Good questions, Sak. I'm in the process of attempting to extricate
myself from this project (to devote more time to other things in my
life, after 5 years here as "lead editor")... so far not too
successfully! ;-)
As "lead editor" I had tried to find other people to take over the
editorial responsibilities for the individual books. Gary was taking
care of the Writer Guide; I'll leave it to him to say whether he's
still in that role. And I'm not at all sure who, if anyone, is taking
on the role of editor for any of the other books. Want to volunteer
for any of them? :->
You may gather that we're a bit disorganised. The active group was
larger a few years ago, but now the few available people are taking on
different roles in a rather ad-hoc fashion. So your opinions are as
good as anyone's; my comments on historical background are just to let
you know where we're coming from -- which is not necessarily where we
should be going. :-)
> What distinction is there between being a maintainer and the editor?
I think a "maintainer" is the person who has accepted responsibility
for keeping the *content* of a chapter up to date: this is a research
and writing role that does not require a strong command of English
grammar or attention to details of consistency (though it's nice if
the writer has those abilities as well). The *editor* deals with
issues of style, grammar, and consistency (including layout);
publishes chapters; and compiles and publishes a full book from the
chapters. That's the theory, anyway.
> how do I know the main editor of a particular book?
There's no way to tell, mainly because for most of the books the
editor is a moving target or missing in action. At the moment I think
the lineup is Gary for Writer, Linda for Calc, and me for everything
else (Draw, Impress, Getting Started) -- assuming I get around to it.
Given that I'm updating most of GS, and plan to leave soon after these
revisions are done for 3.0, I'd like to have "book editors" for all
three of those books -- if only some people were willing to take on
that role!
I guess the only practical thing for you to do is ask questions as
they come to mind, as you've been doing.
BTW, the main reason I keep lurking around is that I am the publisher
of the *print* editions of the books, through an Australia-based
organisation called Friends of OpenDocument Inc. (I should write up a
summary of the relationship between FoOD and OOoAuthors and put it on
both websites.) FYI, the reason FoOD is the publisher is that it's
incorporated, while OOoAuthors is not; we needed some mechanism for
handling money raised from book sales, and a not-for-profit
incorporated organisation seemed like the best way to do that. (Giving
the money directly to OpenOffice.org was unacceptable to the group,
for several reasons.) I'll soon be making public the accounts for the
last financial year (2007-2008).
--Jean
Sak wrote:
I think I pretty much understand, and agree with everything Jean said
here. There are multiple authors and reviewers for the chapters of each
of the books, so it goes without saying that one writer will have a
preference over another in regards to certain writing styles. My
changes in this respect were more of a suggestion based on what I felt
looked right to me, as I mentioned in my original email, so I hope I
didn't bring up too much heat. :)
That said, it certainly makes sense that each book should imitate its
main editor's preference, or have some sort of agreed-upon uniformity
throughout. For example, it wouldn't bother me one bit to edit all of
the chapters of a particular guide or book to use UK spelling and
punctuation--though I'd face a greater learning curve on that
project--if that spelling was decided to be in "favour" for the entirety
of the book. ;)
But this brings me to a few questions regarding who to ask about these
types of style considerations depending on which book chapters I may be
working on. There are a lot of names in the list of authors in each
chapter of each book, so how do I know the main editor of a particular
book? I didn't know that Gary was the editor for the WG, though I did
know Michele is the maintainer. What distinction is there between being
a maintainer and the editor? I'd obviously like to try and help build
as decent a book as possible, so going from one chapter to the next, and
noticing different writing styles, which do I give preference to? Or,
should I just continue as I have, making notes at places where I make
changes, and leaving it to whomever to make the final decision to reject
or accept the change?
Thanks,
Sak.
Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
Thanks for catching the colour/color discrepancy.
Regarding dialog (box), the Getting Started book use "dialog", NOT
"dialog box", because I (the editor of that book) want the books to be
consistent with the usage in the program itself. However, Gary, the
Writer Guide editor, insists on "dialog box" among other things that
don't agree with the program (checkbox/check box, for example).
Arguing about this and other matters is just a waste of everyone's
time, and it's obvious that neither of us is going to give in to the
other's POV, so...
My compromise is to use the WG style when working on the WG (and my
preferred style in the GS book and -- I think -- in the Draw Guide),
but occasionally I slip up. The chapter on Setting up Writer is a
conspicuous case: some of it is otherwise identical between GS and WG,
except for a few of these usage issues. :-)
BTW, I'm trying to solve the checkbox/check box issue by rewording to
use the term "option" if any designation is required -- which often is
not necessary, IMO. Similarly, we avoid the problem of differences
between US and UK punctuation with quotation marks by not using quote
marks before a comma or full stop. :-)
For historical background info: at one time (several years)
consistency wasn't enforced between chapters of a book (only within
individual chapters), so having whole books made internally consistent
is quite a change.
--Jean
Sak wrote:
I went ahead and reverted my crazy italics style changes to what they
were, and uploaded a new document to the site. My goof, so I figured
I'd save someone a few minutes having to reject those changes. ;)
In regards to Gary's suggestion concerning "dialog" versus "dialog
box" I also made a couple changes there as well, adding "box" behind
dialog. I agree that it makes a bit more sense, in this context,
than having "dialog" hanging out there by itself. His also
mentioning the spelling difference between UK and US reminded me of a
paragraph I changed in the document in those respects--though it was
colour/color that was changed. The rest of the document was using
the US version, "color," and since that paragraph was the only with
UK spelling I changed it to US for the sake of uniformity.
Anyhow, thanks for all your patience while I'm still trying to get
the hang of things here. Like once again mis-labeling the subject
line of this email: "Ch3" when the document is "Ch2." I guess I had
chapter 3 on the brain since I was thinking about diving into it
next. :)
Thanks,
Sak.
Gary Schnabl wrote:
I thought the (tabbed) pages were in bold when they were to be
selected (pushed...); otherwise (when not selected), I forget...
Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
Gary Schnabl wrote:
In the past, dialog box names used default character styles. If
any were not, then those would be in error.
Although the names of the dialog boxes themselves are supposed to
be in the normal character style, the names of the individual
*pages* or *tabs* of the dialog boxes were in italics, were they
not? Sak may be talking about those.
--Jean
Sak wrote:
First, the use of italics for naming dialog windows was
implemented in some places but not others. I went ahead and
italicized the other places, but I didn't see anything in the
Style Guide about whether this was a preferred method or not.
I'd be curious to know what your thoughts are on this for future
revisions or documents that I'm working on.
