The Author/Editor enables you to create and edit pages that conform to The Manuals Machine Standard Document Type, to Carrier Pages for other types of content. The Administration Package provides tools for organising the Volume and perfoming maintenance functions.
The structure of the Table-of-Contents is explained under How Volumes Work.
One of the most important Admin Package tools is the TOC Builder. This enables you to set up the Master TOC, which is the roadmap to the Volume and specifies how the subsidiary TOC files for chapters and subchapters are to be references and stored.
The TOC Compiler can recreate all the TOC structures to incorporate the latest definitions of what page should be included in any chapter, how they should be ordered and the titles that should be shown. If only one chapter is being worked on there's a function to regenerate just the one TOC file. There's also a Chapter Builder, which enables you to operate on a single chapter. You can add, delete and move pages, and modify their TOC-related settings such as titles and synopsis.
The Index Compilers scan all of the files in the Volume and look for indexing specifications in the XML content files and Carrier Pages. The Manuals Machine provides an Alpha Index designed to have the look-and-feel of the index in a reference book, a Keyword Index, and a File Name Index intended principally for use by authors and administrators.
These utilities enable you to conveniently view all files that may be used for control and customisation of the Library and Volume. The include the LibraryConfig.xml and VolumeConfig.xml files, CSS Style Sheets used to customise appearance, and the XSLT Stylesheets used for displaying pages - including any extension templates that you have provided.
While the Admin Package provides viewers for these components, current versions of The Manuals Machine do not provide editors. It is expected that administrators will already have their preferred editors for thse types of files.
These utilities provide, in a single location, a range of functions that are included within the Author/Editor. They include a tool to generate generic HTML by applying to an XML page its preferred stylesheet, and saving the result as XHTML. This enables The Manuals Machine Author/Editor to be used to prepare pages for display by web browsers with no or inadequate XML/XSLT support.
Non-XML content must be provided with Carrier Pages in order to be fully integrated into a Manuals Machine Volume. The Content File Importer provides a powerful and convenient way to do this for batches of similar files - such as the JPG files you have unloaded from a camera's memory card, a product documentation library on PDFs, or a set of XML technical documents that you have received from a supplier.
You put these files into a subfolder then run the CFI. It automatically generates Carrier Pages for all of a particular type, generates preliminary TOC and Index entries, and prepares a complete TOC section covering the set of files. This TOC can then be used to browse the content files via their Carrier Pages review them. During this browse/review they can be edited using a subset of the Author/Editor functions, to add titles and synopses, to extend and finalise the index specifications, and to rename files. Selective delation can also be performed (to weed out the bad photos!).
When ready, the imported files can be promoted to full membership of the Volume either individually or as a batch. The TOC and Index Compilers should then be run to incorporate all details that have been added during the review.
The Volume is simply a folder in a Windows file system, which can have any required subfolder structure below it. It's completely permitted to employ other file managers (including Windows Explorer) and to use other editors (including Windows Notepad, or XML editors) to work on the content.
The Admin Package includes tools to run schema checks and to tidy indentation on XML content files after they have been edited manually.