Each VIVO document consists of a large number of wiki pages. These pages must work well together, both on the wiki and when exported to a PDF file. Here are some suggestions to help that happen.

Page sizes

Keep each page to a manageable size, and focused on a particular topic. If you find that the page is too complex or too diverse, break it into smaller pages. Within each group of pages, the parent should contain introductory material or an overview, while the child pages explore individual topics.

Start with a Table of Contents

Start the page with a call to the "Table of Contents" macro. The Table of Contents will include all of the headings in the current page. It will also include a top-level heading for each child page, thanks to the "Children Display" macro.

When the document is exported to a PDF file, the "Table of Contents" macros are not included. Instead, the file begins with a table of contents for the full document.

Follow with an Excerpt

If a page has a parent, the parent will show the child's excerpt text in its "Children Display" macro.

Confluence will only show the first sentence of an excerpt, so the excerpt should ideally be a one-sentence summary of the page.

Starting a page with a summary can seem odd. Enclosing the excerpt in a panel sets it off nicely from the main body of the page.

End with a Children Display macro

The documentation wiki for VIVO includes a child display at the end of every page.  There is no need to include a children display macro explicitly.  It will be added for you.

Use all heading levels

The major headings on all pages should be Heading 1.  The second headings on all pages should be Heading 2.  Use the Heading styles only – do not format headings using bold, italics, etc.  When the pages are combined into a PDF file, the heading levels will be displayed properly and numbered correctly in the table of contents and in the document.

Pagination in the PDF document is controlled by the PDF template, not by the author.  Use page titles and page headings consistently.  The resulting PDF document will then be consistent.

Headings within the child pages are demoted accordingly, to keep the organization intact. So a level 2 heading in the Table of Contents might represent:

• a level 2 heading in the parent page,
• a level 1 heading in a child page,
• the title of a grandchild page.

Linking within the document

It's good to include links on the wiki pages, pointing to other areas of the document. However, these links will not be active in the PDF file. The text of the link should be sufficient to find its target.

When linking, don't link to a section number within the document. The section numbers are not available in the wiki pages, and a small change to the structure of the document could make the section numbers incorrect in the PDF.