ludic/tools/docgen

Ludic documentation generator

Generates the public documentation site (the pages branch) from a single source of truth, so the site can never drift from the language.

Source of truth

docs/
  language/<category>/<id>.md    one file per symbol — keyword, type, phase,
                                 builtin, namespace method, operator, annotation
  language/<category>/_section.md   section title + blurb + order
  language/colors/palette.json   the 221 named colors (generated by `x docs-palette`)
  site/site.json                 landing-page messaging (hero, features, …)
  site/snippets/*.ludic          the code shown on the landing page (real programs)
tools/docgen/inventory.json      the authoritative symbol set the coverage guard checks

A symbol file

---
id: screen-fill_rectangle     # anchor + page name (screen-fill_rectangle.html)
name: Screen.fill_rectangle
category: screen
kind: namespace-method        # keyword|type|phase|namespace-method|builtin|annotation|operator
tokens: Screen.fill_rectangle # literal token(s) the highlighter matches & links
sig: Screen.fill_rectangle(x, y, width, height, color)
tip: Draw a solid, filled rectangle.     # one sentence — the hover-card summary
order: 1
ns: Screen                    # namespace-method only
member: fill_rectangle        # namespace-method only
related: screen-clear screen-draw_rectangle
---

Rich description — inline `<code>`/`backticks`, "model instance" language.

Parameters:                   # for anything that takes arguments
- `x` — the left edge, in pixels
- `color` — the fill color, e.g. a `Color.*` name

​```ludic
program Example { … descriptive-named, compilable … }
​```

What it produces

One page per symbol (<id>.html), a namespace overview page per namespace (ns-screen.html … ns-color.html), a searchable index (api.html, fuzzy search over every symbol), the landing page (index.html), the ludic-highlight.js highlighter (all its symbol tables, tips, per-item link targets, per-parameter anchors and hover-card data generated from the sources above), symbols.json, and .nojekyll.

In any code sample: keywords/types/builtins/annotations link to their page; Screen.fill_rectangle links Screen → the namespace page and fill_rectangle → the method page separately; a named argument like width: links to that parameter's anchor; Color.Charcoal links Color and Charcoal separately; hovering any token shows a summary card from the real API data.

Build & check

The generator and its guards are written in Ludic and run through x — there is no Python in the pipeline. assets/ (the CSS/HTML/JS templates) and inventory.json are the only inputs the tools here still read directly.

bin/x docs-gen --out build/pages    # generate the whole site
bin/x docs-check build/pages        # coverage + duplicate-token + link guard
bin/x check-docs                    # parse every ```ludic doc fence

docs-check fails CI if any symbol in inventory.json lacks a page, if a token is documented on two pages, or if a highlighter link points at a missing page — so "every symbol is documented, autogenerated each time" is enforced. It needs a built bin/x (bootstrapped from the IR seed with clang alone).

Publish

.forgejo/workflows/docs.yml bootstraps the toolchain from the IR seed and runs x docs-gen + x docs-check on every push to main that touches docs/**, tools/docgen/** or tools/x/**, and publishes the result to the pages branch root. index.html + .nojekyll always stay at the root.

Colors

palette.json and selfhost/backend/stdlib/emit_color.ludic are both generated by bin/x docs-palette from a single palette table — the pal_add(...) rows in tools/x/docgen.ludic. Edit the table there and regenerate; do not hand-edit the generated files.