X-Git-Url: https://git.proxmox.com/?p=pve-docs.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=README.adoc;h=ed031141cf3e1be4673fefb1683750383cea542e;hp=c5cec413f23103d72e996389de5efd61065976b4;hb=fc3425bdf7c0fca3a2c25c9221a4a3abc3f6d295;hpb=22b0b166a7669ae2ef7a01a7bc0142d95f028800

diff --git a/README.adoc b/README.adoc
index c5cec41..ed03114 100644
--- a/README.adoc
+++ b/README.adoc
@@ -1,21 +1,73 @@
 Proxmox VE Documentation
 ========================
+include::attributes.txt[]
 
-What is this?
--------------
+We try to generate high quality documentation for
+http://www.proxmox.com[Proxmox VE], and choose to use
+http://www.methods.co.nz/asciidoc/[AsciiDoc] as base format.
 
-This is an experimental project, trying to generate high quality
-documentation for http://www.proxmox.com[Proxmox VE].
+The basic 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').
 
+When possible, we provide scripts to extract API definitions,
+configuration or command line options from the source code.
+
+To simplify the documentation task, we keep all Documentation within
+this repository. It is possible to generate the docs without installing
+any additional Proxmox packages with:
+
+ make index
+
+To update the auto-generate API definitions use:
+
+ make update
+
+NOTE: you need a fully installed development environment for that.
+
+
+Debian Packages
+---------------
+
+We generate a development package called 'pve-doc-generator', which is
+used by other Proxmox VE package to generate manual pages at package
+build time.
+
+Another package called 'pve-docs' is used to publish generated
+'.html' and '.pdf' files on our web servers. You can generate
+those debian packages using:
+
+ make deb
+
+
+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.
+
+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.