Style Guide

by Dan Rigdon-Bel (Last updated: Thursday, March 28, 2024)

Below are examples of nearly all the available syntax using Markdown, the table-of-contents , etc.

Stylistic Conventions

There are various stylistic “voices” that can be used when authoring content for this site. Depending on your audience and the context - writing a guide is different from writing a new feature entry - you might employ different “voices,” conventions, different outlines, and even different exercises to get you started.

New Features: The Elevator Pitch

Before doing a video, forum post, blog post, or any new feature content, write down the answers to these simple questions: If you can’t answer them, don’t start creating content. Ask for help!

• Who is the new feature targeted at? Of course many potential users can benefit. But who is ideal? Be specific.
• Why do they want it? What compelling need does the feature satisfy? While there may be many needs, pick the one or two really compelling reasons customers will use the feature. What pain will the new feature make go away? What is a day in their life like both without and with the feature?
• What is the feature’s category (modeling, editing, rendering, export, etc.)?
• What is the key differentiator? Just pick the ONE that is most likely to keep someone’s attention.
• What was the alternative before this feature was available? This doesn’t necessarily mean another vendor’s product. It could be a more painful Rhino workflow.
• How is the new feature different from the alternative?

Armed with the answers, build an outline by filling in the following template to form a single paragraph:

For [ideal user]

who has [problem]

is a [category]

that [differentiator].

Unlike [fill in the competitor]

[fill in the key differentiator]

Technical Conventions

Site file naming

The naming convention for files - guides, samples, etc - is lowercase with - used as spaces. This leads to more consistent and legible URLs. In addition, Google recommends one construct compound URL names with - and not underbars (_). For example, consider the name of this guide: “Style Guide”. The file name for this guide is style-guide. Google treats a hyphen as a word separator, but does not treat an underscore that way. Google treats and underscore as a word joiner — so “red_sneakers” is the same as “redsneakers.”

In general, when considering new file names for guides, please imagine you are saying “Guide to _____”. This often leads to verbs ending in “-ing”, the progressive or continuous verb tense. Obviously, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, but rather a convention.

In general, when considering new file names for samples, please imagine you are saying “_____ sample”. As with guides, this is not a hard-and-fast rule, but rather a general convention.

Division of content

# Title become H1 headers and are reserved for the title of the page only.

## Header become H2 headers and are reserved for major sections within the page.

### Sub Header become H3 headers and are reserved for sub-sections within a major section.

Fonts

On Windows, this site attempts to use Segoe UI (font size: 16 px, font weight: 400, line height: 1.6) and falls back to Frutiger Linotype, Dejavu Sans, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, in that order. On macOS, the site will (almost) certainly use Helvetica Neue or Helvetica (font size: 16 px, font weight: 300, line height: 1.6). The operating system-specific font weight is set in the footer using javascript.

Paths & Filenames

*Italics* are used to denote filenames, paths, and file extensions. For example:

Navigate to C:\Program Files\Rhinoceros 5 (64-bit)\Plug-ins.

Bold

**Bold** (strong emphasis) is used in instructions to highlight critical instructions that are very important. Bold should be used sparingly as it is often present in headers as natural division of content.

Spelling & Case

The following spelling and case conventions are adopted on this site:

• “Plugins” is not hyphenated unless it refers to a place in the Rhino UI where it is hyphenated.
• “openNURBS” (not OpenNURBS, nor opennurbs, nor oPeNnURBs) unless it refers to a namespace in code where it is capitalized, or a path where it is not.

Images & Screenshots

Please use image names without spaces (use a hypen - NOT an underscore - for word separation). It is also safest to use lowercase filenames and extensions.

When feasible, it is best to use the .svg vector format for images, especially for diagrams.

When using bitmap images, the preferred format is .png, but any browser-friendly bitmap format will work.

When capturing screenshots, consider that many people have high-DPI (aka: “Retina”) displays. Please capture all screenshots on a high-DPI display.

See the Text Modifiers > Images section of this guide for more information on inserting images.

Headers

Headers demarcate major sections of the page, guide, etc.

Headers are created like this:

The example above is an H2 header.

Creating a header automatically creates an #anchor tag in the generated html.

For headers with multiple words, the markdown parser lowercases all the words, removes non-alphanumeric characters and adds dashes for spaces. For example, if we had a header like this:

the resulting html anchor tag would be:

Read more about anchors here.

