The project is now in its testing phase, and can be found on https://manuscriptdesk.uantwerpen.be.

The Manuscript Desk builds on Mediawiki Software and MediaWiki extensions created for the Transcribe Bentham Project. Additionally, Collatex is used.

Within the Manuscript Desk, images of manuscript pages can be uploaded, and transcribed using a TEI-Editor. Also, collections containing several manuscript pages can be created, and texts can be collated.

##Requirements##

The extensions have been tested using Mediawiki 1.23.2 and 1.23.13. Later versions will probably also work, but compatibility with these has yet to be tested. Running these extensions on older versions of MediaWiki is not recommended.

Additionally, your server needs to have:

• Perl with the ImageMagick Module enabled.
• Apache to be able to write to directories.
• PHP >= 5.6

And ofcourse all the other requirements needed for MediaWiki (Apache, MySQL, PHP). See: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_requirements.

##Installation##

Full installation instructions for MediaWiki can be found here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Installation_guide.

Short instructions:

You can download MediaWiki version 1.23 from https://github.com/wikimedia/mediawiki/tree/REL1_23.

The MediaWiki files should be extracted to a subdirectory of your website root (for example /w). You should point your browser to the directory where you have extracted MediaWiki, and follow the on-screen instructions.

Important:

During the on-screen instructions you have to Enable file uploads. For the other settings the default options can be used.

###Installing the extensions###

Once MediaWiki has successfully installed (you should see the default website when navigating to it with your browser), you can install the extensions by:

• Moving the content in w/extensions into your local MediaWiki's extensions folder (for example w/extensions).
• Moving the content in w/skins into your local MediaWiki's skins folder (for example w/skins). Overwrite existing files.
• Moving the .htaccess file to your website root.
• Moving the folders stylometricanalysissvg and zoomviewskins (+content) to your website root.
• Importing ManuscriptDesk.sql into your local MediaWiki's database (there should already be many tables in this database after MediaWiki's default installation. These should remain there).
• Going to LocalSettings.php located in the root of your MediaWiki installation (for example w/LocalSettings.php), and by appending all code in ExampleConf.php (except for the PHP tag) to this file.
• Installing Collatex-tools. This can be done by downloading and installing the latest version from:http://collatex.net/. CollateX needs to be run as a web service in localhost. The CollateX URL and Headers can be configured by modifying $wgCollationOptions['collatex_url'] in LocalSettings.php.
• Installing PyStyl. Pystyl can be downloaded from https://github.com/mikekestemont/pystyl and configured using $wgPystylPath in LocalSettings.php
• Configuring the variables $wgWebsiteRoot, $wgPrimaryDisk , $wgOriginalImagesPath , $wgZoomImagesPath, $wgPerlPath, and $wgPythonPath in LocalSettings.php.
• Navigating with your browser to the installation, logging in as Administrator, and copying the contents of Sidebar.txt to Mediawiki:Sidebar (For example localhost/md/Mediawiki:Sidebar).
• Going to Special:UserRights (for example: localhost/md/Special:UserRights), enter your administrators username, and add it to the 'ManuscriptEditors' group. With the default installation, every registered user needs to be added manually to this group to be able to access the functionality of the Manuscript Desk. If you want to change this, you can reconfigure the section on User Permissions in localSettings.php. See https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:User_rights

If you have questions regarding the installation process you can always reach us at uamanuscriptdesk 'at' gmail 'dot' com.

##Technical documentation##

The extensions are largely built according to the recommended structure for MediaWiki extensions. See [the manual for developing extensions] (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Developing_extensions) or see the example extension.

The MediaWiki website is also the main source for information on, for example, hooks, database access, user rights, and specific classes such as the User class.

##License##

The Manuscript Desk is open-sourced software licensed under the GNU license.