Vale-based technical documentation style guide

A Vale-compatible style for technical writers documenting open source software and for anyone writing about Open Source. The style guide closely follows the SUSE Documentation Style Guide and is developed by the SUSE Documentation Team.

Checks

The supplied rules perform the following checks:

• common language usage errors
• punctuation
• editorializing
• wordiness
• terminology
• corporate speak
• inclusive language

Installation on Linux

The following installation procedure has been tested on Linux Mint and openSUSE.

Option 1. Install precompiled binary

1. Check the available tags at https://github.com/errata-ai/vale/tags
2. Use wget to download the latest tag, for example:

wget https://github.com/errata-ai/vale/releases/download/v2.20.0/vale_2.20.0_Linux_64-bit.tar.gz

3. Create a vale subdirectory in your home directory and extract the downloaded archive there:

test -d ~/vale || mkdir ~/vale
tar xvf vale*.tar.gz -C ~/vale

4. Add vale to PATH by adding the directory to .bashrc and reload it:

   echo 'export PATH=~/vale:"$PATH"' >> .bashrc
   source ~/.bashrc

Instead of ~/vale, you can move the binary to any directory that is in $PATH.

Option 2. Install distribution provided binary

vale is widely packaged by the distribution providers, so install it for your distribution if provided in a recent enough version. Please check the packaging status:

For example in openSUSE Leap 15.5 or newer, vale can be installed by issuing:

zypper install vale

Option 3. Install via Brew

1. Install Brew:

   /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"

2. Install Vale:

   brew install vale

Install the style guide rules

1. Create the styles directory: mkdir ~/styles
2. Clone the Git repository: cd ~/styles && git clone https://github.com/openSUSE/suse-vale-styleguide.git

Create configuration file

Create a configuration file in your home directory:

nano ~/.vale.ini

Add the following configuration:

StylesPath = styles
MinAlertLevel = suggestion
[asciidoctor]
experimental = YES
[*{xml,adoc,md}]
BasedOnStyles = common

3. Save the changes.

Add DocBook-XML and AsciiDoc support (openSUSE)

1. Install the libxslt-tools and docbook-xsl-stylesheets packages.
2. Open the .vale.ini file for editing and update the existing configuration as follows:

StylesPath = styles
MinAlertLevel = suggestion
[asciidoctor]
experimental = YES
[*.xml]
Transform = /usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/suse2022-ns/xhtml/docbook.xsl
BasedOnStyles = common, docbook
[*.adoc]
BasedOnStyles = common, asciidoc
[*.{xml,adoc,md}]
BasedOnStyles = common

3. Save the changes.

Add XML support (Linux Mint)

1. Install the docbook5-xml and docbook-xsl packages.
2. Open the .vale.ini file for editing and update the existing configuration as follows:

StylesPath = styles
MinAlertLevel = suggestion
[asciidoctor]
experimental = YES
[*.xml]
Transform = /usr/share/xml/docbook/stylesheet/nwalsh/html/docbook.xsl
BasedOnStyles = common, docbook
[*{xml,adoc,md}]
BasedOnStyles = common

3. Save the changes.

Add VS Code and VSCodium integration

In VS Code, install the Vale +VS Code extension. In VSCodium, install Vale +VS Code extension.

Source code

In VS Code or VSCodium, choose File > Preferences > Settings and specify the path to the Vale binary (for example, /usr/local/bin/vale) under Vale > Vale CLI: Path.

Problems?

Please report bugs and issues in the Issues section.

Contribute

If you've found an error, or you have a suggestion for improvement, open an issue in the Issues section.

To add a new feature or fix issues yourself, proceed as follows.

1. Fork the project's repository.
2. Create a feature branch using the git checkout -b new-feature command.
3. Add your new feature or fix bugs and run the git commit -am 'Add a new feature' command to commit changes.
4. Push changes using the git push origin new-feature command.
5. Submit a pull request.