Sub Headers

Sub Headers demarcate sub-sections a major section underneath a header.

Sub Headers are created like this:

The example above is an H3 header, which we are calling a “Sub Header.”

Just like with H2 headers, H3 headers also create an #anchor tag in the generated html.

Heading Anchors

Anchors are auto generated from heading texts. They’re formatted to be URL safe. In cases that it’s really needed, an additional anchor tag can be specified.

Language

Anchors are automatically generated by parsing the English version of the heading text and formatting it to be url safe.

For example a heading text in fr\index.md that reads Grands projets will look for a corresponding heading in en\index.md to find Large Projects and format it to:

Formatting

In the process of sanitizing the heading text to generate anchors, all characters will be lowercased. Spaces will be replaced by - and special character will be removed.

For example a heading reading:

becomes:

Optional Explicit Anchors

Optionally, an additional anchor with explicit ID can be specified using anchor shortcode (does not replace auto generated heading anchors). This can be useful for making sure lagacy links to headings work when migrating from another existing system to Hugo.

For example below heading in markdown:

Will generate two anchors:

and

The UI-widget to the left of this column is a the Table of Contents (TOC) for this page. If you are authoring a page that requires a TOC, you can generate one automatically by toggling the toc = true frontmatter field (see How This Site Works for more information).

For example, to get a Header to show up in the TOC, you would type this:

To get a Sub Header to show up in the TOC, you would type this:

Structural Elements

Paragraphs

Consecutive lines of text are considered to be one paragraph. You must add a blank line between paragraphs.

Block Quotes

A blockquote is started using the > marker followed by an optional space; all following lines that are also started with the blockquote marker belong to the blockquote. You can use any block-level elements inside a blockquote:

Yields:

This is a sample block quote

Nested blockquotes are also possible.

