! ==============================
! Format for MESA defaults files
! ==============================

   ! This document defines a format for MESA defaults files.
   ! Because these files are compiled, documenation must be in commments.
   ! After leading spaces and ! are stripped, this file should be valid
   ! reStructuredText (reST) so that it can rendered in the Sphinx docs.
   ! This file is written in the format it describes.


! Comments
! ========

      ! Comment lines begin with a bang, followed by a single space,
      ! and then have at least one non-whitespace character.  Empty
      ! comments are treated like blank lines.


   ! Regular Comments
   ! ________________

      ! Most comments will be paragraphs of text.

      ! In reST, a paragraph is chunks of text separated by one or
      ! more blank lines. indentation is significant in reST, so all
      ! lines of the same paragraph must be left-aligned to the same
      ! level of indentation.

      ! Each block of comments is treated as a paragraph, and so the
      ! lengths of the lines will not be preserved.  (This feature
      ! allow us to nicely display much of the content in a non-fixed
      ! width font!)  For example, the following two blocks will look
      ! similar when rendered for the web.

      ! This block has no line breaks.

      ! This block
      ! has several
      ! line
      ! breaks

   ! Formatted Comments
   ! __________________

      ! More complicated comments benefit greatly from additional
      ! formatting.

      ! You can trigger emphasis using *one asterisk* for italics or
      ! **two asterisks** for bold.  The use of ``backquotes`` lets
      ! you put fixed-width font material inline.

      ! It is frequently helpful to make a list

      ! + foo
      ! + bar
      ! + baz

      ! If you're writing code in your comments, then you probably
      ! want things to appear in a fixed-width font in code blocks.
      ! To do so, end a paragraph with the special marker :: (double colon).
      ! Then write your code as an indented block surrounded by blank lines.
      ! (Remember, a comment begins a bang & space,
      ! so you must have at least 2 spaces after the ! to indent.)

      ! ::

      !  foo =   1
      !  bar =  10
      !  baz = 100


      ! By default, blocks trigger fortran syntax highlighting::

      !     subroutine foo(bar)
      !       implicit none
      !       integer, intent(in) :: bar
      !       bar = bar + 1
      !     end subroutine foo

      ! If you know where you want the line breaks to be, but don't
      ! want to render things as code (in a fixed-width font), you
      ! can force a line break by starting lines with a | (pipe).

      ! | These lines are
      ! | broken exactly like in
      ! | the source file.


! Options & Defaults
! ==================


   ! Single Options
   ! ______________

      ! Most MESA options stand alone and have their own
      ! documentation.


      ! number_option
      ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      ! Number options are great.  MESA is good at taking numbers
      ! and making more numbers for you.  Often you'll want to set
      ! ``number_option > 0``, but sometimes you want to set
      ! ``number_option <= 0``.

      ! ::

    number_option = 1


      ! string_option
      ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      ! String options are great.  You can tell MESA what you want
      ! it to do.

      ! ::

    string_option = 'make me a sandwich'


      ! boolean_option
      ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      ! Boolean options are great.  They can take one of two values:

      ! + .true.
      ! + .false.

      ! ::

    boolean_option = .true.


   ! Multiple Options
   ! ________________


      ! xa_average_lower_limit_species
      ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
      ! xa_average_lower_limit
      ! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

      ! Sometimes there are options that need to grouped together,
      ! because they share documentation. If options are to be
      ! grouped, both their headings and their default values should
      ! be adjacent.

      ! ::

    xa_average_lower_limit_species(1) = ''
    xa_average_lower_limit(1) = 0

! Whitespace Style
! ================

      ! An indent is 3 spaces.  No tabs are used.  Almost all
      ! whitespace at the beginning of lines is strictly cosmetic and
      ! is not used by the parser in determining the structure of the
      ! file.  Whitespace at the end of lines should be avoided.