# Preface

## Software feature offerings and intended audience

This manual is about the &xtpcpp; protein identification software project.

&xtpcpp; has the following features:

- Load mass spectometry data files in the mzXML or mzML format, thanks to the excellent libpwiz library of ProteoWizard

  .

  fame.

- Configure the way the peptide/mass spectrum matches (PSM) are to be performed;

- Configure the database files to be used (target organism databases and contaminant databases);

- Use the MS/MS data in the file to feed the &xtandem; program that produces peptide identification results by matching the measured ion masses with peptide fragments calculated in silico on the basis of the databases contents;

- Perform the protein inference step that leads to reliable protein identifications on the basis of the peptide identifications performed by &xtandem;

- Display the data obtained at any step in powerful ways in a unified graphical user interface to allow the user to inspect the peptide identifications and also control the way these identifications are used to infer the protein identifications.

- Export the exploration results in a variety of formats.

## Feedback from the users

We are always grateful to any constructive feedback from the users.

The PAPPSO software team might be contacted via the following contact page:

(search for team members having the Bioinformatics specialty mentioned, like Olivier Langella or Filippo Rusconi).

## Program and Documentation Availability and License

The programs and all the documentation that are shipped along with the &xtpcpp; software suite are available at . Most of the time, a new version is published as source, and as binary install packages for MS-Windows (64-bit systems only).

For GNU/Linux, binary packages are created locally (see ) but are also built in the Debian

autobuilders and are uploaded to the distribution servers. These packages are available using the system's software management infrastructure (like using the Debian's `apt` command, for example, or the graphical application).

The software and all the documentation are all provided under the Free Software license GNU General Public License, Version 3, or later, at your option. For an in-depth study of the Free Software philosphy, the reader is kindly urged to visit .