Uwe Fischer wrote: > Hi, > > Uwe Fischer wrote: >> we (the authors of StarOffice and OpenOffice.org Help) would like to >> give more links from the (F1) Help to the documentation on >> documentation.openoffice.org. May be to other Web sites, too.
Bottom posted some comments inline > > > Recently we asked for ideas on the OOo mailing lists how we can > improve the installed Help of StarOffice and OpenOffice.org. One good > idea was to add more links that point to external documents written by > the community. > > Currently, at the end of many Help pages you find "Additional > information" or "See also ..." sections. These links stay within the > installed Help system, or they link to portal pages like > documentation.openoffice.org which will work without "page not found" > errors for quite a time. > > Given the ever changing availability of external documents with > regards to version, operating system, and language, as well as their > Web locations, a database approach seems to be appropriate. > > Now we want your feedback about the following proposal > > a) the Help Viewer already knows about the operating system, version, > and language of the installed Help. Additionally, the user will be > able to select additional languages to read external documents that > are only available in those languages. And the user will be able to > disable the Web search for additional documents, and to redirect the > search to a folder on the local file system. Additionally, during installation create the ability for a network admin can specify an address on the intranet for documentation. > > One idea is to offer a drop-down list box with the main languages. The > current Help language already has a check mark by default, and the > user can select more languages. > > Enable external Web Help: > (none) > v english > german > french > ...etc... > > Choose (none) to disable Web Help from the Internet. > An additional check box "locally installed documents" can be enabled > to display links to documents that are stored in a given folder on the > hard drive. Every user can store own documents here, which must > contain some meta information to be shown at the right location of the > Help. This could also be setup in the options whether the files are on the localhost or on a network. > > > b) The current Help page gets some additional entries in the "More > Information..." or "See also..." section. > These new entries are visible only if Web Help is enabled and if such > help is available. > If the Web Help is enabled and if the current shown Help page contains > a link to the new Web Help feature, then the Help Viewer connects to > the server over the Internet. > > The Help Viewer sends the following information: > - the current Help page > - the current version of the Office software > - the current operating system > - the selected languages for external Web Help > > The server evaluates this information. > If any Web Help document is available for the current page (topic), > version, operating system, and language, the respective link or links > are returned. These links will be shown in the "See also..." section. > The user can click the link to load the external document. > If no suitable document is found, the server returns the following text: > "For this Help page we have no external document at this time. You may > consider changing your langauge selection at Tools - Options - > ...etc... Visit documentation.openoffice.org if you want to write an > external Web Help document for the current topic." > > The server evaluates the Help pages and languages for which Web Help > was asked. These data will be published periodically. The information > helps to improve internal and external Help offerings. > > c) There is a database running on the server. The community maintains > the database. When for example a Language Project has some new > documents, the respective links will be added to the database. There > might be a Wiki to simplify adding and editing the hyperlinks together > with meta information about visible text, language, version, operating > system. A script will update the database based on the Wiki information. > > > This is what I propose. Now please let us discuss this concept. Give > feedback if you want it in such a way and if you think it can be done. > Then we need to find some community members who really do all the work. > > What do you think? > > Regards > Uwe Excellent idea, I am in the process of organising a custom build for a client and they asked for that specific functionality to be placed in the help menu dropdown. A link to the Documentation project front page as well as a link to the same on the companies intranet. This idea however would take that functionality several steps further. This is obviously for an English version but we plan to be building another l10n here as well. I like the idea of a wiki. The lowest possible barrier to community participation is the obvious goal Cheers Graham -- "GET LEGAL - GET OPENOFFICE.ORG" http://why.openoffice.org ISO 26300 compliant Graham Lauder, OpenOffice.org MarCon (Marketing Contact) NZ http://marketing.openoffice.org/contacts.html INGOTs Assessor Trainer (International Grades in Office Technologies) www.theingots.org.nz
