Wiki style guide
This article provides styling guidelines for the contents of the SciComp wiki.
Structure
Keep the structure of a page clean, simple and well balanced. In principle an article should not have more than 4 levels. The page title is level 1 and the current section is level 2
Level 3
This is an example of level 3...
Level 4
... and of level 4.
Level 5
As you can see, things become messy down here because level 5 is hard to distinguish from level 4. As a consequence, level 5 should be avoided at all cost.
If a part of an article is much more complicated than the rest, then perhaps you should consider moving it into a wiki page of its own.
Voice
Avoid the 3rd person and the passive voice. Consider:
- BAD: ssh must be used to access the cluster, and authentication must be done using ETH username and password
- BAD: one must use ssh to access the cluster, and authenticate oneself using one's ETH username and password
- BAD: users must use ssh to access the cluster, and authenticate themselves using their ETH username and password
- GOOD: please use ssh to access the cluster, and authenticate using your ETH username and password
Of course, there are cases where a passive form is better. Use your best judgement.
Commands and shell output
When citing commands in a sentence, such as "use squeue to see the available queues", encode the command like this: <tt>squeue</tt>.
When showing a command and its output in a code section, make the command(s) stand out using bold characters, e.g.:
[leonhard@euler06 ~]$ squeue JOBID PARTITION NAME USER ST TIME NODES NODELIST(REASON)
For the prompt, always use user leonhard. If a prompt on a local computer is required, use leonhard@calculus.