Code Blocks

To create a code block, surround the code with three back-ticks, followed by a language abbreviation. For example:

```

…followed by the code…

…and finally closed by three back-ticks.

The abbreviation after the first set of back-ticks is the language code for syntax highlighting. We are using a syntax highlighting built into Go’s Chroma Highlighting engine. Many languages are supported. The most common language abbreviations used on this site are:

• cs is C#
• vbnet is Visual Basic
• python is Python
• cpp is C/C++

A complete list of language aliases can be found in the List of Chroma Highlighting Languages.

Horizontal Rules

Horizontal rules (lines) are created by using three dashes:

You can an example of one of these right here…

---

Lists

You can create ordered lists and unordered lists.

Ordered Lists

Ordered lists are created by typing 1. at the start of a line, like this:

yields:

This is an ordered list:

1. Item one.
2. Item two.
3. Item three.

Nested ordered lists are also possible. For example:

yields:

This is a nested ordered list:

1. Do item one.
   1. Item one subtask one.
   2. Item one subtask two.
2. Do item two.
3. Do item three.

Unordered Lists

Unordered lists (bullet lists) are created using the dash (-) symbol at the beginning of a line:

yields:

This is a bullet list:

• Item one
• Item two
• Item three

Tables

markdown supports a syntax for creating simple tables. A line starting with a pipe character starts a table row. However, if the pipe characters is immediately followed by a dash (-), a separator line is created. Separator lines are used to split the table header from the table body (and optionally align the table columns) and to split the table body into multiple parts. If the pipe character is followed by an equal sign (=), the tables rows below it are part of the table footer.

Here is the syntax for a simple table:

yields:

Header1	Header2	Header3
cell1	cell2	cell3
cell4	cell5	cell6
cell7	cell8	cell9

HTML Elements

markdown allows you to use block-level HTML tags (div, p, pre, etc) to markup whole blocks of text – just start a line with a block-level HTML tag.

Here is an example of using HTML elements:

yields:

This can contain only *span* level elements.

Text Modifiers

Emphasis

Emphasis (bold and italic) can be added to text by surrounding the text with asterisks:

For example:

yields:

I like my coffee bold.

Links

Simple Links

A simple link can be created by surrounding the text with square brackets and the link URL with parentheses:

yields:

This is a link to the Rhino 3D homepage.

You can also add title information to the link:

yields:

A link to the homepage.

There is another way to create links which does not interrupt the text flow. The URL and title are defined using a reference name and this reference name is then used in square brackets instead of the link URL:

yields:

A link to the homepage.

If the link text itself is the reference name, the second set of square brackets can be omitted:

yields:

A link to the Rhino3D homepage.

Anchor Links

As discussed above, Headers and Sub Headers automatically create anchors in the resulting rendered html output.

You can link to any anchor within a page using the hash # symbol in a normal link. For example:

yields the sentence fragment shown above.

To create new anchors within the site, you can use html inline. For example:

was added to the top of this page.

Links with previews

Links wrapped in unfurl shortcode will try to show a preview of the link og meta data on hover. This only works for links to other pages on rhino3d.com and other mcneel sites that we configure for this purpose.

For example

{{< unfurl >}}[docs link](https://docs.mcneel.com/rhino/8/help/en-us/commands/clippingdrawings.htm){{< /unfurl >}}

will produce docs link which shows a preview when you hover over it.

You can optionally override the title, image and description that gets shown in the popup by providing the additional arguments. For example:

{{< unfurl title-override="...h" description-override="..." image-override="https://..." >}}[Rhino3D homepage](https://www.rhino3d.com){{< /unfurl >}}

produces Rhino3D homepage

Inline Code

Text phrases can be easily marked up as code by surrounding them with back-ticks:

yields:

To write a line to the command line use the Rhino.RhinoApp.WriteLine method.

HTML Elements

HTML is not only supported on the block-level but also on the span-level:

yields:

This is written in red.

MathJax & LaTeX

markdown has support for LaTeX to PNG rendering via MathJax.

For example:

yields:

$$y = {\sqrt{x^2+(x-1)} \over x-3} + \left| 2x \over x^{0.5x} \right|$$

See the MathJax basic tutorial and quick reference on StackExchange.

Images

Images can be created in a similar way to links: just use an exclamation mark before the square brackets. The link text will become the alternative text of the image and the link URL specifies the image source:

yields:

Alternative, you can use the image shortcode as well, which accepts arguments for url, alt, width, and height.

Shortcodes

Shortcodes are Hugo’s way of inserting a html into your content that generate some special type of formatted output. Hugo comes with some built-in shortcodes for things like inserting Vimeo or YouTube videos, Instagram or Twitter posts, etc. but we can author our own shortcodes to suit our needs.

So far, we’ve got the following shortcodes of our own:

3dm

Use the 3dm shortcode to embed a 3D view of a 3dm file to a page.

yields:

and

yields:

Required Arguments:

• path: string. Path to the 3dm file, for example file residing in the same folder as .md content file could be renference as path="example.3dm".
• width: String. Pixel or Percentage value for width of the element.
• height: String. Pixel or Percentage value for height of the element.

Optional Arguments:

• camera: JSON. XYZ Position of the camera. Example: camera=`{"x":0,"y":50,"z":50}`
