This section describes the workings of Silva from the point of view of
the Silva Author, Editor and Chief Editor roles.
The Silva environment (that's the Silva Management Interface, or SMI)
has two workspaces, the Content Management Screens and the Authoring Screens.
The Publications and Folder workspace is where site management occurs. Functions such as adding and deleting items, structuring the site,
configuration and bulk approve or publish actions all occur in this workspace. The document
workspace is for manipulating content in documents. These areas are
further divided into screens, reachable via the navigation
at the top of each screen.
A Folder or Publication, has five screens: Contents, Preview, Properties, Access and Publish. Each screen provides a cascading overview, showing both the item and its underlying items’ characteristics (excepting the Preview screen, which only shows the preview at that level).
The Content or document workspace can have five screens: Edit, Preview, Properties, Access, and Publish. Each screen provides a different view on the item. Sometimes there are less than five, depending on what sort of content it is.
The functions of the screens in the two workspaces correspond. For
instance in the Publish screen of a document you can publish
the item. You can also publish it in the Publish screen of its folder. The difference is that when you're in a publish screen of a document,
all modifications only affect that item. When you're in a folder you can perform bulk operations on multiple objects, such
as publishing all items inside a publication in one go.
Figure 1: Various content types on the left, with their corresponding screens. The screens are like veins running through the content tree.
A Silva Publication usually has multiple levels of folders and subfolders. Since each level has a corresponding set of screens, a matrix of locations develops. Navigation through this grid is possible in three directions.
Figure 2: Matrix navigation, with the current screen highlighted.
Figure 3: From the Preview screen of a document deep in the content tree, the matrix navigation allows you reach a multitude of locations in one click.
Most links and buttons in Silva have access keys that make keyboard navigation easy (hitting a key is always faster than grabbing the mouse). For instance the screen buttons correspond to alt-1, alt-2, and so forth. To jump to the top of Silva, use alt-/.
Remember that you can enter an access key even if the button or link is not visible. This negates the need to scroll. Help is always available with alt-?, to see a complete explanation and list of the keys.
If you've been given a role in a Silva site, your role and user name
appears in the ‘user info’ row in the footer –
bottom right corner – of every screen.
If the site manager has activated the Silva Email Service, Silva can notify people of requests and changes in the status of documents. This occurs via the Publish screen. In the bottom left corner of the footer there is a “User settings” link (alt-~) that pops up a new window which shows some account information about you.
It depends on your local Silva setup whether this allows you to edit your email address; the default setup allows this, but some other setups could retrieve the email address from an external source such as LDAP instead, and may not allow you to edit the address.
If allowed, you can fill in the email address you want Silva to use for messages and click the Save button (alt-s). This way Silva knows where to send email to you.
If you have a Reader role in a specific location, and you wish to have authoring rights. Click on the Request Access link (alt-), located in the middle of the user information row. If this link is missing it can be configured by the site administrator. This link pops up a screen where you can request an additional role. Choose a role and click the Send button (alt-s). Your request will be sent to the person responsible for that area of the site.
Descriptions of the building blocks of a Silva site follow in the subpages. The important concept to grasp is that content in Silva is built in a tree structure. As folders and subfolders are added, the tree branches out. Textual content in documents has a tree structure as well, since it is stored in XML.
As you build a site, a forest of trees develops. The icon for a Silva Publication is a forest, while the icon for a Silva Document is a single tree. This metaphor is carried throughout the user interface.
© Copyright 2002-2004 Infrae.
All rights reserved. 
