Inspections

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.

Detects overridden anchors in XML <a href> links.

Enabled 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.

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.

Detects empty code blocks and empty source code files.

It detects literally empty <code-block> elements only if there is no source file specified in the src attribute. Otherwise, it checks the contents of the source file.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Suggests creating glossary.xml when tooltip used, but glossary.xml not listed.

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

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.

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

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects includes with the filter attribute instead of use-filter.

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

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects incorrect references to <primary-label> and <secondary-label> identifiers.

You can either select one of the existing labels, create a new one with the specified ID, or remove the label element.

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 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 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 missing openapi-path attribute either in the <api-endpoint> element directly or in the parent <api-doc> element.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

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 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.

Disabled by default with severity Error.

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

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects non-empty code blocks that also define a valid source file via the src attribute.

By default, Writerside inserts the contents of the referenced source file into the code block. If you really want to use the contents of the source file, remove text inside the <code-block> element and collapse it. Otherwise, keep the text in the code block and remove the src reference to the source file.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

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 <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 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 Markdown topics with a missing topic title. Every Markdown topic must have a first-level # header, which serves as the topic title. Alternatively, you can also use a YAML front matter block:

There are two suggested quick fixes: adding a # Topic title to the very beginning of the topic or converting the first header of any other level to H1.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects media references that do not match their expected media types, for example, image references in <video> tags and videos in image elements.

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 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 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 unresolved references to images, topics, resources, and other referencable objects.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects unsupported languages in code blocks.

Such code blocks will be rendered as plain text, without syntax highlighting.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

Detects videos without a preview image.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

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 XML-like tags inside <code-block>.

If you need to show XML-like markup in a code block, either wrap the contents of the code block with CDATA or use HTML character entities instead of angle brackets.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

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.

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 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.

Reports unresolved references in Markdown links.

Enabled by default with severity Warning.

Detects the absence of whitespace characters around tags.

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 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 TOC elements in tree files that reference library topics.

A library topic is a topic with is-library="true". Although you can re-use content from any topic file, it is better to keep reusable snippets in dedicated library topics, which are not meant to be published with any help instance.

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 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 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.

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 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.