Template:Documentation

Documentation

This documentation is transcluded from Template:Documentation/doc. (view | edit | history)

This template employs intricate features of template syntax. You are encouraged to familiarise yourself with its setup and parser functions before editing the template. If your edit causes unexpected problems, please undo it quickly, as this template may appear on a large number of pages. Remember that you can conduct experiments, and should test all improvements, in either the general Template sandbox or your user space before changing anything here.

This template automatically displays a documentation box like you are seeing now, of which the content is transcluded from another page. It is intended for pages which are transcluded in other pages, i.e. templates, whether in the template namespace or not.

Usage

Normal

<noinclude>{{documentation}}</noinclude>
or <noinclude>{{documentation|template:any page/doc}}</noinclude>

This code should be added at the bottom of the template code, with no extra space before "<noinclude>" (which would cause extra space on pages where the template is used). The parameter can be used as shown above to transclude an arbitrary documentation page.

Add categories and interwiki links to the documentation page inside includeonly tags.

If the documentation page contains includeonly or noinclude tags as part of the documentation, replace the "<" with "&lt;".

Customizing display

Overrides exist to customize the output in special cases:

• {{documentation|heading=}}: change the text of the "documentation" heading. If this is set to blank, the entire heading line (including the first [edit] link) will also disappear.

Functions

If the documentation page doesn't exist, the "edit" link includes a preload parameter so that clicking it will pre-fill the edit form with the basic documentation page format.

Rationale

This template allows any page to use any documentation page, and makes it possible to protect templates while allowing anyone to edit the template's documentation, categories, and interwiki links. It also reduces server resources by circumventing a technical limitation of templates (see a developer's explanation).

See also

• Template:template doc (backlinks, edit) (similar template with more documentation; see template comparison)
• Template:documentation subpage (backlinks, edit) (replaces older {{Template doc page viewed directly}} and {{Template doc page transcluded}})
• m:Template:Documentation (backlinks, edit)