GMAO Quick Start Guide

This guide is to help people who want to use GMAO to start a new translation project of their own. If you plan to use GMAO to translate files locally on your hard drive, and you do not want to connect to a GMAOServer, this guide is for you.

Starting GMAO

First, you need to start GMAO. Go to the GMAO web page and click on the "Launch GMAO via Java Web Start" link. This should launch GMAO, unless you don't have Java Web Start installed. There are directions there showing you where to get Java and Java Web Start.

Please wait while GMAO loads. When it asks you if you want to run GMAO, please click "Start".
Java Web Start is loading GMAO.

Setting up options

Once GMAO loads, you need to set the options up for it. Please select Options from the GMAO Menu.
Set the options up

You will want to load images from your hard disk, so please set the "Image Source" to "Local file system". You also will need to tell GMAO what directory all of your raw scans live in. To do that, set the "Image file location" - you can use the Browse button to pop-up a file chooser. You want to choose the directory that all the raw scans are in.
Set to local file system

Once you have done that, delete the "XML File" entry - this lets you specify an XML file to load (over the web using http:// or locally using a file URL (I always forget the syntax for that though. It might be file://)). You should also delete the "Annotation Update server" since the GMAOServer that I run on fugu.cs.columbia.edu won't know about your translation project. (You can run your own GMAOServer if you like - the code is included, but it isn't user friendly at all... It is much worse than GMAO itself...)
Delete XML File, and Annotation Update server entries.

Next, you want to set up the directory that any HTML files or auto-edited images you make will be saved to. You can set that to whatever you want, using the Browse... button again. Auto-edited files are saved with an ae_ prefix, so they will not over-write anything in the directory (except previously generated auto-edited files.)

Creating a new XML file

Next, you need to create a new XML file. To do that, go to the File menu, and select "New". Please choose a place to save the file, and answer the questions (Series name, and volume number.)
Create a new XML file.

Next, you have to identify yourself as an annotator - even if you are translating the documents locally, you need to create an annotator. It is used internally to keep translations from different people apart. You can use whatever you want for the fields, but you should remember them since they have to match exactly next time. The annotator name should be an email address, just because.
Login

Next, you have to add the first chapter to the XML document. Go to the "New Chapter" menu item in the GMAO menu. Answer the questions (Chapter numer, and chapter title.) GMAO will number each successive chapter automatically after you assign the first chapter a number.
Create the first chapter

Next, you have to create the first page. Do that with the "New Page" command. You will have to type in the name of a file to use - GMAO will check that it exists, but does not give you an easy way to browse for it. The file must be in the directory you specified back in the options for "Image File location".
Add the first page

After this, you can make your annotations and translations as explained in the GMAO tutorial. Don't open the remote file though - now you have your own XML file that you can use. When you start GMAO next time, you can do a "File" "Open" command to open the XML file up again. The XML file does not save any options, so you will have to change those if you change projects - but the settings are saved every time you quit GMAO, so if you only work on one project at a time, you will be fine.

Be sure to save your work using "Save" from the "File" menu. Save often!!

Questions?

If you have questions, comments, or suggestions, please post them on the GMAO Forum.