Couchbase Vale Style Guide

This repository is the home of the Couchbase Style Guide files - also translated into Vale format!

Vale is an open-source text linter that Couchbase uses to help enforce style guidelines, right inside your code editor.

Get Started

To get started with the Vale Style guide, you need to:

1. Clone this repository to your computer.
2. Install Vale.
3. Set up a .vale.ini file.
4. Install AsciiDoctor.

Install Vale

To install Vale:

1. If you haven't already, install a package manager:

   • On Windows: Chocolatey
   • On Mac: Homebrew
   • On GNU/Linux: Don't use the Snap package manager. Download the precompiled binary of Vale.

2. Open a terminal application with administrator permissions.

3. Follow the instructions at Vale.sh for your platform.

The package manager does all of the heavy lifting to install Vale. If you receive a prompt to run additional scripts from your terminal, approve it.

Set Up A .vale.ini File

The .vale.ini file contains all of the necessary configuration for Vale to lint your text files.

You'll need to create this file and configure it, to make sure that Vale pulls in the style rules from the correct location on your computer:

1. In your file explorer, go to your $HOME directory:

   • On Windows: C:\Users\<yourusername>
   • On Mac: /Users/<yourusername>
   • On Linux: the location of the $HOME directory varies based on your specific Linux distribution.

2. In your $HOME directory, create a new plain text file called .vale.ini.

3. Open the .vale.ini file in a text editor.

4. Copy and paste the following text into the .vale.ini file:

StylesPath = ""
MinAlertLevel = suggestion 

Vocab = Couchbase

[asciidoctor]
description = YES
docname = YES
doctitle = YES
doctype = YES
docfile = YES
example-caption = YES
figure-caption = YES
important-caption = YES
listing-caption = YES
note-caption = YES
outfile = YES
part-signifier = YES
preface-title = YES
table-caption = YES
tip-caption = YES
toc-title = YES
warning-caption = YES

experimental = YES

attribute-missing = drop

[*.{adoc}]
BasedOnStyles = Vale, write-good, proselint, Couchbase, Google

5. Inside the quotation marks for the StylesPath, enter the location on your computer of the ValeStyles folder in this repository. For example, C:\Users\<yourusername>\GitHub\docs-style-guide\ValeStyles or /Users/<yourusername>/GitHub/docs-style-guide/ValeStyles.

Install AsciiDoctor

You need to install AsciiDoctor so Vale knows how to interpret the AsciiDoc file format that Couchbase uses to author documentation.

To use Vale with AsciiDoc on Windows, you need to install Ruby before you can install AsciiDoctor.

For all other systems, you can just install the AsciiDoctor package on your computer.

Windows

1. In a terminal window, run:

choco install ruby

2. Then:

gem install asciidoctor

MacOS

1. In a terminal window, run:

brew install asciidoctor

GNU/Linux

Consult the AsciiDoctor Docs for details based on your specific distribution's package manager.

Lint a File

After you've done all the setup, you're ready to lint some files!

1. Open the file or folder's location on your filesystem in a terminal window.

2. Run vale <FileName> or vale <FolderName>.

Tip: If you want Vale to print to a file that you can review later, add > <outputFileName>.txt to the end of your Vale command:

vale myFolder > valeResults.txt

Vale generates a report that provides the following information:

1. If you ran Vale on a folder, the name of the file where Vale found the following list of issues.
2. The line number and character/column number where Vale found an issue.
3. The severity of the issue: Suggestion, Warning, or Error.
4. The description of why Vale flagged the issue.
5. The location of the YAML file that flagged the issue, written as <FolderName>.<FileName>, based on the contents of ValeStyles in this repository.

If you run into issues linting a folder:

• Check your .vale.ini to see what file types Vale lints. If you see a [*] above the BasedOnStyles setting, Vale lints all file types. Enter a file type (.adoc, for example) to change the scope.
• Change the folder to limit the scope of the files you want Vale to lint. Large numbers of files might not run correctly through Vale.

For a nicer editing experience, try linting in real time inside VS Code.

Linting in Real Time

You can also get live feedback as you write from the Vale VSCode extension:

1. Click Extensions.
   
2. Search for Vale VSCode (by Chris Chinchilla).
3. Click Install.
4. Click the gear and go to Extension Settings.
   
5. Click Enable spell checking with Vale.
6. Set Readability Problem Location to both, or just inline.
7. Restart VS Code, by closing any open editor windows and reopening the application.

If the extension does not work as expected, you can go back into your Extension Settings for Vale and try the following:

1. In Config, input the path to your .vale.ini:
   • Mac: /Users/<yourusername>/.vale.ini
   • Windows: C:\Users\<yourusername>\.vale.ini
2. Find the path to the Vale.exe and add it in the Path field:
   • Mac: /usr/local/bin/vale
   • Windows: C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\vale\tools\vale.exe

Only make one of these changes at a time to help with troubleshooting. Make sure to restart VS Code in-betweeen any changes.

Note: The Vale VS Code extension only runs and checks for problems when the you save an open file. You can go to File and select Auto Save to have VSCode automatically save files as you are typing - giving you truly instant feedback on your writing. Be aware that this setting applies globally, and may have side-effects elsewhere.

Edit Vale Styles

To tweak the existing styles in Vale, open any .yml file in a text editor and make your changes.

Vale uses Go-based RegEx. If you need help to write a RegEx pattern, use a site like regex101.com to learn syntax. Make sure to actually test any of your rules through Vale Studio. Keep in mind that Vale extends the Go-based RegEx, and supports lookahead and lookbehind patterns.

If you have a specific term like a page or product name that must be spelled the same and appear the same way everywhere, add it to the Vocab files:

1. Go to ValeStyles\config\vocabularies\Couchbase.
2. Do one of the following:
   • To add a word or phrase that Vale should never flag as incorrect in any other rule, modify the accept.txt file.
   • To add a word or phrase that Vale should always reject that isn't yet covered by another rule, modify the reject.txt file.

Keep the following in mind:

• Add only a single word or phrase per line to the accept.txt or reject.txt.
• If multiple spellings for your word or phrase are correct, make sure that you add them with RegEx to the accept.txt. Otherwise, Vale flags any spellings or capitalization styles that don't exactly match what's present in the file.
• If your word or phrase includes punctuation or other characters that are a part of RegEx syntax, make sure you escape them with a backslash (\). Otherwise, Vale breaks.