Documentation Principles
Documenting a function
Structure of your Wiki-page
Write your documentation within the command-XML-tag. The content of your documentation should be structured as follows:
...
...
Syntax
...
Description
...
Example
...
...
Example
...
...
Title
The title of your command is the concatenation of the global alias, which you have defined for your CoCoA-package, and the title of your function, e.g.
Mat.Det
for a function called Det within a package matrix with global alias Mat.
Short description
Describe shortly the basic functionality of your function. Thereby treat your short description as a real sentence, i.e. your short description has to begin with a capital letter and has to end with a dot.
Computes the determinant of a matrix.
Syntax
The syntax of your function has to be complete, i.e. including the types of your parameters and the type of your return value if this is possible! If it is possible to call your function with different types, then itemize the complete syntax for every possibility, e.g.
Syntax
Mat.Det(M:MAT)
Mat.Det(M:LIST)
In this example it is possible to call the function Det either with the matrix M or with a list (of lists) which defines the matrix M. Here it is not possible to determine the type of the return value, because it depends on the types of the entries of matrix M. Suppose that M only has rational entries. Then the syntax should look like this:
Syntax
Mat.Det(M:MAT):RAT
Mat.Det(M:LIST):RAT
Description
Describe and explain here in detail what your function does. First of all itemize all your parameters and the return value and describe as short as possible which role they play within your function, e.g.
@param M: Matrix M for which the determinant is computed.@return: The determinant of matrix M.
Please use by your description the strings "@param" and "@return" to mark the parameters and return values.
Examples
Please note the examples have to be written within the description-tag! Write as many examples as necessary to understand the complete functionality of your function.
- If you write more than one example use a new example-tag for every example!
- The examples should be complete, i.e. they have to begin with
Use ...and end with the result. So it is possible for the user to copy the whole example (without the result), paste it into (Ap)CoCoA and execute it. - Please give intelligent examples, i.e. examples which are not only cover the trivial cases.
- It could also be a support for the user if you comment your function especially by difficult examples.
