| Filename extension | .page |
|---|---|
| Developed by | Shaun McCance GNOME |
| Type of format | markup language |
| Extended from | XML |
| Standard(s) | projectmallard.org 1.0 DRAFT |
Mallard is a markup language for the creation of help pages and user documentation for applications (technical documentation). The language is developed within the GNOME project. Mallard is in draft status, meaning, it is not completed yet.
Mallard is an XML language. Similar to DocBook it defines the logical structure of a document. The documents are then displayed in a help browser, which too creates links between the documents. Concepts such as guides, and topics provide means for reaching help pages in different ways.
At the moment, GNOME applications such as Empathy, Eye of GNOME, Evince and others use Mallard for documentation purposes.
Mallard pages can be shown in the GNOME help browser yelp. Further output formats are planned, they can be generated via command line using the tools that are provided via Gitorious:
User documentation can be written with normal document applications (e.g. LaTeX, OpenOffice, LibreOffice) or with wikis and HTML pages. Special documentation formats are: