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 link titles that match the referred topic's titles.

When you add a link to another topic, Writerside uses the topic's title as the link title unless you put some text inside the <a> tag. It is not necessary to manually add the topic's title there.

Disabled 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 thumbnails.

Thumbnails are small previews which you can use to replace large images on the topic pages. When the user clicks on the thumbnail, it expands to the full image.

You can either set thumbnail="true" to generate a small thumbnail from the original image, or use preview-src to specify a custom preview image instead of the thumbnail.

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

Disabled by default with severity Warning.

Highlights unresolved references in Writerside Markdown topics as errors.

Enabled by default with severity Error.

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

Example:

In this example, bar is shadowed by foo. This means that any build which will include foo content, will not include bar content. Make sure that all parent elements include filters that you expect for any of its 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.

Inspection reports invalid and conflicting style values.

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

color can be a valid color name, for example: red, green, blue, and so on.

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 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 version numbers in titles.

You should probably use a variable instead of a hard-coded version number.

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Images without the width attribute are incorrectly displayed in Tips of the Day.

This inspection detects such images and offers a quick-fix to add the width attribute based on the image dimensions.

For images witn @2x name suffix the actual value is divided by 2.

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.

Enabled 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 existing topics that are outside of current product tree.

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.

By default, id is mandatory only for the <chapter> element. You can specify the elements to check in Settings/Preferences | Editor | Inspections.

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.

Checks that the root element has the id attribute.

The id attribute is necessary for proper project configuration.

Disabled by default with severity Error.

Detects content snippets that are not included anywhere.

Usually, you create snippets to include their content somewhere. If you don't, probably, you can remove the snippet.

Enabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Detects topics that are not included in any instance tree.

If the topic is not used anywhere, consider deleting it from the project.

Disabled by default with severity Weak warning.

Detects <control> values that can be replaced with the corresponding property keys.

If the value in <control> is present in one of the property bundles, Writerside suggests replacing it with the corresponding property key.

Enabled by default with severity 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.