Nano Protocol Documentation

nano-docs is the source code for the Nano protocol documentation and is built using MkDocs with the MkDocs Material theme.

Purpose

This documentation focuses on various users within the technical community: advanced users, node operators, developers integrating Nano, and those interested in details around how the protocol works. All efforts to help update the documentation should keep in mind these goals as submissions that fall outside of this scope are likely to be rejected.

Contributing

For users wishing to contribute to this documentation, we recommend you join the Discord (https://chat.nano.org) #documentation channel to keep up to date on the latest activity. GitHub issues will be used to manage requests for changes. It is recommended any navigational changes or larger updates be discussed on the Discord #nano-docs channel or within a GitHub issue before completing work - this will help avoid wasted work that does not align with the documentation goals.

To submit changes, please fork the repository and create a branch to make changes. Submit a Pull Request back to the source repository when ready for review ahead of possible inclusion.

Development

The recommended local setup is to use Docker with a pre-built image for MkDocs and Material theme. With Docker installed, from the cloned nano-docs directory run:

docker pull ghcr.io/nanocurrency/nano-docs:latest
docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 ghcr.io/nanocurrency/nano-docs:latest

You can also install MkDocs with Python 3 to serve using the following:

pip3 install -r requirements.txt
mkdocs serve

If only reviewing pull requests is required, using a pre-packaged container with all custom theme modifications can be done with the following commands:

docker pull ghcr.io/nanocurrency/nano-docs:pr-<pull_request_number>
docker run --rm -it -p 8000:8000 ghcr.io/nanocurrency/nano-docs:pr-<pull_request_number>

Note that because a local volume isn't being mounted this pull request review approach is only good for validating changes and not for development purposes. These PR-specific containers will be deleted once the related pull request is either closed or merged. If an offline version of the docs are needed, the container tag latest is also available and updated on each change to the master branch.

Access the site at http://localhost:8000. This supports automatic rebuilding, so anytime changes are saved to the documentation or configuration, it will be rebuilt and refresh the page. Some search indexing may remain cache between builds.

Theme

We sponsor the developer of this theme on GitHub (@squidfunk) in order to get access to special features of the Insiders version. Our @nano-infrastructure account has the permissions to the private repository for that Insiders theme and using a personal access token in the GitHub deployment workflow (set as a GitHub secret in this repository), the theme is pulled down as part of deployment.

Those developing locally may not have access to some of the special features of this insider theme, but most changes done by external contributors do not need the special theme - changes are backwards compatible with the regular theme. If you need access to the Insiders theme please contact the Nano core team.

Formatting and Organization Tips

Title and description

At the top of every page (not snippets) two fields should be added title: and description: which will be converted to values of <title> and <meta> tags in the header to better inform search engines, social scraping tools and more.

Headers

Pages automatically have a <h1> title setup for them based on the page name, so headers ## (<h2>) and higher should only be used to organize the content.

Table of Contents

Currently, the ToC on the right side is limited to a depth of 4, so ##, ###, and #### will be included there. Higher header levels can be used on the page to better organize content but will not be in the ToC.

Links

MkDocs has a link checker built in that can be run using the --strict flag on mkdocs serve, or mkdocs build command. This flag is included in the build pipeline. For it to work, links must be referencing the relative file path with the file extension included and no trailing slashes. Anchors are not included in this check. Although relative URLs will function if used, they will not be verified by the link checker.

For example, linking from a page in therunning-a-node folder to integration-guides would be:

• Gets checked: ../integration-guides/the-basics.md.
• Doesn't get checked: /integration-guides/the-basics

Snippets

The snippets directory contains reusable pieces of content which can be inserted as follows:

--8<-- "snippet-file-name.md"

This should be used for simple, duplicated content only and is not a complex templating setup.

Comments

The StripHTML extension is used so that HTML-style comments can be included in the markdown docs. However, for best compatibility, keep them at the top level, not within indented areas/rendered admonition blocks, etc. as much as possible.

<!-- this is a valid comment that will not get rendered to the browser -->

Admonition Extension Quick Reference

Admonition is an extension for MkDocs that provides easy block-styled side content (including collapsible blocks). More details on use can be found here: https://squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/extensions/admonition/. Below is a quick reference for this functionality:

For an always expanded option: !!! note "This is the title" This is the text

For a collapsible option:

??? question "Is this collapsed by default?" Yes, it is

???+ question "Is this expanded by default?" Yes, it is

Types include:

• note
• abstract
• info
• tip
• success
• question
• warning
• failure
• danger
• bug
• example
• quote

Diagrams

Usage of Draw.io is encouraged for generating diagrams:

• Folder /docs/diagrams contains the .svg files that are the preferred format for diagrams
• Diagrams can be edited using the Draw.io and similar applications:
  • Web: https://nanocurrency.github.io/drawio/src/main/webapp/index.html or https://app.diagrams.net
  • Desktop: https://github.com/jgraph/drawio-desktop/releases/latest
• Embedding diagrams uses markdown format: ![account-chains](/diagrams/account-chains.svg)

There is also support for Mermaid Sequence Diagrams, and documentation can be found here: https://mermaidjs.github.io/#/sequenceDiagram, however given the desire to have consistency in the diagrams and the limitations of Mermaid, generating Draw.io type diagrams is preferred.

Octicon icons

The scripts for using Github's Octicons are included in the header. Details for available icons can be found here: https://primer.style/octicons/. Usage should be limited. Example currently available in announcement block:

<span class="iconify" data-icon="octicon-tag-16" data-inline="false"></span>