The draft C++ Library Fundamentals Technical Specification

Visit the Polymer-based rendered version or the standalone version.

This TS is written using a set of custom HTML elements based on the Polymer framework.

This guide is intended to produce results compatible with the main C++ standard, which is written in LaTeX.

Look for applicable <cxx-*> elements, and write semantic markup according to http://developers.whatwg.org/.

Generally use <code> rather than <samp>, <kbd>, <tt> or other monospacing elements. <samp> could be useful for sample compiler error messages. Don't use <kbd> for code a user might enter: that's just <code>.

Use <em> for emphasis and <i> for text in another "voice", like comments and technical terms. <dfn> is good for the defining instance of a term, but not for subsequent uses. I may add a <cxx-term> element to call out uses of technical terms specifically, which will enable automatic cross-linking and indexing.

Use <var> for variables. There's tension between using it for all variables, including function parameters, and only calling out meta-variables used in documentation. I'm leaning toward only meta-variables, since marking up parameters requires a huge number of tags, which make it harder to read the source, and there's not much reason to italicize normal variables. Most meta-variables will end up marked up as <code><var>meta-variable</var></code>.

Very little text is bold, either with <strong> or <b>.

Any repeated markup structure should be abstracted out into a custom element in the https://github.com/cplusplus/html-doc-framework project.

Namespace contents are indented by 2 spaces, with one blank line between the namespace open and the first line of the contents. Multiple namespaces can be opened at the same indentation level, like:

namespace std {
namespace experimental {

  class contents{};

} // namespace experimental
} // namespace std

Namespaces are only shown in header synopses, not around class or function definitions.