Hi Cathy, My responses are given in-line with your original message.
On 05.08.2017 06:24, Cathy Crumbley wrote: > Dave, > > Here is a suggestion that might help those of us who are new: a chart > or listing that attempts to show who is involved in the documentation > team and what they are doing. While I understand the "nice to have" proposal you are suggesting, I think you might be misinterpreting the word "Team". We use the term to describe those folks who are currently contributing to the project in whatever area they have chosen. In open source projects contributors come and go, some contribute intermittently over the long term, others might make substantial contribution on a one-off basis. There are people with interests in other areas of the project, who strictly speaking are not part of the documentation "Team", but provide valuable assistance in other ways. Keeping track and maintaining the chart/list you suggest would be a task I would be unwilling to take on, or that all those people who could be listed would wish to be included. The best that I can suggest is to look through the "Contributors" and "Acknowledgments" tables in the front pages of all documentation publications. > It might be hard to ensure that everyone is included but perhaps it > could start with the people who have been actively participating in > the mailing list. Only list moderators have access to the confidential list of subscriber details. Posting to a mailing list is no indication of a person's actual "Team" activity or involvement. Many people post, but only a few contribute. > There is little hierarchy No, there is no hierarchy, only levels of experience and willingness to contribute. > but some people have higher levels of formal responsibility and it > would be good to know who they are. The only people who have formal responsibilities are TDF (The Document Foundation) board, elected by TDF members and a couple of sub-committees. See the "Foundation" and "Governance" menu entries http://www.documentfoundation.org/ for more information. TDF board oversees the general management of the LibreOffice and Document Liberation projects. TDF has appointed a small number of contractors to assist in moving some areas of the LibreOffice project forward, note that I said "assist", not control. Oliver is a TDF founding member, a long time supporter of this software's development since the time when it was first open sourced under the name OpenOffice.org and has taken on the responsibility of assisting those of us who wish to contribute to the documentation. Beyond that, all contributors are equal. In this respect the only difference between you and I is that I have long term experience with the software and although not always an active contributor I have followed the documentation development from it's beginning, but just like you, I had to research and ask questions to understand how things worked when I first took an interest in the software and project. > If possible, it would be interesting to know people's geographical > locations as well. Unless contributors chose to volunteer that information, I don't know how we could establish that. FWIW. I was born (hatched?) in West London, near Heathrow airport and now live in Northern Italy. Oliver tells me he is of French extraction and now lives in Brazil. I think Paul recently mentioned that he is Canadian. In a previous post Jean Weber said she is in the northern part of Queensland, Australia and Hazel is in the UK (she thinks). In his introductory post Jorge mentioned Costa Rica. My best guess is that you are somewhere in North America. Likewise, I could only guess at the location of any other volunteers. I recall seeing at least one other open source project's website that had a world map pinned with the location of it's contributors? committers? or similar. If you believe something like this would serve to create more of a "team spirit", put out a call on this list for contributors to provide the information and put it on the documentation wiki. > A chart or listing for the overall LibreOffice structure would also be > helpful. It need not be very detailed but could give a sense of how it > is organized and maybe who some of the main players are. In terms of formal structure I can only refer you back to TDF web page menu. For LibreOffice project main areas of activity see the list under the heading "Teams": https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Main_Page For the organisation of the documentation development, please put forward specific recommendations/suggestions for the changes/additions you want to make to https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development if there are no objections made within a reasonable period of time (we are all subject to peer review), you are free to go ahead and make those changes, or find someone willing to make them for you. Not sure what you mean by "main players", because in my mind that creates an idea of an organization structured like a corporation, rather than volunteer driven project. If you mean the people widely recognized as being most active within the project, I am not sure how those people could be identified, with a few exceptions, an individual's level of activity often changes. Then there are those people who are very active and make vast contributions the project's success and progress with their work outside of it's normal (formal?) structure. Not forgetting the work of the folks in the Ask LibreOffice forum and other similarly associated sections of the project. I believe that Jean Weber (the former team lead) would qualify as the longest serving, still active contributor to the documentation. > It should be possible to produce these without significant effort. On the contrary, much of what you are asking for would take considerable effort and demand even more of mine, or someone else's already very limited spare time. > Or better still, they already exist and just need to be linked to. Other than the links I have given above I am not aware of other links that may serve your purpose. However, if you or anyone else finds something that could