Documentation/4.0/HowTo

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3D Slicer
Description
Research platform for the analysis and visualization of medical images, including image guided therapy.
Free and extensible open source package.
Multi-platform	Linux, MacOSX, Windows
Version	4.0
License	Contribution and Software License Agreement

Overview

This document aims at describing the principle and guidelines to consider when writing Slicer user documentation.

The 4.0 documentation framework has been redesigned keeping in mind the following principles:

• Single location for editing documentation (either the wiki or the source code), no duplicative editing.
• Smart use of mediawiki templates to enforce consistency and reduce maintenance work.

Naming conventions

1. The application Slicer should be referenced with an uppercase S.
2. All documentation should be added as subpages under Documentation/X.Y/ where X and Y are respectively the major and minor Slicer version.
3. Version of Slicer should NOT be written in plain text, documentation/version template should be used instead.
4. Documentation/4.0/SlicerApplication should be the root of all subpages specific to Slicer application.
5. Documentation/4.0/Modules should be the root of all subpages specific to Slicer modules.
6. Module subpage should be named after the module name used in the associated source repository. Assuming the module is named Foo, the corresponding subpage is expected to be Documentation/4.0/Modules/Foo
7. Collaborator names, logos or URLs should be referenced using the convenient Collaborator template.

Category

1. All subpages should be categorized. See [1]
2. The user documentation pages are grouped in the Slicer Application and Modules categories.

SlicerApplication page

1. slicerapplication-header and slicerapplication-footer templates should be respectively used at the top and the bottom of the page.

Module page

1. module-header and module-footer templates should be respectively used at the top and the bottom of the page.
2. modulename should be used instead of writing in plain text the name of the module.
3. Base your work on either Documentation/4.0/Modules/YOURMODULENAME or an existing module documentation.
4. For CLI modules, the SVNREVISION revision number is reported on this page. The module description and the information for developers would be automatically extracted from the corresponding XML description.

For the moment it's required to update that number at multiple location within the wiki source of a given module documentation page. Soon this will be centralized.

Miscellaneous

• High resolution logos are in the Logo Gallery
• There is a python helper script for SEM compliant tools that can save a significant amount of transcription time: Slicer/Scripts/SEMToMediaWiki.py