An Administrators Guide is exactly what people I work with have asked for. That would cover part of what I suggested, plus much more that others will suggest. Something in Getting Started about working on multiple machines also sounds like it would be in the right place.
Synching dictionaries, templates, and macros between machines are user tasks that have probably been grappled with by a lot of us. Providing protected corporate templates and dictionaries is probably a less common need, but if we want to make inroads into businesses, this info would be helpful. And, as far as I can tell, the competition doesn't provide this level of info (at least not that I've seen), so it could actually give us an advantage. >>> Jean Hollis Weber <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07/19/06 6:37 PM >>> 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.
