2011 Slicer4-Documentation-Sprint
Contents
What
Slicer 4 Documentation Sprint. The purpose of this event is to jump start the documentation for Slicer 4 in preparation for the RSNA release.
Who
Module creators
Where
1249 Boylston Street
When
October 20, starting at 8am
Background
JC has been working on a design which is supposed to accomplish two objectives:
- Single location for editing documentation (either the wiki or the source code), no duplicative editing.
- As much automation as possible
List of Modules
List of Slicer modules that we are planning to use at RSNA. All of them should be fully documented and contain proper acknowledgements.
- Data
- Welcome to Slicer
- Volumes
- Models
- Scene Views
- Annotations
- Volume Rendering
- Editor
- Model Maker
- Diffusion Tensor Estimation
- Diffusion Tensor Scalar Measurements
- Tractography Labelmap Seeding
- Tractography Fiducial Seeding
- Tractography Display
- BRAINSTools
- Change Tracker
- N4 bias correction
- ctkDicom
Extensions:
- ABC
- Plastimatch
- EMSegmenter
- Skullstripper
Naming conventions
- For matter of consistency, both example pages have been renamed:
- Module:EndUserDocumentationTemplate-Documentation-4.0 -> Documentation/4.0/Modules/YOURMODULENAME
- Modules:GradientAnisotropicFilter-Documentation-4.0 -> Documentation/4.0/Modules/GradientAnisotropicDiffusion
- The main documentation page has also been renamed from "Documentation-4.0" to Documentation/4.0
- All module documentation pages for a given version of Slicer Y.Z should be named according to the following pattern: Documentation/X.Y/Modules/MODULENAME
Category
The following link will list all modules belonging to the Documentation/4.0/Modules category: http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php?title=Category:Documentation/4.0/Modules
- The template "Documentation/4.0/module-footer" takes care of including the documentation page in the appropriate category. See [3]
- The following page will list all element from the given category: http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Category:Documentation-4.0-Modules
- "category" is a parameter of the "module-footer" template.
- For CLI module, as explained on the template itself [1], it's recommended to use the template "Documentation/4.0/module-cli-category" that can extract the category from the XML module description. See [4].
- Using the provided module category, the module will also be added to the category "Documentation/4.0/Modules/<MainCategory" and "Documentation/4.0/Modules/<MainCategory.SubCategory>". For example:
- Documentation/4.0/Modules/Filtering see [5]
- Documentation/4.0/Modules/Filtering.Denoising see [6].
- Ideally, it would be great if the category associated with loadable module (interactive module) could also be extracted from a unique location. Doing so would avoid to maintain the category attribute both in the source and in the documentation.
Versioning
- All pages and template associated with version X.Y of Slicer are located under the page prefix: Documentation/X.Y
- From any documentation page or template, doing so allows to easily extract the current version using the template Template:Documentation/version. See [7]
- In other words, assuming the current page is "Documentation/4.2" adding {{documentation/version}} in the source will return 4.2.
- Following each release of Slicer, this approach will allow us to:
- minimize the work required after a documentation set is duplicated
- easily reference the different documentation sets
- automate the duplication of these pages. Let's note that the mediawiki extensions like "Duplicator" [8] or "Multiplicator" [9] could be useful.
- "Long life" of past documentation will also be ensured. Indeed, each time the documentation will be duplicated, a complete set of category, template and documentation page will be created. You will find below what the list of pages and templates could like after 4.2 is released:
[...] Documentation/4.0/Modules/Add Documentation/4.0/Modules/GradientAnisotropicDiffusion Documentation/4.0/Modules/Threshold Documentation/4.0/Modules/YOURMODULENAME [...] Documentation/4.2/Modules/Add Documentation/4.2/Modules/GradientAnisotropicDiffusion Documentation/4.2/Modules/Threshold Documentation/4.2/Modules/YOURMODULENAME [...] Category:Documentation/4.0/Modules Category:Documentation/4.0/Modules/Filtering Category:Documentation/4.0/Modules/Filtering.Denoising [...] Category:Documentation/4.2/Modules Category:Documentation/4.2/Modules/Filtering Category:Documentation/4.2/Modules/Filtering.Denoising [...] Template:Documentation/4.0/module-cli-description Template:Documentation/4.0/module-header Template:Documentation/4.0/module-footer [...] Template:Documentation/4.2/module-cli-description Template:Documentation/4.2/module-header Template:Documentation/4.2/module-footer
Separation of information and representation
- This could be done with the help of a few convenient custom templates:
- It allows to tune / update how the documentation looks like for a given documentation set.
Developer information
- For each module, the list of bugs, associated tests, list of classes, developer notes etc. should be collected automatically. This could be achieved with the help of the "module-developerinfo" template.
- Every module should include the template "Documentation/X.Y/module-developerinfo". See [10]
- As of today, this template is a placeholder/stub. As soon as, functionality will be implemented all module including that template will automatically display the wanted information.
- This implies:
- In mantis, bugs should be assigned to a category / tag and product version
- In CDash, tests should be labeled with both the ModuleName and the Slicer version. Then, using the webapi we should be able to obtain the list of tests, coverage, etc ...
- Status of the "Ron rules" could be semi-automatically generated: coverage, number of test, amount of documentation, style, ...
Categorizing
- The list of category is currently manually generated. This is not sustainable. Given the new page structure. These lists could be automatically generated.
- Mediawiki offers some nice feature to manage category. Let's use them.
Documentation packaging in Slicer
- Since a template "module-section" has been introduced, there is now a placeholder that will allow to refine how sections are identified and will ease the integration in a future Slicer Assistant module.
Critical details
- A module should be identified consistently in both the source and the documentation. GradientAnisotropicFilter != GradientAnisotropicDiffusion
- If a name is incorrect, it should be fixed/updated at the source ! Not just in the documentation.
ToDo
- Look at wiki like "http://techbase.kde.org" .. I think we could be inspired from what they did and improve the "user friendliness" of slicer wiki
Add "EmailObfuscator"[11] or "EmailAddressImage"[12] extension to mediawiki that will be used inside the "contact" template [13]Done - EmailAddressImage added- Setup a mechanism so that current "Documentation Set" follow Slicer source trunk could be duplicated and "frozen"
- Implement "developerinfo"
- Please, review both the template [1] and GradientAnisotropicDiffusion [2] documentation.
Links
[1] http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Documentation/4.0/Modules/YOURMODULENAME
[2] http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Documentation/4.0/Modules/GradientAnisotropicDiffusion
[4] http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Template:Documentation/4.0/module-cli-category
[5] http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php?title=Category:Documentation/4.0/Modules/Filtering
[7] http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Template:Documentation/version
[8] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Duplicator
[9] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Multiplicator
[10] http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Template:Documentation/4.0/module-developerinfo
[11] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:EmailObfuscator
[12] http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:EmailAddressImage
[13] http://wiki.slicer.org/slicerWiki/index.php/Template:Documentation/4.0/contact
Logos
A ready source of logos can be found here.