Inspections

Detects attribute values that reference non-existent entities.

For example, there must be a topic file named introduction.topic with an existing anchor my_anchor to reference it like this:

This also applies to from, element-id, instance, use-filter, and other similar attributes.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects links to topics where the topic title matches the link text.

When you add a link to another topic, Writerside uses the topic title as the link text, unless you put some text inside the <a> tag. If this text matches the topic title, Writerside suggests removing the text and collapsing the <a> tag.

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Detects unreachable external links.

You can add an external link to your documentation by providing a URL in the href attribute. This inspection sends a request to the specified URL and reports a problem if the response status code is 400 or more.

Disabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects large images without a thumbnail and suggests making them expandable.

Thumbnails are small previews that you can use in place of large images. When the user clicks on the thumbnail, it expands to the full image.

You can either set thumbnail="true" to make the original image expandable (optionally, also set the `width` to make the image thumbnail smaller), or use preview-src to specify a custom preview image as a thumbnail.

You can set the maximum image width allowed by the inspection in Settings | Editor | Inspections.

Disabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects elements that can be combined.

Such elements as <var>, <title>, <web-file-name>, <show-structure>, <help-id>, <card-summary>, <link-summary>, and <web-summary> are generally one per topic or chapter. If you define them multiple times with overlapping scopes, they can usually be combined for clarity.

For example:

Can be combined as:

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Highlights unresolved references in Writerside Markdown topics as errors.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Highlights unresolved references in Writerside XML topics as errors.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects overridden anchors in XML <a href> links.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects content filters that are shadowed by filters of parent elements.

Example:

In this example, bar is shadowed by foo, meaning that it will never be included in any instance. Make sure that all parent elements include filters that you expect for the child elements. So in this case, you should add bar to the parent paragraph.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Checks for missing title attribute in chapter, def, and tab elements.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Checks the <format> element style and color validity. A valid <format> element must specify color, style, or both attributes, and they must contain valid values.

style can be a valid combination of the following: bold, italic, strikethrough, underline, superscript, subscript.

color can be a hexadecimal RGB code or a valid color name, such as #ff0000 or Red.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects <img> elements without the alt attribute.

Always use the alt attribute to provide a textual alternative to non-text content (in our case, to screenshots and icons) on web pages.

The purpose of using the alt attribute is to:

• Make the page accessible to people who use screen readers.

• Display information about non-textual page elements when they cannot be displayed.

• Provide search engines with semantic information about the page contents.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects unreachable URLs to external images.

You can add an external image to your documentation by providing its URL in the src attribute. This inspection sends a request to the specified URL and reports a problem if the response status code is 400 or more.

Disabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects unreachable URLs to external videos.

You can add an external video to your documentation by providing its URL in the src attribute. This inspection sends a request to the specified URL and reports a problem if the response status code is 400 or more.

Disabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects includes with the filter attribute.

Usually, filter is used on elements inside snippets, and when you include the snippet, you specify use-filter.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Reports problematic filter declarations that may result in unexpected behavior:

• Explicit empty values in filter attributes

• Redundant or misplaced negation ! operators

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects the simultaneous use of the thumbnail and animated attribute.

An image can be either thumbnail or animation, not both.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects code blocks with long lines.

The frontend adds a horizontal scroll bar to code block elements with lines that don't fit inside the block. The maximum width of the code block element can fit lines up to 70 characters without a scroll bar. This inspection highlights code blocks with long lines: rearrange such code to avoid truncated examples for your readers.

You can change the maximum line length for this inspection.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects any XML-like code inside the code tag.

Don't use any XML markup to highlight text within the code section. If you see legacy code using XML markup to set highlighting in the code snippet, use the intention to remove it.

If you need to put sources that can be recognized as XML code inside the code tag, use the CDATA section. There is a quick fix available for that.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects available-only-for attributes in <topic>, <chapter>, and <procedure> elements.

<available-only-for> should be a child element of a <topic>, <chapter>, or <procedure>.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects occurences of plain procedures (without numbered steps or bulleted choices).

Plain procedures are deprecated. Consider using quick fixes either to change the procedure style to choices or to unwrap the procedure.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects non-Latin characters in attribute values.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects usage of tags other that step inside the procedure.

Only step elements and p elements with short and precise introductions are allowed inside procedures.

Disabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Detects problems caused by improper image dimension settings.

We have three recommended image widths that best fit our layout:

• 296

• 460

• 706

This inspection checks that:

• An <img> element has the width attribute.

• The width attribute is one of the above values.

• Real image dimensions are in acceptable range for its specified width, that is, the image is not stretched or shrunk too much relative to its original size.

Disabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Detects the misuse of markup elements based on rules from the XML schema.

Disabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects links pointing to an existing topic that is not in the current help instance tree.

It ignores such links if the current topic itself is not in the current help instance tree.

