SVO Offline Editor – User Manual

SVO Offline Editor

User Manual

Version: / 1 (draft)
Date: / 4th June 2004
Author: / David Heath
Project Number: / F1027

Revision History

Version / Author / Date / Notes
1 (draft) / David Heath / 4th June 2004 / First draft

Distribution list

David Heath

Kedar Dash

Rahul Kumar

Alex Lockwood

Bornwell Mwewa

Amanda Squires

Claire Paszkiewicz

Gopal Gobiratnam

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SVO Offline Editor – User Manual

1 Table of Contents

Page 1 of 15

SVO Offline Editor – User Manual

1 Introduction...... 3

2 Installation...... 3

2.1 Windows...... 3

2.2 Linux...... 3

3 Using the OWT for the first time...... 5

3.1 Resumable download...... 6

3.2 Import of database dump...... 6

4 Understanding the article list window...... 7

4.1 Section (subsite) chooser...... 7

4.2 Article Category Tree...... 7

4.3 Article List Window...... 8

4.4 Window Division Adjuster...... 8

4.5 Send/receive button...... 8

4.6 New article button...... 9

5 Creating a new article...... 10

6 Submitting articles for publishing...... 11

7 Updating a previously published article...... 11

8 Glossary...... 11

Appendix – Ezpublish Tagging Syntax...... 12

Basic formatting tags...... 12

Example text...... 12

Image tags...... 13

Hyperlink tags...... 13

Table tags...... 14

Object tags...... 14

Advanced tags...... 15

Custom tags...... 15

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SVO Offline Editor – User Manual

2 Introduction

The Offline Working Tool (OWT) provides a simple, easy-to-use tool for publishing articles to the OneWorld CMS (Content Management System). The tool is designed to allow preparation of articles “offline”, which can later be submitted to the central CMS for publishing when an internet connection is available.

3 Installation

3.1 Windows

Under windows, an installation package is available. Please visit to download the latest installation package. To install:

  1. download the installer program
  2. run the program
  3. follow the on-screen instructions

NOTE: The OWT has only been tested on Windows 2000. It has not been tested on other versions of Windows, and may not work on older versions such as Windows 95 or Windows 98. Use at your own risk on these versions of windows. Also, it has not been tested on Windows XP, although it should work.

3.2 Linux

The OWT has been tested and developed under Mandrake Linux 9.2. I will give installation instructions here for Mandrake only. Other distributions should be similarly straightforward, provided the necessary software packages are available. These instructions assume that the reader is familiar with the use of RPM for package installation.

Packages needed (plus any dependencies):

php-cli-4.3.3-2mdk

php-gtk-1.0.0-1mdk

php-curl-4.3.3-1mdk

php-sqlite-4.3.3_1.0-1mdk

Installation steps:

  1. install above packages, e.g. using the following command (if using mandrake):

urpmi php-cli php-gtk php-curl php-sqlite

This command will prompt you to insert CD disks as needed, or download from the network. It will also install the needed dependencies.

  1. Once those packages are installed, download the linux tarball package from support.oneworld.net
  2. Unzip the tarball package into a suitable directory, for example:

$ cd /usr/local/

$ tar zxf owt_linux_0_1_beta1.tgz

  1. symlink the owt program to a bin directory, e.g.

$ ln -s /usr/local/owt/owt /usr/local/bin

  1. run the owt:

$ owt

4 Using the OWT for the first time

The first time you run the OWT, you must have an internet connection available. You will be prompted for a username and password. You should enter your normal username and password which you use for the online CMS (ie. at


When you have entered your username and password, click OK. The system will connect to OneWorld’s servers in order to verify your login details. Once your details have been verified, the Data Synchronization Dialog will open.


Note: when the datasync dialog first opens, it may freeze for up to thirty seconds whilst the offlne client waits for the remote server to generate a database dump. This is normal, and you should simply wait patiently for this. Once the dump has been generated and the offline client has received a response from the remote server, the window will un-freeze, and downloading of the data file will commence.

During download of the data file the progress bar will advance across the window up to 100%.

4.1 Resumable download

If your internet connection is broken during download, the download process will abort. Fortunately the offline client is able to resume a partially completed download.

In order to resume your download you should:

  1. exit the OWT
  2. start the OWT again
  3. login as described above
  4. the download will resume from the previous location

After three failed download attempts, download resumption will be aborted, and a new dump will be requested.

4.2 Import of database dump

After downloading the database dump, the OWT will begin to import the data. When the process has completed successfully (which will take several minutes the first time), the “OK” button will be enabled:


Click “OK” to exit the Synchronisation Dialog and begin using the OWT.

