Hi Folks,
As you know, David Valles sent a message to the authors list a few weeks ago that showed some discouragement with the movement of FAQs to the OOoAuthors site. I'm quite sure my response was not very encouraging, and that stayed with me and bothered me quite a lot. I was not able to provide the support that FAQ maintainers at OOoAuthors.org believed their FAQ work deserved, although I was in a position to do the work. I brought up how I felt on both lists.
Since then, Scott Carr wrote a spider script that works well to capture updates to the FAQs in the FAQ folder on the authors site. The output of that script has updated a few times now, and we have worked to purge some of the things that caused glitches from the FAQ set at OOoAuthors. There is still more work to be done, but I dare say we have a very fair start, and a decent display of the FAQ collaboration set, which may be used for the FAQ transfer to the OOo site.
The test output file for Scott's script is located here:
http://scott.progbits.com/doctest/
The documentation project FAQ index page has been updated, particularly in the bottommost section for FAQ maintainers. That file lives here:
http://documentation.openoffice.org/faqs/
and it points folks back to the source files at OOoAuthors.org.
Also, G. Roderick Singleton has offered to upload new FAQs to the documentation project directly too, if you attach your work to an issue and assign it to him (grsingleton). You can find that offer on the documentation project mail list archives, under a plea for more help date 06 March 2005.
It looks like there is a decent window of opportunity for FAQ maintainers at OOoAuthors to get their FAQ work to the OpenOffice.org site, and G. Roderick Singleton has provided a second way for you to pass your work to OpenOffice.org.
I'm not sure how the license change will play into the FAQ transfer work, because FAQs are always editable. It's likely best to cross that bridge if and when we get to it. Anyway, at the moment it looks like there is more than one path set up for your FAQ work to reach the OpenOffice.org site.
I just looked at the member list, and found that there are 518 user logins at OOoAuthors. I log onto the site almost every day to add new users of the site to the members group. All folks in the members group have access to the FAQs. I will continue to do this. If you are a member of the OOoAuthors.org site, feel welcome to work in the FAQs.
My future FAQ work will remain in a casual mode. I hope to migrate myself to a more serious job hunt, I have tax reports to do, and then I hope the weather improves enough so that I can move myself outside to work in the natural world, where I find much inner peace. Hopefully you will see less and less of me, and the FAQ set will become more and more open to all in the community.
I hope this helps.
Thank you to all who have done work in the FAQs. There are several folks in the background who provided and set up the server, the URL, transferred the FAQs to this OOoAuthors site, sorted through the FAQs once they got there. I know for a fact that there are several maintainers out there too. Each and every one of you deserves much credit for the work you have done! This is a huge effort to which many folks have contributed. Don't be fooled by those who say otherwise.
I want to send a special thank you to David V. for the motivation. I hope the results serve you well.
:)
Best Wishes, Diane Mackay