You have several options to deal with this issue:

• Mark the link with nullable="true", which will render it as plain text if the target is not available

• Exclude the containing element (such as the paragraph with the problematic link) from the current help instance

• Include the target topic into the current help instance

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects empty files referenced via src in code blocks.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Checks if there is an MP4 video to replace an animation with.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects media references in Writerside XML tags that do not match their expected media types, e.g., image references in <video> tags.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects references in Markdown images that do not match their expected media type, e.g., links to local video files.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects videos without a preview image.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects links without the `type` attribute inside the spotlight element on a section starting page.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects top-level headers in Writerside Markdown topics that will be converted to chapter headers in the generated documentation.

In Writerside Markdown topics, the first top-level (level 1) header is interpreted as the topic title. All subsequent top-level headers are implicitly converted to chapter titles (level 2 Markdown headers).

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects <title> tags that do not affect the topic title.

In Writerside XML topics, only the first <title> tag in the file defines the topic title. All subsequent <title> tags are ignored and can be removed.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects external URLs in the table of contents that can't be reached.

You can add a link to any URL to the table of contents with the href attribute. This inspection sends a request to the specified URL and reports a problem if the response status code is 400 or more. For values that start with mailto:, it ensures that the email has valid syntax.

Disabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects TOC titles that match the topic title.

By default, Writerside renders the topic title in the TOC. If the topic title is too long for the TOC, you can assign a shorter TOC title for it by specifying the toc-title attribute in <toc-element>. The TOC title is used only for the corresponding TOC entry and does not change the topic title.

If the TOC title matches the topic title, this inspection highlights the redundant toc-title attribute and suggests removing it.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects duplicate redirects.

You can use the accepts-web-file-names attribute on a <toc-element> to specify HTML pages from which you want to redirect to this TOC entry. For example, when you remove a topic, you probably want to redirect its web filename to another topic. If you use the same web filename for multiple redirects, it will lead to a conflict. This inspection detects duplicate redirects and suggests removing the duplicates.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects redirects from web filenames of existing topics.

You can use the accepts-web-file-names attribute on a <toc-element> to specify HTML pages from which you want to redirect to this TOC entry. For example, when you remove a topic, you probably want to redirect its web filename to another topic. If you use a web filename of an existing topic, it will lead to a conflict. This inspection detects such conflicts and suggests removing the redirect.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects topics that are added to the TOC more than once.

Every entry in the table of contents references a specific topic. If you add a topic to the same help instance tree more than once, it will lead to conflicts. This inspection detects TOC elements that reference the same topic and suggests removing the TOC element.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects non-unique sort order values of <seealso> categories in c.list.

The c.list file defines categories for the <seealso> block at the end of topics. Use the order attribute to set the order in which Writerside renders the categories. Make sure that order values are unique within the c.list file to avoid conflicts.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Highlights elements that don't have the id attribute.

All elements in the generated help instance get random unique hash IDs, unless an element has the id attribute. By default, id is mandatory for structural elements, such as chapters and procedures, for elements with titles and anchor links, such as tabs and definition list items, and for snippets that are expected to be referenced by their ID. Use this inspection's settings to define a comma-separated list of elements that should have an id.

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Detects duplicate element IDs.

You can use IDs to set up links to topic elements or to reuse them in other topics, so element IDs must be unique within a file.

Replace matching IDs and make sure that new IDs are easy to distinguish.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects duplicate element identifiers in Markdown Writerside topics.

You can use IDs to set up links to topic elements or to reuse them in other topics, so element IDs must be unique within a file.

Replace matching IDs and make sure that new IDs are easy to distinguish.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Reports unresolved references in Markdown links.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects missing or incorrect topic IDs in XML files. Every XML topic must have the id attribute in the root <topic> tag with the value equal to the topic file name without the extension.

The quick fix either adds or corrects the ID to match the topic file name.

For example, if the topic file name is some_intro.topic, then the root <topic> tag must have id="some_intro".

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects snippets that are not included anywhere.

For regular topics, Writerside suggests unwrapping the <snippet> element (preserving the content).

For library topics, Writerside suggests removing the <snippet> element (preserving only descendant snippets that are used somewhere).

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Warns you when the topic file is not used anywhere.

If the topic file is not included in any table of contents and does not have anything from it included in other topics, consider removing it from the project.

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Warns you when the topic currently open in the editor is not in the current help instance.

You can either add this topic to the current help instance or select a help instance with this topic.

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Detects text outside of paragraphs.

Writerside uses paragraphs to apply styles to the textual information. During the build, it automatically wraps text with the p tag in most places. However, it cannot process some complicated cases, when it is not obvious what is a paragraph. To avoid this, use paragraphs in list items, table cells, procedure steps, definitions when there's more than one paragraph or other block elements. Always use the p tag in chapters, tips, notes, and warnings.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Checks whether the textual topic content follows the style guidelines.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Checks whether the textual topic content follows the style guidelines.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects the absence of whitespace characters around tags.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.