Writing documentation with Doctave
So far, we have setup our account, downloaded the desktop app, and setup our first project.
Let's take a very high level look at how you write documentation with Doctave.
Desktop previews
Doctave's desktop app provides you two things:
- A preview of what your documentation will look like once published
- Warn you of potential issues, such as broken links, or syntax errors
The actual writing of your documentation is done with an editor of your choice. Whenever you make a change in your editor, the Doctave desktop app will immediately update to reflect the changes.
Typically, writers will have two windows open side by side: Doctave on one side and their editor on the other. You may want to install a Markdown syntax highlighter in your editor to make things easier to read.
Adding pages
To add a new page to your docs site, you create a new file. The path of the file in your project will determine what path the page will be accessible at.
For example, if you create a page under introduction/getting-started.md
, it
will be accessible to your readers online at
<your project's domain>/introduction/getting-started
.
The home page of your site is the README.md
file in the root of your project.
Doctave generates one for you when creating a project.
Navigation
The left side navigation is managed in the navigation.yaml
file. You can
create multiple sections, nested hierarchies, collapsible lists, subheadings,
and much more.
You can read more about how Doctave handles navigation here
Assets
You can include images and more as part of your documentation site. Doctave
will include all assets under an _assets
directory.
In order to include an image for example, you refer to the file by its path in the asset directory:
An image under _assets/cat.jpg
would be displayed as so:

Next step
➤ Next, let's publish your documentation!
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