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.

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

  • OpenOffice 2.0 (still beta) 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.

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.