be usefully linked, I would be happy make the linkages. > Cheers, > > Cathy Sorry if I appear negative, which I am definitely not trying to be, but I am having difficulty in getting a handle on your perspective of how an open source project functions. By it's very nature, being supported (operated?) mainly by individuals from many countries, speaking different languages, from a wide variety of cultures and each of those individuals contributing to any area of a project in which they have an interest, knowledge or experience, open source volunteer projects cannot be neatly compartmentalized and structured. Some open source projects are sponsored by corporations who exercise a measure of management/control over those projects and may have a more formal structure. In part TDF/LibreOffice came into being in order to break away from such corporate management. Cheers, Dave > > On 7/29/2017 4:06 AM, Dave wrote: >> On the (US English) download page, inside the box for the chosen version >> it reads: >> <Q> >> LibreOffice 5.4.0 release notes >> Supplementary Downloads: >> Help for offline use: English (US) (Torrent, Info) >> need another language? >> </Q> >> The installer file for the off-line/local help facility, is offered as >> "Supplementary" (additional) to the main installation file, because it >> is a convenience option, not an essential requirement to use the >> software. If the off-line help is not installed the software >> automatically attempts to provide the on-line equivalent in the user's >> web browser. If you have a suggestion for the "simple fix" rewording to >> convey this in a few words, we can put it forward to the website team. >> "Few words", because everything has to be translated into many >> (https://www.libreoffice.org/community/nlc/) languages, by our >> (overworked) translation volunteers. >> >> Oliver was not suggesting the wiki is not a good source of information. >> The wiki content has been built up over a number of years and in some >> areas it would benefit from a bit of housekeeping. As with all things in >> open source software, there is always much more work to be done than >> there are hands to do it. >> >> You seem to be looking for some kind of single reference source that >> will inform people about everything within the complex structure of this >> fairly large project. Can you give some indication as to what level of >> detail and what audience(s) such a source should cater for. Maybe >> something suitable could be drafted and put forward as an overview for >> the "Get Involved" page: >> https://www.libreoffice.org/community/get-involved/ >> >> You might have misinterpreted Sophie's post. Pootle is not exclusively >> related to the online version of the software, it is a >> tool/facility/service used by the translators for many aspects of the >> software. >> >> >> On 29.07.2017 02:14, Cathy Crumbley wrote: >>> Thanks for your input. These is much to learn! >>> >>> I am referring to the LibreOffice download page. Why? Because it sounds >>> like I am not the only one who is unaware that we need to download a >>> separate file for the Help files. It should be a relatively simple fix >>> to just re-word what is on that page so that people understand. It is >>> puzzling that this has not been done since people are aware of the >>> problem. >>> >>> I can see what is on the wiki. However, Olivier said "But it requires >>> permanent reordering and addition/deletion/update of hundreds of pages, >>> permanently." I was trying to understand if he was saying that it is >>> not >>> a great source of information. In any case, it sounds like it is the >>> only place to get an overview of LibreOffice (although it is still >>> challenging to do so). >>> >>> From your description of Pootle, I was able to learn that an online >>> version of LibreOffice is in the works. I don't really understand the >>> rest of it, but at least I now know that Pootle is related to that >>> project. >>> >>> On 7/28/2017 4:41 AM, Sophie wrote: >>>> Hi Cathy, >>>> Le 27/07/2017 à 21:55, Cathy Crumbley a écrit : >>>>> Hi Olivier, >>>>> >>>>> Thanks again for the responses. >>>>> >>>>> If this has been a problem for a while, I am puzzled about why it has >>>>> not been fixed. Are you aware of a reason why the download page >>>>> cannot >>>>> be re-worded now? >>>> It depends on which download page you're talking about. The download >>>> page on the main website is reworked by infrastructure, design and >>>> marketing project, together with the donate page. It's currently being >>>> improved before being translated. For the download page of the >>>> documentation project, the page is quite new, and maybe no >>>> volunteer had >>>> time to work on it for the moment. >>>>> To be clear, what are you saying is the best source of information >>>>> for >>>>> people who are new to this and want to learn about the overall >>>>> LibreOffice project? Are you saying that the wiki is not useful >>>>> because >>>>> so much work needs to be done on it? >>>> On the wiki, you'll see the different sub-projects of the LibreOffice >>>> overall project, mainly: development, QA (quality assurance), >>>> UX/Design >>>> (user experience), l10n (localization), documentation, infrastructure, >>>> marketing, certification and NLPs (native language projects). All >>>> those >>>> sub projects interact together to finally deliver LibreOffice the >>>> product. You'll find also information about the Document Liberation >>>> Project (DLP) which is another project under TDF umbrealla. >>>>> As long as I am asking questions, here is one more: What is the >>>>> Pootle >>>>> server? >>>> Pootle is an instance used by the l10n team to localize LibreOffice UI >>>> and Help, part of the website, LibreOffice On Line currently. >>>> >>>> Don't hesitate to ask any question you have :) >>>> Cheers >>>> Sophie -- Please address any reply to the mailing list only. Any messages sent to this noreply@ address are automatically deleted from the server and will never be read. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: documentation+unsubscr...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
