About.xml

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<!DOCTYPE concept PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DITA Concept//EN" "http://docs.oasis-open.org/dita/v1.1/OS/dtd/concept.dtd" []>
<concept id="about-this-handbook">

  <title>About This Handbook</title>
  <shortdesc></shortdesc>

  <prolog>
    <author type="creator">Graduate Program Committee</author>
    <copyright>
      <copyryear year="2014"/>
      <copyrholder>CS Department</copyrholder>
    </copyright>
  </prolog>
  <conbody>

    <section>
      <title>The Department of Computer Science</title>
      <p>The Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech is poised to become one of the top programs in the country. The number of Ph.D. degrees awarded places us in the top 30 programs in the United States. The resources and facilities for research areas such as human-computer Interaction, bioinformatics, and high-end computing are state-of-the-art, and the growing list of specialized courses provides opportunities for students to concentrate their research and study on the specific aspects of computer science in which they are most interested. Visit our website at <xref href="http://www.cs.vt.edu" format="html" scope="external"/> for more information about the department.</p>
    </section>

    <section>
      <title>The Graduate Handbook</title>

      <p>The purpose of this handbook is to present the policies and procedures of the graduate program in the Department of Computer Science at Virginia Tech. The current version of the handbook is noted on the cover page of the PDF version of the document.</p>
      <ul>
        <li audience="masters">The MS section (see <xref href="MS.xml"/>) covers all the information related to our three options under the MS degree.</li>
        <li audience="phd">The PhD section (see <xref href="PHD.xml"/>) discusses the doctoral program in the department.</li>
        <li> We offer one graduate certificate in HCI (see <xref href="HCI-certificate.xml"/>) and a degree option in BioInformatics (see <xref href="Bioinformatics.xml"/>). </li>
        <li>The last section describes general information relevant to all graduate students in the Computer Science Department.</li>
      </ul>

      <p>This handbook is available in a variety of formats. Like good computer scientists, we have specified all content once in a single format and transformed it into multiple formats using some fancy secret magic (see after the table below for more on this). The table below indicates the contents and formats available for your reading pleasure.</p>

    <table>
      <tgroup cols="3">
      <colspec colnum="1" colname="c1" colwidth="1*"/>
      <colspec colnum="2" colname="c2" colwidth="1*"/>
      <colspec colnum="3" colname="c3" colwidth="3*"/>
      <thead>
        <row>
          <entry>Format</entry>
          <entry>Content</entry>
          <entry>Description</entry>
        </row>
      </thead>
      <tbody>
        <row>
          <entry><xref href="http://www.cs.vt.edu/graduate/handbook" format="html" scope="external">Web Handbook</xref></entry>
          <entry>Full Handbook</entry>
          <entry>Contains all the content, describing all degrees offered by the CS department. This is formated to be navigated and used on the web.</entry>
        </row>

        <row>
          <entry><xref href="handbook-full.pdf" format="html" scope="external">PDF Handbook</xref></entry>
          <entry>Full Handbook</entry>
          <entry>Contains all the content, describing all degrees offered by the CS department. This is formated to be printed.</entry>
        </row>

        <row>
          <entry><xref href="handbook-ms.pdf" format="html" scope="external">PDF MS Handbook</xref></entry>
          <entry>MS</entry>
          <entry>Contains only the content relevant to the Masters of Science Degree. This is formated to be printed.</entry>
        </row>

        <row>
          <entry><xref href="handbook-phd.pdf" format="html" scope="external">PDF PhD Handbook</xref></entry>
          <entry>PHD</entry>
          <entry>Contains only the content relevant to the PhD Degree. This is formated to be printed.</entry>
        </row>

        <row>
          <entry><xref href="handbook-ms.epub" format="html" scope="external">ePub MS Handbook</xref></entry>
          <entry>MS</entry>
          <entry>Contains only the content relevant to the Masters of Science Degree. This is formated to be used in an ePub reader, such as Apple's iBook.</entry>
        </row>

        <row>
          <entry><xref href="handbook-phd.epub" format="html" scope="external">ePub PhD Handbook</xref></entry>
          <entry>PHD</entry>
          <entry>Contains only the content relevant to the PhD Degree. This is formated to be used in an ePub reader, such as Apple's iBook</entry>
        </row>
      </tbody>
      </tgroup>
    </table>

  <p>The secret magic is that the handbook has been broken up into pieces all annotated in DITA (see <xref href="http://dita.xml.org" format="html" scope="external"/> for more information). We use the DITA Open Toolkit (see <xref href="https://dita-ot.github.io" format="html" scope="external"/>) to transform the content into HTML, PDF, and ePub.</p>

    </section>
  </conbody>

  <related-links>
    <link format="html" scope="external"
          href="http://www.cs.vt.edu"><linktext>CS Department Website</linktext>
    </link>
    <link format="html" scope="external"
      href="http://graduateschool.vt.edu/graduate_catalog/program.htm?programID=002d14431ce38e83011ce38e96c30044"><linktext>Graduate Catalog for CS Programs at the Graduate School</linktext>
    </link>
  </related-links>
</concept>