amber-developers: Some comments on amber10 documentation

From: David A. Case <case.scripps.edu>
Date: Fri, 7 Dec 2007 11:58:34 -0800

Hi everyone:

There have been some minor changes in documentation files that I want to bring
to your attention.

1. The AmberTools docs are now in amber10/doc/AmberTools.{lyx,pdf}, with the
    .lyx file as the source and the .pdf file as what users will see.

   a. You can download LyX from www.lyx.org, and use it to make modifications.
      Or, just send plain text corrections and updates to me.

   b. Tom has promised to convert ptraj documentation to latex/lyx, but that
      has not yet been done, but should be coming soon.

   c. There are some obvious nice features about latex, and I think we should
      be generally moving in that direction:

      -- the hyperref package means that all cross-references in the pdf file
         (table of contents, index) are links.
      -- the listing package can be used to get nice-looking program or
         output listings.
      -- the math and typesetting are done right, and it is fairly easy to
         maintain a consistent style
      -- we can probably create an HTML version, although I haven't really
         tried that yet.

   d. Right now, the bibliography is hard-coded, but this will be converted
      to bibtex as I get time. There are still glitches in here (cover page
      especially, but I don't think these will be all that hard to iron out.

2. The Amber documentation is still in .me (troff) files that get converted
    to amber10/doc/amber10.pdf. We would need an ambitious volunteer to
    convert this to latex in time for the Amber 10 release, so I don't really
    expect that to happen. Either send plain text corrections to me, or
    edit the .me files (syntax is really not all that hard to grok -- if
    you can write C++ or F90 modules, you ought to be able to figure out that
    a paragraph starts with ".pp".)

3. Above are formatting issues. As far as the content goes, we need lots of
    improvements -- weeding out old cruft, adding in more and better examples,
    updating to any new functionality, updating the bibliography to recent
    publications, and so on. Just because you know how to use some feature
    doesn't mean that others will, so please be diligent here. Being an
    "Amber author" implies that you are willing to work on documentation, and
    to help answer questions on the mailing reflector.

...best wishes to all for the upcoming holidays!....dac
Received on Sun Dec 09 2007 - 06:07:43 PST
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