Understanding the Cookbook Format
Problem
You want to contribute, but aren't familiar with the Cookbook format or don't know how your contribution should be formatted.
Solution
Cookbook-style guides contain recipes that guide a beginning programmer to a deeper knowledge of the subject by answering specific, "how-to" style questions. Cookbook recipes address more topics than API documentation for a class, but are smaller in scope than a topic-based guide.
All recipes follow the same format:
- Title
- Broadly explains the topic of the recipe
- Problem
- Outlines the recipe's goals
- Solution
- Summarizes the correct approach to addressing the problem
- Discussion
- Explores the solution in detail
A Cookbook does not need to be read in any particular order, and each recipe should contain all the information necessary for a beginner to address the problem statement. Referring to other recipes that are considered prerequisite knowledge is encouraged.
Discussion
Take a look at an O'Reilly Cookbook or the Coffeescript Cookbook. Both of these are great examples of the Cookbook format.