Bother. Messages from this list are failing to reach me again.
I picked this up from the archives.
Scott, I've been thinking along much the same lines. My opinion:
we should write an "Administrators Guide" to cover these and
similar topics (if OOo Documentation doesn't produce one).
A few of the topics you mention might go well in an appendix to
the Getting Started book: things like copying custom setups from
one machine to another, including cross-platform.
However, I do not think most of these topics should go into one
of the existing guides, which are generally aimed at individual
users and have a different focus. But as you said, there are lots
of issues that organisations (including techwriting departments)
need to deal with, so I think a separate book for those users
would be a very valuable addition to the documentation for OOo,
helping to bridge the gap between the "developer" docs available
from OOo and the "user" docs that we are writing.
I have started a forum topic on this:
http://www.createforum.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=96&mforum=oooauthors#96
People should add to the forum thread any other topics they think
should go into such a book, and where possible volunteer to
research and write about the topic. One thing that would really
help with this project (with a minimum of effort) is if people
would post (on the forum) links to (or copies of) information as
they find it (eg posts on other lists and forums with answers to
common questions). That way quite a bit of research could get
done without any one person needing to spend a lot of time doing
it. Of course we'll still need to find people to write it all up
for publication!
--Jean
On 19 Jul 2006, Scott Rhoades wrote,
There are some topics that have come up in conversations with
OOo users or in my own work that don't seem to be covered
anywhere in the doc. For example, I've had people ask me where
they could find information about administering OOo over a
network, with info about sharing a dictionary on the network,
sharing templates on a network, pushing customized toolbars and
menus to other users, and similar info about things that an
organization might want to do to standardize OOo usage. These
kinds of questions are likely to come up more as OOo is adopted
by businesses and other large organizations.
A guide, chapter, or how-to about using OOo on multiple computers
would also be helpful, with info about copying customizations,
macros, templates, etc. to other computers, including computers
that use other platforms. For example, it's probably not uncommon
for users to customize OOo on their main workstation, and want to
copy their custom setup to their laptop, or from their Windows
box to their Linux box. And are there ways to simplify keeping
multiple installation in sync?
I wish I could volunteer to research and write about some of this
stuff, but at the moment I'm having trouble finding time for
topics I've already volunteered to cover.
