Technical Style Guide
This is an interim style guide approved by the Technical Standing Committee, as allowed by §4 of the TSC charter. In due course it may be expanded.
Approved by the TSC on 9 September 2014, and amended 7 December 2015.
Document Format
Documents must be written using freely available formats supported on Windows, Linux, and OS X. We strongly suggest:
- Plain ASCII or UTF-8 text (.txt) where formatting is not essential.
- ASCII or UTF-8 Markdown (.md) where formatted text is desired.
- Open-source editable diagrams, such as Dia- or Inkscape-generated files. Since these tools are not as widely used, each diagram should be shared in PNG format as well as in the native format of the tool used.
Other formats can be used, but know that doing so reduces the chances that your formatting will be understood by others.
If WYSIWYG programs are used (MS Office, OpenOffice, LibreOffice, KOffice, Google Docs, etc) they should be assumed to contribute only text (content); all formatting varies enough from platform to platform that even simple ideas like italics cannot reliably be assumed to transfer correctly between platforms.
FHISO standards will normally be made available in both HTML and PDF formats.