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explain

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Updated 10-15 17:14

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Explainer Document Conventions

Term handling

  • Put a term list at the top of the document in table form (| Term | Description |). Every specialised term used in the body must be defined in this list at first occurrence.
  • A term-list entry defines what the term is in one or two sentences. The functional or behavioural detail goes in the body, not in the term list.
  • Even widely recognised proper nouns (industry-standard product names, infrastructure components, etc.) get defined here. Assume the reader does not know them.
  • When defining a compound term, define the constituent words too. If the compound has three words, give all three their own entries — readers cannot be expected to infer one from another.

Diagram conventions

  • Use Mermaid for diagrams. Do not use ASCII art.
  • Every node label is a term that exists in the term list. Do not introduce a new term inside a diagram.
  • Do not put <br/> inside a Mermaid node. Many renderers display the literal HTML tag. If a line break is needed, separate with / or shorten the text to fit one line.
  • For diagrams with four or more nodes, or where any label is long, use graph TD (top-down). graph LR (left-right) collapses long-label graphs into an unreadable horizontal strip.

Granularity of the description

  • Do not gloss details with vague language. Subjects, objects, and verbs must be explicit.
  • A phrase like "A uses B to do X" must specify what A is and why A is needed for X.
  • Avoid vague verbs like "receives" or "passes". Spell out who does what to bring the state about (e.g. "receives the address" → "the platform allocates the address automatically").
  • Do not require the reader to make a leap between steps. Every step's causal connection to the next is explicit.
  • Describe the mechanism in its general form first; tie it to specific named instances afterwards as "in case X, ...". Do not anchor the whole description to a single proper-noun example.

Structure

  1. Term list
  2. Background (why this thing is necessary, or what problem it addresses)
  3. Mechanism (how it works — includes the diagrams)
  4. Concrete steps (commands, procedures, or worked examples)
  5. Current state (where things stand today — for ongoing systems)