5 Understanding the article list window


The article list window is divided into two major areas, with buttons along the top. An explanation of these is given below:

5.1 Section (subsite) chooser

Before performing any operation with the OWT you must set your subsite. By default it will be set to the same subsite as you use in the online CMS. If you do not use the online CMS, you may need to choose your subsite here before you can create a new article.

5.2 Article Category Tree

This area on the left of the window shows the categories in the current subsite. Categories which you do not have write permission to will be “greyed” and you will not be able to select them.

Selecting a category in the article category tree has two purposes:

  1. on selecting a category, the articles which you have created locally (i.e. in the OWT) will be displayed in the article list area.

Note: you will not see any articles which have been created in the online CMS. The OWT is designed only for submitting new articles, not for editing articles created online.

  1. Once a category has been selected, clicking “New article” will create an article in that category.

At the bottom of the category tree there are three special categories OUTBOX, DRAFTS and SENT ITEMS. These categories allow you to see articles according to their status:

Outbox: shows articles which you have created offline and which are waiting to be uploaded

Drafts: shows articles which you have created offline, but which have been saved as a draft. They will not be uploaded when you press send/receive.

Sent items: shows articles which have previously been uploaded. Note: you are allowed to edit previously uploaded articles. After editing they will be moved to the outbox for uploading again.

5.3 Article List Window

This window shows any articles in the currently selected category.

Note: you will not see any articles which have been created in the online CMS. The OWT is designed only for submitting new articles, not for editing articles created online.

5.4 Window Division Adjuster

Dragging the “grip” will allow you to adjust the size of the Article Category Tree.

5.5 Send/receive button

Before you click send/receive you must be online. If you are using a dialup modem connection, make sure to establish the connection before you click send/receive.

After clicking send/receive the OWT will open the Data Sync Dialog as described in section 3. The following actions will be performed:

  1. First the OWT will attempt to login to the remote server using the username and password you used when you started the program.

Note: the login step may fail if you have changed your password online. In this case you will need to exit the OWT and login again, but this time you should tick the Go online to login button. This will verify your password with the remote server, and update the local database to record you r new password[1].

  1. Once you have been authenticated with the remote server, the OWT will start sending all of the articles in your outbox, one at a time. You will see log messages indicating the ID of the article which has been published on the remote server. You may want to make a note of these numbers if you need to edit the article further online (e.g. to add an image).
  2. Next, the OWT will request a “Synchronisation dump” from the remote server. This will update your client to reflect any changes to the category tree, for example new categories or sections.
  3. When the synchronisation process has completed, you should click OK to close the window.

5.6 New article button

Click the new article button to create a new article in the currently selected category.

6 Creating a new article

To create a new article:

1)In the article category tree window select the category to which you would like to add your article

2)click the new article button.

The article edit window will be opened (see screenshot below).


The article edit window is divided into four “tabbed panes”:

Article edit: is for basic article information such as title, summary publishing organisation

Classifications: is for language, country, topic, genre, target audience

Related Links: is for related links

Advanced controls: is for scheduled publishing (start/retract), enable user comments, syndicate to yahoo

7 Submitting articles for publishing

Click send/receive. See section 4.5 for details.

8 Updating a previously published article

Double click on an article in the article list window to edit it.

9 Glossary

OWT: Offline Working Tool

CMS: Content Management System

Appendix – Ezpublish Tagging Syntax

The OWT uses the same ezpublish tagging format as the online CMS. This appendix is repeated from the online help system. It describes the different tags you can use in an article. The exact style (font, size and other additional attributes) of each tag can be defined in the articletags template and the site's stylesheet.

Some tags have attributes, displayed in italic; those also displayed in bold are required, the others are optional or may be asumed to have a default value if not specified.

Basic formatting tags

All the basic formatting tags may have subtags, i.e. other tags inside them, except for the header tag. All these tags must always have the correct end tags. The end tags are always written as the start tag with a / in front of it, and without any attributes (required or otherwise).

<header level text </header>

<header 1Example text</header> /

Example text

The <header> tag displays a header with level from 1-5. The attribute "level" can be left out and will default to 1 which is ususally largest (depending on the style sheet).

<bold>Example text</bold> / Example text

The <bold> tag displays the text as bold.

<italic>Example text</italic> / Example text

The <italic> tag displays the text as italic.

<underline>Example text</underline> / Example text

The <underline> tag displays the text as underlined.

<strike>Example text</strike> / Example text

The <strike> tag displays the text as overstriked.

<strong>Example text</strong> / Example text

The <strong> tag displays the text as "strong". This it an old HTML tag which usually renders the text as bold, but this may be redefined the the article tags template and/or the stylesheet.

