Documentation

The documentation provided with this release is not complete yet, but it should be enough to understand how to use and configure Amaya. Some documentation is also available for developers.

Using Amaya

• Amaya English user manual (English manual.pdf, French manuel.pdf).
• Presentation of Amaya and its main features in the W3C Note "An Introduction to Amaya".
• Description of the current implementation status of Cascading Style Sheets in Amaya.
• Note on using proxies with Amaya.
• Note on configuring your WWW server to understand the PUT method.
• Note on fonts configuration in Amaya
• Templates have been introduced in Amaya (work still in progress)
• Tutorial on How To Build A Webpage in Amaya by Jeff Hunt

Compiling Amaya

For those who want to port Amaya to a new platform or adapt it to their needs, there is a document which explains:

How to compile the Amaya environment on Unix platforms from the distributed source tree.

Compiling Amaya on PC / Windows platforms is different. See Compiling Amaya On Windows NT for more information on how to compile and install Amaya.

Translating Amaya dialogs

The text of menus, dialog boxes, and messages are stored in files found in the Amaya/config directory: xx-amayadialogue, xx-amayamsg, and xx-libdialogue, where xx represents the code of the selected language (en, fr, etc.). All these files are generated by a Perl script applied to following three xml files:

1. menu entries (base_am_dia.xml)
2. amaya messages and dialogs (base-am_msg.xml)
3. thotlib messages and dialogs (base_am_lib.xml)

The best way to add a new language is to send us a new copy of these three files, with the new <language> declaration in the <control> section, and a new <message> entry for each <label>.

If you have access to the Amaya CVS base, the Perl script is Amaya/tools/xmldialogues/scripts/Am_dial_managment.pl

Extending dictionaries

Amaya is able to work with several dictionaries. It selects the current set of dictionaries according to the language of the current element. Within a <p xml:lang="en">, it will use Eprinc.dic and Eperso.dic (or .DIC dictionaries if .dic are not available). Eprinc.dic is the main compressed English dictionary. Eprinc.dic is the main textual English dictionary. Eperso.dic (or Eperso.DIC) dictionary registers personal English words. Within a <p xml:lang="fr">, it will use Fprinc.dic and Fperso.dic. dictionaries.

The format of a .DIC dictionary is very simple:

• the first line gives the number of words and the number of characters (including following newline characters).
• each following lines list words; there is a word by line ordered by size then ordered by alphabetic order.

When you ask Amaya to learn the new word, it inserts it in the $AmayaHome/dictionary.DCT dictionary. That dictionary has exactly the same format as .DIC dictionaries and you can use that facility to extend or create a directory.

Suppose I want to extend the French directory:

1. I download extenddic.tgz to get the source of the French directory: extenddic/dic/Fprinc.DIC
2. I copy the Fprinc.DIC to $AmayaHome/dictionary.DCT and I add some missing words with the learn function of Amaya.
3. I use the diccompress program to generate a new compressed Fprinc.dic and install this new version in Amaya/dicopar directory.

The diccompress program source and current existing .DIC dictionaries are available in extenddic.tgz tar file. The included extenddic directory must be created next to the Amaya source directory as diccompress.c uses Amaya include files.

Developer's corner

Those who want to extend or change Amaya need to read the following documentation:

• Overview of the Amaya architecture.
• The Thot API manual explains how the Thotlib works and gives the list of available functions
• The Thot Application generation manual explains how to generate menus and the mechanism of Thot events.
• The Thot language manual gives the syntax of the S, P and T languages.
• The Amaya-dev.html page gives the conventions for writing code in the Thotlib and in Amaya.

Amaya is based on the results from the Thot research activity developed at INRIA.

Publications

Some articles about Amaya have been published in scientific conferences and journals:

• Techniques for Authoring Complex XML Documents (html, pdf), Vincent Quint, Irรจne Vatton, DocEng 2004, ACM Symposium on Document Engineering
• Towards Active Web Clients (html, pdf), Vincent Quint, Irรจne Vatton, DocEng 2005, ACM Symposium on Document Engineering
• Templates, Microformats and Structured Editing pdf, html), F. Campoy Flores, V. Quint, I. Vatton, DocEng 2006, ACM Symposium on Document Engineering