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Slate

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description Slate Overview

Slate is an open-source static site generator specifically engineered to produce clean, responsive, three-column API documentation from Markdown source files. Built primarily with Ruby and Middleman, it allows developers to output an intuitive interface that displays code examples on the right and descriptions on the left. It is widely used by software engineers and technical writers who need to generate and host easily navigable developer documentation.

help Slate FAQ

Is Slate documentation still maintained in 2024?

While Slate remains widely used, the original repository has not seen major feature updates in several years and suffers from a large backlog of open issues. Many developers have since migrated to modern alternatives like Stoplight or Redocly for generating OpenAPI documentation.

Does Slate documentation run on Node.js?

No, Slate is actually built on Ruby and utilizes the Middleman static site generator to build its documentation pages. You will need to have Ruby, Bundler, and Node.js installed on your system to successfully run the local development server.

How do I change the color theme in my Slate API documentation?

Slate uses SCSS for its styling, and you can easily change the primary colors by opening the `source/stylesheets/variables.scss` file. Inside this file, you can modify the hex codes for the primary colors, navigation background, and code block syntax highlighting to match your brand.

Can I use Slate to generate documentation from a Swagger JSON file?

Slate does not natively import or render Swagger or OpenAPI JSON specifications out of the box; it requires you to write your documentation in Markdown. If you want to render an OpenAPI spec, you are much better off using a dedicated tool like Swagger UI or Redoc.

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