Hello,
Jean Hollis Weber schrieb:
Those of you who subscribe to the OOo Documentation Project's mailing
list know that they are debating whether the source documents for
"official" user guides and other documentation should be on the wiki,
rather than having the source in ODT files as it is now.
You can use a wiki to collaborate in writing a book. Therefore you need
to setup the hole book structure at beginning. Working that way might be
faster and easier then sending the book around. You can have immediately
response to the content and discussion would be much easier. However you
need someone, to bind all the texts to a book, including making an index
and trim it into pages and fitting to the styles.
One side-topic is whether OOo needs docs in ODT and/or PDF at all, if
they are on the wiki. I am definitely in the group that thinks
documentation should be in several forms, to suit the preferences and
needs of different users. That is why I am in the process of putting the
OOoAuthors guides on the Docs Project wiki (converting them from the ODTs).
We have a very successful German wiki on http://ooowiki.de (Not in the
openoffice.org site). The purpose of such a wiki is different from a
book. That wiki gives short pages on single themes. User have a problem,
jump in and find a solution in the wiki. That is different to using a
book and more like using the help. Also writing is different from
writing a book. Although I have worked on the German Draw book, I like
it much more to write short essays for the wiki. It's done in one or two
evenings, errors can easily be corrected and when a new OOo version
comes, which brings knew features - no problem, simple add them.
Such a wiki (in English) would be a very good thing on
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation in addition to
the build in help.
But such a wiki is not suitable for making a book out of it.
However, I am not convinced that the wiki should be the source documents
for updates to the books we have written, mainly because I want ODTs and
PDFs (as well as wiki access).
I have yet to see an ODT generated from wiki source, so I have no idea
how much work there might be to clean it up. I do know there is a lot of
work involved in cleaning up wiki material generated from ODT source (at
least ODTs like ours, with layout complexity and lots of graphics),
though maintaining it after conversion is quite easy and convenient for
anyone with high-speed internet access.
Besides the decision, where the source of the books should be, it would
be helpful to have a copy of the book in the wiki - divided into its
sections, because readers can use the discussion page to point to
errors, make suggestions for better texts, add texts for new features,
add better illustrations and so on. A tool ODT > Wiki already exists.
Even if you decide not to use the wiki as source, authors will get
valuable feedback which help them for the next version of the book.
kind regards
Regina