• background: String. Background color of the viewer. Example: background="transparent"
• title: String. Text overlay at the bottom of the element.
• text_color: String. Text color of the title. Example: text_color="red"
• settings: JSON. General settings for the viewer. Example: settings=`{"controls":false, "camera":{"type":"orthographic", "fov":50, "zoom":8}}`
• animation: JSON. Flip trhough set of predefined cameras, titles (TODO: and layers). Has two sub-objects; settings and frames. Example: animation=`{"settings":{"repeat":1, "eachDelay":2, "eachDuration":2}, "frames":[{"title":"left","camera":{"x":10,"y":-30,"z":10},"layers":"*"},{"title":"right","camera":{"x":0,"y":40,"z":5},"layers":"*"},{"title":"front","camera":{"x":40,"y":0,"z":5},"layers":"*"}]}`

Anchor

Creates an empty div with the specified ID and can be used as an #anchor anywhere in the page:

{{< anchor "custom_anchor" >}}

produces an empty div above this line, and can be referenced with a link #custom_anchor

Awesome (Font Awesome)

Font Awesome provides a huge library of vector icons that area easy to use with this sortcode:

{{< awesome fas fa-check small >}} produces:

You can also specify a size and a color like this:

{{< awesome id="fab fa-windows" size="small" color="#49abe9" >}} produces:

Badge

Adds a round background around text.

For example: {{< badge >}}1{{< /badge >}} Produces 1

BeforeAfter

You can create image-based before-and-after comparisons with the following shortcode:

produces:

You can also supply optional captions for the left and right images like this:

This shortcode uses the twentytwenty jQuery widget.

Call-Out

To call attention to a specific area of content on the page, use the call-out shortcode.

For example:

produces:

The following arguments can be passed to the shortcode to determine the type:

• note
• abstract
• info
• tip
• success
• question
• warning
• failure
• danger
• bug
• example
• quote
• new

Align

produces

Center

Use the center shortcode to center images, text, etc. in the div.

For example:

produces:

You can center images too using the image argument like this:

produces

Command

Command What’s New

Discourse Gallery

Use the discourse-gallery shortcode to embed a Discourse gallery with thumbnails as an iframe.

produces:

Arguments:

• category: Number. Restrict topics to a single category. Pass the id of the target category.
• tags: String. Restrict topics to those associated with this tag.
• per-page: Number. Controls how many topics to return. We suggest multiples of 3.
• template: String. Either complete (default) or basic While basic is just a list of topic titles, the complete template brings title, user name, user avatar, and topic thumbnail.
• top-period: String. One of all (default), yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily.

Figure

Use the figure shortcode to insert images with captions like this:

produces:

Optionally, you can also use the gallery and load-photoswipe shortcodes to embed figures in a gallery and pop-up an image overlay when users click or tap on the image.

Gallery

The gallery shortcode used to show multiple images in a thumbnail grid. It is used in conjuction with the figure and load-photoswipe shortcodes like this:

produces:

This shortcode uses the hugo-easy-gallery shortcode, along with Photoswipe.

Image (shortcode)

There is a basic image shortcode for doing simple sizing (this is an html resizing, not an actual image process - see imgproc below)…

Here is an example that changes the width of an image

produces

Image Processing (imgproc)

Hugo comes with a number of useful image processing routines like resizing and cropping. It’s important to understand that these are not just css styles, but actual processes the generate entirely new derivative files based on the image you use as your input. This is especially useful for generating thumbnails from large images so that a smaller (in kb) image is delivered in those situations where a larger one would cause slow pageloads. Think of these image processing routines as the equivalent of opening up your file in a program like Photoshop and performing resizing, format, or cropping operations on them.

To use the Image Processing routines on the page, use the imgproc shortcode.

Here is an example that resizes an image:

Make sure you close the final brace (not shown above, unfortunately) with a forward slash / like this…

produces

Latest Rhino Version

Avoid writing the latest Rhino version in text. Instead, the site itself knows which is the current shipping version. So use the following shortcode:

{{< latest-rhino-version >}} produces 8

Load Photoswipe

The load-photoswipe shortcode loads the javascript libraries on this page in order to support clicking or tapping on an image to show a lightbox-style image overlay. You only need to call it once per page like this:

and the library will load.

Keyboard

Adds styling around text to make it look like a keyboard key.

For example: {{< keyboard >}}Enter{{< /keyboard >}} Produces Enter

You can put anything between the opening and closing tags. Here are some common keys:

⌘ command ⏎ enter ⇧ shift ⌥ option ⌃ control ⌫ delete

New Label

Use the New Label along with the included_in.since frontmatter field to create version-specific “new” labels.

Standard size:

{{< new-label 6 >}} produces:

Small size:

An inline {{< new-label 6 small >}} small new label produces:

An inline

small new label. There’s a bug here that causes a line-wrap in the middle. Brian doesn’t know how to fix it.

Bullet in list:

produces:

• 6
  Feature description
• A feature from a previous version
• 7
  A feature from a previous version

Open Rhino

To open URL in Rhino, use the:

to produce:

Open Clip.3dm in Rhino

To open Rhino by clicking an image:

Page Search

Create a search bar to search through the contents of the page. Use shortcode below:

