[graphl-cvs] graphl/doc/manual index.html

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		<h1>The Graphl User Manual</h1>
		
		<h2>Introduction</h2>
		
		<p>Hi all, this is a very rough first guide to using <a href="http://www.mediavirus.org/graphl">graphl</a> as a graph viewing and editing tool.
		   As this is a leisure project, this guide might become outdated as graphl evolves and new features
		   are added. However, I am willing (as of now) to support you personally, so if anything doesn't work
		   like expected, feel free to drop me a line at
		   <a href="mailto:led...@im...">led...@im...</a>. Don't expect an immediate
		   answer, I am a lousy mail-answerer, but eventually I will come back to you.</p>
		<p>OK, let's get started right away with the most important stuff you were willing to pull your toenails
			out to read... Iiiiit's the</p>
			
		<h2>Disclaimer!!!</h2>
		
		<p>graphl is <strong>alpha quality software</strong>. This means that everything can change anytime, new versions
		   <em>will</em> be incompatible to previous ones, and while using it you may expect serious crashes, 
		   dataloss, frustration and/or hair loss. Don't blame me, I've told you before! It may be completely unsuitable for
		   you at the present stage, but if this is the case it might be worthwile to chack back half a year later
		   or so to see how much it has progressed - depending on my motivation, a lot of things are possible in a half year...</p>
		
		<p>If the thing crashes on you or does unexpected tings, it would be nice to
		   email me a <em>reproducible</em> error report, so maybe I can fix the thing in a future release.</p>		   
			
		<h2>Installing graphl</h2>
		
		<p>graphl can be obtained from its <a href="http://www.mediavirus.org/graphl">website</a>. Note that currently this
		   URL is redirected to a different server, but that might change in the future. The URL in the link above
		   will remain stable however, I own this domain and I am not planning to give it back in my lifetime.</p>
		
		<p>Java installed...</p>
		
		<p>After downloading the .zip package (I don't provide other packages currently, every platform should be able to
		   unzip it. If you're to cool a linux hacker, and you reject to bother with .zip files, go build it from
		   <a href="#building">source</a>). Ahm. So - after downloading the .zip file, unpack it to a directory of your choice,
		   and view the contents of that directory. It cointains various folders, and some files. You can go through
		   the README.txt, the changelog and the license, if you really hope to find useful information in there. The only
		   file that is really interesting for now is <code>graphl.bat</code> (for windows users) and <code>graphl.sh</code>
		   (for Unix and Mac users). These scripts start graphl - it's no shell magic, these scripts just save you some
		   typing to correctly start the java interpreter etc. - if you're interested, look what's inside the scripts, and
		   you will see what it's doing. (BTW: I am not sure if the .sh thing works at the moment - you see I am a
		   windows user, and I don't know a thing about unix stuff. I think I remember we tried this out on a Mac once though,
		   but if it doesn't work it would be amazingly fabulous (or fabulously amazing?) if you could fix it and send me
		   the corrected version ;)</p>

		<h2>Starting graphl</h2>

		<p>You can launch graphl with the script, by double-clicking it or typing the name in the console. This also
			opens up the possibility to add some command-line options to influence the behaviour of graphl:</p>
		
		<table>
			<tr><th colspan="2" align="left">graphl command line options</th></tr>
			<tr><td><code>size=&lt;width&gt;,&lt;height&gt;</code></td><td>Specify the size of the graphl window in pixels.</td></tr>
			<tr><td><code>pos=&lt;x&gt;,&lt;y&gt;</code></td><td>Specify the position of the graphl window on the screen.</td></tr>
			<tr><td><code>decorations={on|off}</code></td><td>Turn OS-specific window border on or off (default=on).</td></tr>
			<tr><td><code>toolbar={on|off}</code></td><td>Turn the "toolbar" above the graphl rendering area on or off (default=on).</td></tr>
			<tr><td><code>menubar={on|off}</code></td><td>Turn the menubar on or off (default=on).</td></tr>
			<tr><td><code>refresh=&lt;seconds&gt;</code></td><td>Reload all graphs every &lt;seconds&gt;. Currently defunct.</td></tr>
			<tr><td><code>config=&lt;configfile&gt;</code></td><td>Config file to load (see <a href="#config">below</a>).</td></tr>
			<tr><td><code>{&lt;filename&gt;|&lt;url&gt;}</code></td><td>Load the specified file or URL. This should be extended to a list
						                                                of filenames, since graphl can load multiple files at once.</td></tr>
		</table>
		   		
		<p>So, for example iy you want to show a graph without interaction in fullscreen mode on a 1024x768 screen, you would use
		<code>graphl pos=0,0 size=1024,768 decorations=off toolbar=off menubar=off</code> followed by the filename.</p>

		<p>If you start graphl without any options, you should get a window looking like this:</p>
		<center><img src="images/empty.jpg"/></center>
		<p>(only a bit bigger).</p>
		
		<h2>Loading &amp; Viewing Graphs</h2>
		
		<p>Graphs can be loaded from the commandline as described above. Alternatively, and this will probably be the
			more common way, you can load a graph into graphl by choosing <code>File > Load File...</code> or pressing
			<code>Ctrl+O</code>. Now there is one important thing to understand: in graphl, you are not editing files,
			but you are editing an RDF graph that is possibly composed from the information contained in several files.
			What you are seeing in graphl is a <em>filtered</em> version of this global graph, which means that some
			nodes and edges are hidden, hopefully because you are not interested in them (in fact, graphl loads several
			files at startup, including configuration files and vocabularies, and adds them to the graph. They are filtered
			out however, so you start with a blank display).</p>
			
		<p>It is possible to load multiple files into graphl, and they will all be added to the graph you are viewing.
		   The user interface for <em>removing</em> information from the graph is still in development though, so if
		   you want to "unload" a file that has been added to the graph, you have to start from scratch or manually delete
		   all the nodes and edges that were contributed by this file.</p>

		   		<center><img src="images/load.jpg"/><img src="images/zoom.jpg"/></center>

		<h2>Editing Graphs</h2>
		
		<h2>Saving the Graph</h2>
		
		<h2>Changing the View</h2>
		
		<h2><a name="config">Changing configurations</a></h2>
		
		<h2><a name="building">Building Graphl</a></h2>
		
		
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