“The Swift Programming Language” book now published with DocC

Alex Martini is a member of the Developer Publications team at Apple.

We’re happy to announce that The Swift Programming Language book (TSPL) is now published using Swift-DocC, starting with Swift 5.8. TSPL is now ready to start accepting content contributions, under the direction of the Swift Documentation Workgroup.

This is a major step for the book. It was first release as open source in August 2022 and since then, we’ve merged over 50 pull requests as we converted to DocC. We also made enhancements to DocC based on what we learned working on the book, like adding control over automatic see-also sections and new on-page navigation. Other DocC content that guides developers through a linear narrative, like the documentation for large or complex packages, can also take advantage of these enhancements.

Get involved

Contribute content to TSPL. For some ideas of what you can write about, see the project’s GitHub issues page and the recently accepted Swift Evolution proposals. For details about making contributions, see the CONTRIBUTING.md file in the Git repository, including when to pitch large changes in the Swift Documentation forum category.

Contribute to a translation project. Translations of TSPL can now use the same publication pipeline as the English version of TSPL. Contributors to translations can follow changes in the English version by watching pitch threads on the Swift forum and pull requests in GitHub.

Improve DocC support for long-form content. There are more opportunities to contribute to an improved documentation experience, like adding support for interactive and offline content, and support for tested code listings. For more ideas, see the GitHub issues pages for TSPL and DocC.