README.adoc: add info about macro usage

[pve-docs.git] / README.adoc

diff --git a/README.adoc b/README.adoc
index c5cec413f23103d72e996389de5efd61065976b4..6d2e570e67e6e327e51cbfbf3a43a5d30e6ae7c2 100644 (file)
--- a/README.adoc
+++ b/README.adoc
@@ -1,21 +1,48 @@
 Proxmox VE Documentation
 ========================
+include::attributes.txt[]
 
 What is this?
 -------------
 
 This is an experimental project, trying to generate high quality
-documentation for http://www.proxmox.com[Proxmox VE].
+documentation for http://www.proxmox.com[Proxmox VE]. We choose to use
+http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/[AsciiDoc] as base format.
 
+One idea is to generate high quality manual pages, and assemble them
+into a complete book, called link:pve-admin-guide.adoc[Proxmox VE
+Administration Guide].  So we have one source, and generate several
+documents from that. It is also possible to generate printable PDF
+files, or ebook formats ('.ebup').
+
+Common Macro definition in link:attributes.txt[]
+------------------------------------------------
+
+'asciidoc' allows us to define common macros, which can then be
+referred to using `{macro}`. We try to use this mechanism to improve
+consistency. For example, we defined a macro called `pve`, which
+expands to "Proxmox VE". The plan is to add more such definitions for
+terms which are used more than once.
+
+NOTE: The github 'asciidoc' viewer does not expand those macros.
+
+Autogenerated CLI Command Synopsis
+----------------------------------
+
+We generate the command line synopsis for all manual pages
+automatically. We can do that, because we have a full declarative
+definition of the {pve} API. I added those generated files
+('*-synopsis.adoc') to the git repository, so that it is possible to
+build the documentation without having a fully installed {pve}
+development environment.
 
 Copyright
 ---------
 
-Copyright (C) Proxmox Server Solutions Gmbh
+Copyright (C) 2016 Proxmox Server Solutions Gmbh
 
 Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
 under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
 any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
-Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A
-copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free
-Documentation License".
+Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A
+copy of the license is included in the link:LICENSE[LICENSE] file.