General questions about the documentation

• Help! I’m lost. Where can I get some help?
• Do you plan to translate the documentation?
• I’d like to improve a section in the documentation. How do I contribute?
• I’ve spotted strangely formulated sentences in the documentation. How come?
• How can I generate the documentation?
• What tools do you use to generate the documentation?
• Isn’t the page layout sometimes rough?
• Does the search tool return pertinent results?
• What computer did you use for the numerical results?
• When do you expect to finish?

Help! I’m lost. Where can I get some help?

First of all, documentation is available. The documentation hub is - as its name implies - a central place where you can find links to all the documentation. Did you visit it?

If you didn’t find what you were looking for in the documentation, ask someone on the mailing list.

Do you plan to translate the documentation?

No.

I’d like to improve a section in the documentation. How do I contribute?

Send your comments, suggestions, corrections, feedback, ... to Thank you very much.

I’ve spotted strangely formulated sentences in the documentation. How come?

Maybe becauze it iz my third language? We are always trying to improve our work. If you have comments, suggestions, corrections,... see I’d like to improve a section in the documentation. How do I contribute?.

How can I generate the documentation?

All the necessary steps are explained in the little manual howto.pdf in the directory documentation/doc of the or-tools project. The document itself is written in LaTeX and can be generated with pdflatex.

What tools do you use to generate the documentation?

The documentation is written for the most part in reStructuredText (see http://docutils.sourceforge.net/rst.html) and transformed with the help of the following great open source tools:

• Sphinx;
• pdflatex/pdftex;
• Python.

You will find more details in the little manual howto.pdf in the directory documentation/doc of the or-tools project.

Isn’t the page layout sometimes rough?

We are more focused on the content for the moment. Writing documentation is a two-step process: first, we write the documentation, then we format the documents.

You can send us your comments about the layout (see I’d like to improve a section in the documentation. How do I contribute?). We might not correct the layout right away but we’ll keep your suggestions for later.

Does the search tool return pertinent results?

Yes, it does. Give the Google engine one or two days to index new pages thought.

What computer did you use for the numerical results?

It doesn’t really matter. What matters is that ALL experiments where done with the same computer. You insist? OK, we used a laptop computer running under Linux (Kernel 2.6.38-15) with 3.9 GB of RAM and two Intel Core2 Duo processors at 2,26 Ghz each. Happy now?

Update. As of 2014, I’m using another laptop. It still doesn’t matter what computer I’m using but if you want to compare your results with those written in the documentation, here are the specifications:

• Linux (Kernel 3.11.0-12-generic);
• Intel Core ^TM i7-3840QM at 2.80Ghz x 4;
• 31.0 Gib of Ram.

When do you expect to finish?

• December 30 ^th, 2014

for the first draft.

You can see the overal progress here.