 or more tags of that name, however only one <extension> tag should be defined for the TYPO3 documentation theme.

The class attribute is mandatory, it references the extension that is used to render the documentation with the TYPO3 documentation theme.

TYPO3 Theme settings

edit-on-github-*

The github_repository and github_branch attributes should be set to provide the "Edit on GitHub" button, which allows the reader to jump from the currently viewed documentation directly to the associated GitHub repository and edit the page file.

If the project is hosted on GitHub and public contributions are welcome, these attributes should be set accordingly:

  1. <user>/<repository>, for example to "TYPO3-Documentation/TYPO3CMS-Reference-TCA" or "FriendsOfTYPO3/extension_builder".
  2. <branch>, for example on "main" or "10.x".

For example:

Documentation/guides.xml, excerpt 
<extension class="\T3Docs\Typo3DocsTheme\DependencyInjection\Typo3DocsThemeExtension"
           edit-on-github-branch="main"
           edit-on-github="TYPO3-Documentation/TYPO3CMS-Guide-HowToDocument"
/>
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edit-on-github

edit-on-github
Type
string
Sytanx
[GitHub Organiziation or user]/[Repository]
Default
""

If this configuration is set, a button "Edit on GitHub" is displayed on each page of the manual.

Example: Display a button to edit in the repository of news
EXT:news/Documentation/guides.xml (excerpt) 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<guides xmlns="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides ../vendor/phpdocumentor/guides-cli/resources/schema/guides.xsd"
>
      <extension class="\T3Docs\Typo3DocsTheme\DependencyInjection\Typo3DocsThemeExtension"
           edit-on-github-branch="main"
           edit-on-github="georgringer/news"
/>
</guides>
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edit-on-github-branch

edit-on-github-branch
Type
string
Default
main

The branch that should be used for the "Edit on GitHub" button.

Example: Display a button to edit in the repository of tt_news on branch master
EXT:news/Documentation/guides.xml (excerpt) 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<guides xmlns="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides ../vendor/phpdocumentor/guides-cli/resources/schema/guides.xsd"
>
    <extension class="\T3Docs\Typo3DocsTheme\DependencyInjection\Typo3DocsThemeExtension"
               edit-on-github-branch="master"
               edit-on-github="FriendsOfTYPO3/tt_address"
    />
</guides>
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edit-on-github-directory

edit-on-github-directory
Type
string
Default
Documentation

The directory in which the documentation can be found. The GitHub render action currently does not support using other directories then Documentation/.

This setting is used exclusively for system extension manuals as the TYPO3 Core is kept in a mono repository on GitHub.

Example: Set the GitHub directory for a system extension

EXT:adminpanel/Documentation/guides.xml (excerpt) 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<guides xmlns="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides ../vendor/phpdocumentor/guides-cli/resources/schema/guides.xsd"
>
    <extension class="\T3Docs\Typo3DocsTheme\DependencyInjection\Typo3DocsThemeExtension"
               edit-on-github-branch="main"
               edit-on-github="typo3/typo3"
               edit-on-github-directory="typo3/sysext/adminpanel/Documentation/"
    />
</guides>
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project_*

The project_<topic> attributes provide all links with the name "<Topic>" in the footer of the documentation that guide the user to other aspects of the project than the documentation, for example to the project page in the TYPO3 Extension Repository (TER):

project_home

project_home
Type
string

is set to the homepage URL of the project. For official TYPO3 manuals this is the public base URL at docs.typo3.org, for public TYPO3 extensions this is the associated TER page or a custom project website, for example

  • https://docs.typo3.org/m/typo3/reference-coreapi/main/en-us/ or
  • https://extensions.typo3.org/extension/news.

project_contact

project_contact
Type
string

is usually set to an email address or Slack channel URL of the team behind the project, for example

  • mailto:documentation\@typo3.org or
  • https://typo3.slack.com/archives/C028JEPJL.

project_repository

project_repository
Type
string

is set to the repository of the project's VCS, for example

  • https://github.com/FriendsOfTYPO3/extension_builder.

project_issues

project_issues
Type
string

is set to the location where project issues are to be created and edited, for example

  • https://github.com/FriendsOfTYPO3/extension_builder/issues

project_discussions

project_discussions
Type
string

is used in the rare case that project-related discussions take place in locations other than those defined by the project_contact and project_issues attributes, for example

  • https://github.com/FriendsOfTYPO3/extension_builder/discussions.

typo3-core-preferred

typo3-core-preferred
Type
string
Default
stable

You can set the preferred TYPO3 Core version. This version is used to determine the desired version for links to other manuals and system extensions.

Documentation/guides.xml 
<extension class="\T3Docs\Typo3DocsTheme\DependencyInjection\Typo3DocsThemeExtension"
           typo3-core-preferred="stable" />
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If no preferred version is set it defaults to stable. Possible values are:

main, stable (latest LTS), oldstable (old LTS) or an explicit LTS / eLTS version like 12.4 or 8.7.

Example: Set the preferred TYPO3 Core version to 11.5

At the time of writing the extension news is compatible with TYPO3 v11.5 and v12.4. When referencing Core manuals or extensions, we want the links to go automatically to version 11.5 of that reference or core extension. Therefore we set the preferred TYPO3 Core version to that value:

EXT:news/Documentation/guides.xml (excerpt) 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<guides xmlns="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
        xsi:schemaLocation="https://www.phpdoc.org/guides ../vendor/phpdocumentor/guides-cli/resources/schema/guides.xsd"
>
     <extension class="\T3Docs\Typo3DocsTheme\DependencyInjection\Typo3DocsThemeExtension"
           typo3-core-preferred="11.5"
</guides>
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