Diff for "How_to_update_the_Cytoscape_manual"

The Cytoscape user manual exists as a Microsoft Word file in:

cytoscape\user_docs

To modify the manual, edit the document in Microsoft Word and check it back in to CVS. Someone (maybe it will be you!) will create a PDF from this Word document near release time for distribution.

It would be nice to have a more cross-platform and manageable solution to user documentation. Mike Smoot suggested DocBook, though as of late 2005, it appears not to have a GUI editor, which is definitely a requirement for us. If you are aware of other options, let us know.

MarcioSilva, 09/30/05:

Two options for DocBook editing with GUI editor:

• XMLEditor is specific for XML:

  • http://www.happy-monkey.net/docbook/gui-editor.html

  • http://www.xmlmind.com/xmleditor/

• [http://openoffice.org/ OpenOffice] can work with DocBook:

  • http://wiki.docbook.org/topic/OpenOffice

  • http://xml.openoffice.org/xmerge/docbook/UserGuide.html

  • [http://openoffice.org/ OpenOffice 2.0 (RC1)] has support for saving in docbook format directly:

attachment:ooo-docbook.png

An advantage of using OpenOffice is that it can open the current manual in MS-Word format (see the picture above). As many of Cytoscape developers are Mac users, OpenOffice is also not a problem as it runs on MacOSX too. It is also ported to Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris and Windows, so portability is not too much a problem here . The source code is also available, so it can be ported to other platforms too. For the PDF generation, one can use the native PDF exporter of OpenOffice (no need for extra tools).

I haven't tested OpenOffice with DocBook (because I never worked with DocBook ) and just found XMLEditor using Google, so I haven't tested it either.