• elements is a list comma separated list of html elements.
• weights is their corresponding importance in the search results.

to produce:

Search-tag

These act as a hidden elements so they can be scrolled to. For example if you search for “Search for me” in the search bar above:

Search for me

Will scroll to right here.

Rhino Commands

Produces an icon followed by label of a Rhino command inline. For example use

Produces:

UniónBooleanaDeMallas

This shortcode pulls the command icon from docs.mcneel.com and expects the name of the image to match the english name of the command. But that’s not always the case. For example the name of the image for Rectangle command is rectangle_corner. In such cases, you can pass an additional image-name parameter to fix it.

Rectangle

Rhino Download

To produce a link to a Rhino download page, use the:

to produce:

• Download Rhino 8 Evaluation for Windows or Mac.
• Download Rhino 7 Evaluation for Windows.
• Download Rhino 7 for Windows.
• Download Rhino 8 Evaluation for Windows or Mac.
• Download Rhino 8 for Windows or Mac.

The acceptable arguments are:

1. version eg: 7, 8 (major versions only)
2. platform eg: windows or mac
3. type eg: beta, wip, or commercial.

Without any arguments, a link to the latest commercial version on each platform is produced:

results in :

• Download Rhino 8 Evaluation for Windows or Mac.

Row and Column

Use the {{< row >}} and {{< column >}} shortcodes together to create responsive flow layouts like this:

produces:

Slideshow

Use the slideshow shortcode to embed a sliding gallery of pictures.

Slideshow shortcode shows the name of the images under each slide.

Required Arguments:

• dir: string. the relative path of folder in /static containing the images.

Optional Arguments:

• width: string. pixel or percent value for overall width.
• height: string. pixel or percent value for overall height.
• mode: string. can be either "cover" or "contain".
• item-width: string. pixel value for individual slide width when mode is "contain", is ignored in "cover" mode.
• auto-slide: number. providing a value causes automatic transition of slides, value is delay between slides in milliseconds.
• arrow-left and arrow-right: string. font-awsome icon name for slideshow controls.

Carousel

carousel shortcode creates and infinitely scrolling gallery with zooming effect on the center image. The inner content of this shortcode is a toml list of items with caption and image url.

yields:

Required Arguments:

• items: toml. at least two items with caption and image entries. image url should be complete url of image in in new-source version of the site.

Optional Arguments:

• height: string. pixel or percent value for overall height.
• mode: string. can be either "cover" or "contain".
• auto-slide: number. providing a value causes automatic transition of slides, value is delay between slides in milliseconds.

Image-fade

image-fade shortcode indefinitely fades through provided images at given interval

yields:

Required Arguments:

• items: toml. at least two items with image entry. image url should be complete url of image in in new-source version of the site.

Optional Arguments:

• height: string. pixel or percent value for overall height.
• mode: string. can be either "cover" or "contain".
• focus: integer. duration in milliseconds that each slide is displayed.
• fade: integer. duration in milliseconds of fade transition between slides.

Subscribe

Use the subscribe shortcode to embed a button in the page that subscribes the user to the specified maillist.

yields:

Required Arguments:

• maillist: string. the name of the mailing list category matching of of the following "market_segment", "companion_product" or "profession".
• id: integer. the id of the mailing list corresponding to ids defined in the database see https://github.com/mcneel/rhino3d.com/blob/master/content/en/my-account/maillist/maillist.toml for a complete list of IDs.

Optional Arguments:

• label: string. human readable label of the button. (This value should be translated)
• class: string. name of css class to customize placement of the button, for example class="fixed-bottom-left" places the button on the bottom left corner of the page. Additional classes may be defined in page/global stylesheets.
• container: string. id of existing html element to move the button to, this can be any element that’s accessible on the page. For example table of contents has two empty elements on top and bottom of it that can be used for this purpose. container="toc-top-container" places the widget on the top of the table of contents. Similarly container="toc-bottom-container" places the widget on the bottom of table of contents.

Inner body:

Content between shortcode’s opening and closing tags will be displayed in a modal when user is not logged in. The example above has a login button along with a message. (Content should be translated)

Viewport

Adds styling around text to make it look like a rhino viewport title.

For example: {{< viewport >}}Perspective{{< /viewport >}} Produces Perspective | ▾

Vimeo and YouTube Videos

Vimeo

We have extended the built-in vimeo shortcode to support Autoplay and looping…

For example:

produces:

Update: Optional padding parameter added to make the iframe size fit the video tightly. The value for padding varies and depends on the aspect ratio of the video. Vimeo calculates this when you try to get the embed code for a video. Simply copy and paste the xx.xx% (including the %) to padding parameter: padding=xx.xx%

YouTube

Hugo has a built-in youtube shortcode that can be used to embed videos like this:

produces:

Year

Prints out the current year. Useful for copyright notices, etc.

For example:

produces:

2024

What’s New

Wikipedia Link

Use: {{< wikipedia-link Cosmic_latte >}} to get: ikipedia: Cosmic latte

Related topics

• How This Site Works
• markdown Cheat Sheet

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