Scala Language Reference

First of all, the language specification is meant to be correct, precise and clear.

Second, editing, previewing and generating output for the markdown should be simple and easy.

Third, we'd like to support different output formats. An html page per chapter with MathJax seems like a good start, as it satisfies the second requirement, and enables the first one.

Editing

We use Jekyll 2 and Redcarpet to generate the html. Essentially, this is what github pages use.

Building

Travis CI builds the spec automatically on every commit to master and publishes to http://www.scala-lang.org/files/archive/spec/2.11/.

To preview locally, run bundle exec jekyll serve -d build/spec/ -s spec/ -w --baseurl="" (in the root of your checkout of scala/scala), and open http://0.0.0.0:4000/. Jekyll will rebuild as you edit the markdown, but make sure to restart it when you change _config.yml.

General Advice for editors

• All files must be saved as UTF-8: ensure your editors are configured appropriately.
• Use of the appropriate unicode characters instead of the latex modifiers for accents, etc. is necessary. For example, é instead of \'e.
• MathJAX errors will appear within the rendered DOM as span elements with class mtext and style attribute color: red applied. It is possible to search for this combination in the development tools of the browser of your choice. In chrome, CTRL+F / CMD+F within the inspect element panel allows you to do this.

Macro replacements:

• While MathJAX just support LaTeX style command definition, it is recommended to not use this as it will likely cause issues with preparing the document for PDF or ebook distribution.
• \SS (which I could not find defined within the latex source) seems to be closest to \mathscr{S}
• \TYPE is equivalent to `\boldsymbol{type}'
• As MathJAX has no support for slanted font (latex command \sl), so in all instances this should be replaced with \mathit{}
• The macro \U{ABCD} used for unicode character references can be replaced with \uABCD.
• The macro \URange{ABCD}{DCBA} used for unicode character ranges can be replaced with \uABCD-\uDBCA.
• The macro \commadots can be replaced with , … ,.
• There is no adequate replacement for \textsc{...} (small caps) in pandoc markdown. While unicode contains a number of small capital letters, it is notably missing Q and X as these glyphs are intended for phonetic spelling, therefore these cannot be reliably used. For now, the best option is to use underscore emphasis and capitalise the text manually, _LIKE THIS_.

Unicode Character replacements

• The unicode left and right single quotation marks (‘ and ’) have been used in place of ` and ', where the quotation marks are intended to be paired. These can be typed on a mac using Option+] for a left quote and Option+Shift+] for the right quote.
• Similarly for left and right double quotation marks (“ and ”) in place of ". These can be typed on a mac using Option+[ and Option+Shift+].