<pre>Example text</pre> / Example text

The <pre> tag displays the text with a "fixed space" font and without linebreaks other than where it's explicitly defined.

<quote>Example text</quote> / Example text

The <quote> tag displays the text as block quoted, i.e. indented or as otherwise defined in the article tags template and/or the stylesheet.

<factbox>Example text</factbox> / Example text

The <factbox> displays the text in a box which can have different designs depending on the article tags template and/or the stylesheet. As default this box is aligned right on an article page. The <factbox> tags may include other tags inside it.

<bullet>
Example text
Example text
Example text
</bullet> / Example text
Example text
Example text

The <bullet> tag displays a bulleted (unordered) list.

<list>
Example text
Example text
Example text
</list> /
  1. Example text
  2. Example text
  3. Example text

The <list> tag displays a numbered (ordered) list.

Image tags

Images may be placed at any posistion in an article. Image tags are entered in a simple format and are converted to XML before storage. If you want to use the advanced image tags you must write them in the XML form. Image tags does not use end tags.

<image idalign size link

The only required image attribute is "id", which specifies the number of the image from the current article's image list. If left out the alignment will be set to center and the size will be set to medium.

The available alignment attribute values are: left, right, center and float.

The available sizes are: small, medium, large and original.

The link attribute lets you specify a hyperlink to go to if the image gets clicked. If not specified a click will display the image in a larger size.

<image id="id"align="align" size="size" caption="caption" href="URL" target="target"

If you write the image tag in advanced XML form you may also specify a custom caption (instead of the the general caption that may be attached to the image), a href URL, and a target (browser window) for the href address. If the caption variable is "_blank" it will not show a caption, even if there is a general caption for that image. All the extra values are optional.

Hyperlink tags

<link URL linktext

<link ez.no The creators of eZ publish / The creators of eZ publish

This tag let's you make a link to another web page. This link opens in the existing browser window.

The "URL" attribute is the "internett address" of the link, and the "linktext" attribute is the text that may be clicked to activate the link. The "linktext" attribute may contain multiple words.

<popuplink URL linktext

<popuplink developer.ez.no For more technical info... / For more technical info...

This tag let's you make a link to another web page, and opens this link in a new browser window.

The "URL" attribute is the "internett address" of the link, and the "linktext" attribute is the text that may be clicked to activate the link. The "linktext" attribute may contain multiple words.

<mail address subject, linktext

<mail Questions, Ask us! / Ask us!

This tag let's you make a link which opens a user's e-mail program when clicked and fills in the e-mail address of the desired recipient as defined in the tag. Some browser/e-mail program combinations also lets you specify the e-mail's subject.

The "address" attribute is the desired e-mail address for the link. The "subject" attribute may contain multiple words divided by regular spaces, and this makes it neccesary to end the "subject" by using a , (comma), even if there is no defined "subject" (just put a single , in it's place). The "linktext" attribute is the text that may be clicked to activate the link, and this may also contain multiple words.

Table tags

<table width border<tr<td> cell data </td</tr</table>

<table 50% 2
<tr>
<td> cell 1 </td>
<td> cell 2 </td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td> cell 3 </td>
<td> cell 4 </td>
</tr>
</table> / cell 1 / cell 2
cell 3 / cell 4

The <table> tags, including <tr> and <td>, creates a table. The "width" attribute in the main <table> tag defines the total width of the table (either in % or absolute pixel width) and the "border" attribute the thickness of a visible border. The <tr> tags creates the table's vertical rows and <td> creates horizontal cells. The different tags needs to be nested properly for the table to appear correctly.

Object tags

All the object tags requires that there's been attatched objects of some sort to the article. The tags themselves do not provide an upload opportunity, the objects must be attached separatly.

<file id

This tag creates a link to an attached file. The "id" attribute is the number of the file from the current article's file list.

<media id

This tag places a media object in the article. The "id" attribute is the number of the media object from the current article's media list.

<form>

This tag places a selected form in the article. An article may only contain one single form.

Advanced tags

<html> any HTML code </html>

The <html> tag makes it possible to put straight HTML code into the article. The allows you to apply some advanced formatting into the article, but you need to know HTML to do this.

Note: Be aware that if you use the <html> tag you may limit the possibility to successfully export the article to other document formats. The (ususally) best solution if you need some special formatting in the article is to create a new custom tag (if possible).

Custom tags

A website may have several custom tags available through the article tags template and/or the stylesheet. These custom tags should (if possible) be documented by the people implementing them in each case. A custom tag may be as advanced as normal HTML allows.

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[1]actually, an encrypted version of your password. For security reasons, your password is never stored to disk