Bob Wickham wrote:
I've downloaded Writer Guide Chapter 9 Working with Tables for my first
attempt at reviewing a chapter.
Thanks, Bob. Don't be shy about suggesting major changes, if you
think they might be necessary. We might decide not to implement
major changes until we re-do the book for OOoV3, but it's good to
have a record of what various reviewers think might improve the book.
A more general note on that topic, to everyone:
Last year a reviewer did suggest major revisions to the Writer
Guide (among other things, to put style information earlier and
emphasise it more). I and several others thought at the time that
the suggestions were good ones, but the book was too close to
being finished to re-do it completely at that time. Better to get
something useful out, than delay it indefinitely in an attempt to
make it significantly better. IMO, a good time for significant
changes is when we start working on the book for version 3 of
OOo, still some time down the track. At some point those of us
who are particularly interested in that book should have a
discussion about reorganising the book's outline.
And related to that: some topics are not covered in the Writer
Guide as it is now, mainly because no one was available to write
them. Also some are really quite advanced; most of the current
material is beginner-to-intermediate. One thing for us to
consider is having a two-volume book, with the second volume
being more advanced topics. Writer is the most-used component of
OOo, and the most likely to have the widest range of users from
total novices to high-power users, so to me a 2-volume set seems
like a good solution. Or possibly even 3 volumes! But that is a
discussion for another day.
--Jean
