Documentation conventions

Contents

• Overview
• Feature level
• Indexes and glossary
• Headings
• Styles
• BNF grammars

Overview

This topic provides a quick introduction to the conventions used in this documentation.

Feature level

EPOC Release 5 adds new features to previous releases of EPOC, including new programming interfaces, and modifications to existing interfaces. The icon beside a heading indicates such features.

The tool chain is similar to that used in previous releases, so the feature level icon is rarely used. Its use makes it simple to recognise new ER5 features even without checking which document you are reading — which may not be immediately clear, for example, when jumping between different documents.

Indexes and glossary

The Glossary provides definitions of important terms used in this documentation. Note that terms first used in other documentation, such as the EPOC C++ System Documentation, are defined in the glossaries belonging to those documents.

The Indexes provide lists figures used, with hyperlinks to where they are described in the documentation.

Headings

Styles

The documentation uses various typographic styles. Some styles are used to make text easier to understand, for example to highlight code fragments, intended user input, literal filenames, and other quoted text; other styles are used to flag restrictions and general applicability of text. Link styles are also used for hypertext navigation.

BNF grammars

Backus-Naur Form (BNF) grammars are used as a tool for describing language constructions. For example:

---

select-statement :
      SELECT select-list FROM table-name [ restriction ] [ ordering ]

---

---

restriction :
      WHERE search-condition

---

---

ordering :
      ORDER BY sort-order

---

A BNF definition states that the named item given before the colon is written as described after the colon. For example, an ordering is written as ORDER BY followed by a sort-order (which may be defined elsewhere).