[authors] Getting Started book -- opinions requested

[Jean Hollis Weber]

Hello team!
While answering the question about the chapter on Data Sources, which I 
haven't seen yet but sounds like Dan Lewis has actually written 
specifically about Base, I realised that none of the other components 
(Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress) has its own chapter in the Getting Started 
book. Now I'm wondering if perhaps they should!

The GS book started out (in V1) covering common features and that is still 
its main function, but with the name change, that may not be the best mix 
of contents. Perhaps it really should include an intro to each of the 
components of OOo, as well as covering common features. I'll explain what 
I'm thinking now.

As you all may know, the books we are producing will be available as free 
PDF downloads from the OOo website, and we will also be producing and 
selling printed copies. A printed Getting Started book (including a CD of 
OOo) would be particularly good to sell at trade shows as well as other 
outlets. In that case, having the book cover a brief intro to each 
component would be good. On the negative side, we can't say much about most 
components in one chapter, and we don't want the book to grow too big 
(around 200 pages max is my goal).

I would like to hear others' thoughts on this. Let's brainstorm a bit. Here 
are some random thoughts.

Maybe I need to go back to the original idea of a "Common Features" guide 
and outline a completely new GS Guide that would include chapters like 
"What is OOo?" and intros to each of the components of OOo. One possibility 
is to include the first chapter from each of the other books. In that case, 
GS would be separate from the main user guide series, and the common 
features stuff would be a book in the main series.

Jean