Documentation guidelines

This page describes the rules to follow if you want to contribute to Godot Engine by writing or reviewing documentation, or by translating existing documentation. Also have a look at README of the godot-docs GitHub repository and the docs front page on what steps to follow and how to contact the docs team.

How to contribute

Creating or modifying documentation pages is mainly done via the godot-docs GitHub repository. The HTML (or PDF and EPUB) documentation is generated from the .rst files (reStructuredText markup language) in that repository. Modifying those pages in a pull request and getting it merged will trigger a rebuild of the online documentation.

See also

For details on Git usage and the pull request workflow, please refer to the Pull request workflow page. Most of what it describes regarding the main godotengine/godot repository is also valid for the docs repository.

The README.md file contains all the information you need to get you started, please read it. In particular, it contains some tips and tricks and links to reference documentation about the reStructuredText markup language.

Warning

If you want to edit the API reference, please note that it should not be done in the godot-docs repository. Instead, you should edit the doc/classes/* XML files of Godot’s main repository. These files are then later used to generate the in-editor documentation as well as the API reference of the online docs. Read more here: Contribute to the Class Reference.

The ‘Edit on Github’ link

If you’re reading documentation on docs.godotengine.org you’ll see an ‘Edit on GitHub’ hyperlink at the top right of the page. Once you’ve created a GitHub account you can propose changes to a page you’re reading as follows:

1. Copy the URL that the GitHub link points to. Part of the URL refers to a version name such as ‘3.1’ or ‘latest’. Swap this part for the word ‘master’ so that the result looks something like this: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-docs/blob/master/community/contributing/docs_writing_guidelines.rst
2. Load that URL in your browser.
3. On the GitHub page you’re taken to, click the pencil icon. It has the tooltip “Edit the file in a fork of this project”.
4. Complete all the edits you want to make for that page.
5. Summarise the changes you made in the form at the bottom of the page and click the button labelled ‘Propose file change’ when done.
6. On the following screens, click the ‘Create pull request’ buttons until you see a message like Open. yourGitHubUsername wants to merge 1 commit into godotengine:master from yourGitHubUsername:patch-6
7. A reviewer will evaluate your changes and incorporate them into the docs if they’re judged to improve them. You might also be asked to make modifications to your changes before they’re included.

What makes good documentation?

Documentation should be well written in plain English, using well-formed sentences and various levels of sections and subsections. It should be clear and objective. Also have a look at the Docs writing guidelines.

We differentiate tutorial pages from other documentation pages by these definitions:

• Tutorial: a page aiming at explaining how to use one or more concepts in the editor or scripts in order to achieve a specific goal with a learning purpose (e.g. “Making a simple 2d Pong game”, “Applying forces to an object”).
• Documentation: a page describing precisely one and only one concept at a time, if possible exhaustively (e.g. the list of methods of the Sprite class, or an overview of the input management in Godot).

You are free to write the kind of documentation you wish, as long as you respect the following rules (and the ones on the repo).

Titles

Always begin pages with their title and a Sphinx reference name:

.. _doc_insert_your_title_here:
Insert your title here
======================

The reference allows to link to this page using the :ref: format, e.g. :ref:`doc_insert_your_title_here` would link to the above example page (note the lack of leading underscore in the reference).

Also, avoid American CamelCase titles: title’s first word should begin with a capitalized letter, and every following word should not. Thus, this is a good example:

• Insert your title here

And this is a bad example:

• Insert Your Title Here

Only project, people and node class names should have capitalized first letter.

Translating existing pages

You can help to translate the official Godot documentation on our Hosted Weblate.

There also is the official Godot I18N repository. where you can see when the data was last synced.

License

This documentation and every page it contains is published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (CC-BY-3.0)), with attribution to “Juan Linietsky, Ariel Manzur and the Godot community”.

By contributing to the documentation on the GitHub repository, you agree that your changes are distributed under this license.