Welcome to www.co-ment.net !

This site is about sharing documents and gathering annotations on them.
To do that you need to:
- register for an account on the site
- create a text on the site
- describe who should be able to read/comment/modify your text

Getting an account is easy and free, start with the 'register' link at the top right corner of the front page.

Your workspace

Once logged in, go to your workspace. The workspace lists texts you created or commented in the past.
Notice the two links for creating new texts at the top:
- 'upload text' is for uploading an existing document.
- 'create text' is for writing a new text online.
We will explore these two ways of creating a text in the next two screens.

Uploading a document

Supported formats are: Open Office Document, Microsoft Word, Rich Text Format (rtf), Text document (txt), DocBook File, etc.

Writing a new text online

The use of the online editor makes it possible to format your text with no website editing or HTML experience.

Read, add and process comments

Clicking on the 'view and comment' link next to a text in your workspace will take you to this page.
The colored background shows which parts of the text have comments.
- clicking in the text shows the comments that apply to this part of the text
- clicking a comment shows the part of the text the comment applies to
When your text is made public (we will see shortly how to do that) this page becomes public on www.co-ment.net and anyone can then read/answer/add comments to your text.
As the owner of the text you will be able to modify/reject/delete comments.

Back to the workspace

Notice how text viewing and commenting can be private, shared or public for each text. To change these settings click the 'sharing and moderation' link next to the text.

Sharing and moderation

This page has three sections.

Add user(s):

This section allows you to list persons you want to share the text with (a person being identified by his/her email adress) and choose a role for these persons. Roles describe what people can do on a text, as described in this table:

role	permissions
Observer	read text read comments
Commenter	read text read and create comments
Moderator	read text read and create and moderate comments
Editor	read and edit text read and create and moderate comments
Owner	read, edit and manage text read and create and moderate comments

Manage users:

This section allows you to describe:
- what each person can do on the text (through the role you assign to him/her)
- what the public (anonymous users of the site) can do on the text. (For example setting a role of Observer to anonynous users will let the public be able to read your text but not comment it)
This section also lets you:
- remove a sharing permission to someone you share the text with
- send an email to a list of person you share the text with

Manage comments:

In this section you decide:
- what the moderation of the comments should be. (Should new comments be visible as soon as created ? or should a moderator validate them before they become public ?)
- what the workflow of the comments should be. (What are the states a moderator can assign to a comment ?)

Thank you

We suggest you now try co-ment by yourself because there is really more to it than what you have seen in this tour.
Next step will be the registrer page.