Documentation

Author: ArminJo

Contributing.md

@@ -1,8 +1,13 @@
 # Contribution Guidelines
 
 This library is the culmination of the expertise of many members of the open source community who have dedicated their time and hard work.
-The best way to ask for help or propose a new idea is to create a new discussion and / or a new Pull Request
-with your code changes to allow you to share your own innovations with the rest of the community.
+
+If you want to contribute to this project:
+- Report bugs and errors
+- Ask for enhancements
+- Create issues and pull requests
+- Tell other people about this library
+- Contribute new protocols
 
 The following are some guidelines to observe when creating discussions / PRs:
 - Be friendly; it is important that we can all enjoy a safe space as we are all working on the same project and **it is okay for people to have different ideas**.
@@ -11,3 +16,28 @@ The following are some guidelines to observe when creating discussions / PRs:
  In short: 4 spaces indentation, no tabs, opening braces on the same line, braces are mandatory on all if/while/do, no hard line length limit.
  To beautify your code, you may use the online formatter [here](https://www.freecodeformat.com/c-format.php).
 - Cover **all** occurences of the problem / addition you address with your PR. Do not forget the documentation like it is done for existing code. Code changes without proper documentation will be rejected!
+
+## Adding new protocols
+To add a new protocol is quite straightforward. Best is too look at the existing protocols to find a similar one and modify it.<br/>
+As a rule of thumb, it is easier to work with a description of the protocol rather than trying to entirely reverse-engineer the protocol.
+Please include a link to the description in the header, if you found one.<br/>
+The **durations** you receive are likely to be longer for marks and shorter for spaces than the protocol suggests,
+but this depends on the receiver circuit in use. Most protocols use multiples of one time-unit for marks and spaces like e.g. [NEC](https://github.com/Arduino-IRremote/Arduino-IRremote/blob/master/src/ir_NEC.hpp#L62). It's easy to be off-by-one with the last bit, since the last space is not recorded by IRremote.
+
+Try to make use of the template functions `decodePulseDistanceData()` and `sendPulseDistanceData()`.
+If your protocol supports address and code fields, try to reflect this in your api like it is done in [`sendNEC(uint16_t aAddress, uint8_t aCommand, uint_fast8_t aNumberOfRepeats, bool aIsRepeat)`](https://github.com/Arduino-IRremote/Arduino-IRremote/blob/master/src/ir_NEC.hpp#L96)
+and [`decodeNEC()`](https://github.com/Arduino-IRremote/Arduino-IRremote/blob/master/src/ir_NEC.hpp#L194).<br/>
+
+### Integration
+To integrate your protocol, you need to extend the two functions `decode()` and `getProtocolString()` in *IRreceice.hpp*,
+add macros and function declarations for sending and receiving and extend the `enum decode_type_t` in *IRremote.h*.<br/>
+And at least it would be wonderful if you can provide an example how to use the new protocol.
+A detailed description can be found in the [ir_Template.hpp](https://github.com/Arduino-IRremote/Arduino-IRremote/blob/master/src/ir_Template.hpp#L11) file.
+
+### Creating API documentation
+To generate the API documentation, Doxygen, as well as [Graphviz](http://www.graphviz.org/) should be installed.
+(Note that on Windows, it is useful to specify the installer to add Graphviz to PATH or to do it manually.
+With Doxygen and Graphviz installed, issue the command
+`doxygen` from the command line in the main project directory, which will
+generate the API documentation in HTML format.
+The just generated `docs/index.html` can now be opened in a browser.

Contributors.md

@@ -25,6 +25,6 @@ These are the active contributors of this project that you may contact if there
 - [eshicks4](https://github.com/eshicks4)
 - [Jim-2249](https://github.com/Jim-2249)
 - [pmalasp](https://github.com/pmalasp )
-
+- [ElectronicsArchiver}(https://github.com/ElectronicsArchiver) improving documentation
 
 Note: Please let [ArminJo](https://github.com/ArminJo) know if you have been missed.