Project Hirtius - Introduction

Table of Contents

• Description of the Program.
• Learning the basics.
• Credits and Copyright.
• Contacting me.
• Mailing Lists.
• Usual Disclaimer.

Description of the program

Hirtius is a web-based historical research assistant created by Les Ateliers du Héron. Its goal is to replace the historian's notebook and box of cards, while providing a collaborative work environment for a whole team of researchers, that can be thought of as a purpose-built CMS cross-bred with a digital pictures management system, a genealogy application and a Wiki.

Eventually, based on the information you stored in the application, and the links you created between the various data elements, Hirtius will also help you prepare the draft version of your scholarly papers.

Hirtius is meant to handle and store all "objects" that a researcher may be confronted with:

• Physical artefacts (as represented by their pictures, called "Slides")
• Historical sources (original documents from the period)
• Events
• Individuals and Families
• Tiddlers (short notes about any subject)

Once collected, these records can be linked together (through the "See also" mechanism) and with a wide array of relevant meta-data:

• Categories (like tags in a hierarchical tree structure called the INXtree)
• Bibliographical references
• Source references
• Attachments
• Events (called "Biography" in the case of Individuals)
• Alternate Names and Titles (Individuals only)

Further to this, Events can be grouped into Sequences, and Tiddlers into Projects. Projects are the way Hirtius manages your scholarly papers.

To increase its value as a historical research tool, Hirtius now features a built-in perpetual calendar that supports the Julian and Gregorian calendars as well as the transition between them, and can display the Roman day numbering scheme for any supported year. A set of Calendar-related tools is also provided to help compute the interval between two dates or convert between calendaring systems.

Learning the basics

To make the best use of Project Hirtius, please read the help pages linked below, that serve as introduction to the program:

• Concepts
• Projects Management Workflow
• Pictures Management Workflow
• Individuals Management Workflow
• Navigation Tips

Credits and Copyright

Project Hirtius and its documentation are published under the GNU Affero GPL v3 (or any later version at your choice), but the program incorporates some parts that are covered by a BSD-like license (PHPTiddlyWiki and DTree).

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see http://www.gnu.org/licenses/.

Project Hirtius includes work produced by other Free/OpenSource projects. I would like to recognise these projets here and thank their many contributors for their efforts and creativity:

PHPTiddlyWiki: (by Patrick Curry)

An extension based on TiddlyWiki v2.1.3 to use a MySQL database as a back-end storage for the wiki data. This has been embedded in Project Hirtius and further enhanced to support the project management feature and its TiddlyWiki interface. The PHPTiddlyWiki project page seems to have been removed in the mean time.

TiddlyWiki: (by Jeremy Ruston, Osmosoft)

Source for PHPTiddlyWiki.

DTree: (by Geir Landrö)

Javascript tree menu control. Used in the Project Hirtius Help Browser.

Full Size Image In Popup: (by Will Bontrager)

A set of Javascript functions to display an embedded image full-size in a separate browser window. Used in the Project Hirtius Help Browser.

KDE: (by the KDE Development Team)

All Project Hirtius toolbar icons have been freely copied under the LGPLv3 from KDE applications.

Contacting me

Please feel free to give me a feedback on any and all issues related to this product. If you're using it, just let me know: it would brighten my day (and add an incentive to push development forward).

I'm now working for Ion Beam Applications, S.A. (IBA) in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium.

Here is my current email address at the office:

• (Philippe Andersson)

You can also reach me at my private email address (don't expect same day response):

Should you wish to use a secure channel to communicate with me, here is my OpenPGP key.

My personal home page is located at: http://home.scarlet.be/philipa/. Enjoy !

Additionally, please consider subscribing to the hirtius-discuss mailing list (see below for details).

When sending mail directly to me, please begin your subject line with [HIRTIUS] to avoid it being overlooked (not needed when posting to the mailing list).

The official home page of the Hirtius project is now located at https://hirtius.sourceforge.io/ (or http://hirtius.sourceforge.net/).

You can find its SourceForge project page at https://sourceforge.net/projects/hirtius/.

Lastly, if, like me, you love GNU/Linux systems and wish to show your support, please consider registering yourself (and your machine(s), if you feel so inclined) with the "Linux Counter" by following this link:

Mailing Lists

SourceForge is now hosting a mailing list for Hirtius users (with a lot of wit, it is called hirtius-discuss ;-).

Learn how to subscribe, unsubscribe and more from the following page:

http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/hirtius-discuss

This list can be used by Hirtius users, but of course by anybody else interested in the product as well, and the discussions hosted on it can range from support issues to technical questions or to announcements of new releases of the software or large updates to the web site.

Usual disclaimer

This program is provided "AS IS", without any warranty, etc. Bottom line: don't blame me if it doesn't work for you (or messed your setup). You use it at your own risk. Period.