Martina Waller wrote:
Hi all,
compared to competitors OpenOffice has a lot of printed/printable
documentation material. By printable documentation I mean all
documentation that is laid out for being read on printouts like books,
booklets and so on. For Office 2007 Microsoft has forgone the user
manual completely. Therefore I am asking you "Do we really need all
this printable material? For which purpose?"
Printed/Printable documentation is one of those things that some people
like, and others do not. We also have online items, which can be
looked at on the OOo website, as well.
Microsoft has forgone the User Manual completely, mainly due to cost
concerns. I have heard several people complain about the lack of one.
Granted they may only have glanced at it a couple times, but they did
mention it.
With OOo, we are not motivated by money, but by demand and what we feel
is best for the product. I personally feel having SEVERAL different
forms of media is in the projects best interest.
As long as we have the volunteers to handle the work, then we can
continue down that path. If it becomes a problem, then we can focus on
specific forms of media, that we have time for.
Even if we assume that printed documentation is necessary I wonder if
it should not be reduced.
Perhaps it would be easier to split up the big User Manual in
application manuals (one manual for Writer, one for Calc etc.)?
The printed guide is one big set, for print purposes. It could be
posted as separate chapters as well.
And what is the purpose of the User Manual compared to the much
smaller How to's?
Who cares for a How To after it was published? Shouldn't it be removed
from the website or go to an archive when it was not updated after a
certain time?
HowTo's have been a way for some volunteers to submit something quick.
The idea is that HowTo documents tend to be 2 hour+ deals, and then you
are finished. A user manual is more designed to teach the user about
the product in question. A HowTo document teaches about a specific or
special cercumstance within the product. So they serve different
purposes, for the most part as well.
Keeping the documentation on the site, is an attempt to make people
aware of what is on the site, as well as, a hope that if someone sees a
document out of date, then it can be updated.
I agree we should do a better job of labeling what documents are for
which version.
Where does the "Getting Started Guide" from Sun fit in there?
On the other hand the broadening of online documentation is underway.
Apart from our online help we will have more and more help contents in
the web. Do we have any possibilities to update the printable material
and transfer it into our wiki?
This is a possibility. The only issue I see is that, from what I
understand, the server the Wiki was not setup to handle a massive amount
of documents from the Documentation project. We'll have to talk to the
owner to see if it could handle this.
The big competitors use the web for up-to-date documentation,
tutorials, tips & tricks, videos. What can we do to offer a more
modern approach to documentation?
The wiki is a great idea. We will have to come up with a way much like
Wiki Books, to take a wiki document and turn it into Printed material
for those that just want to have it.
Hope to hear from you
Martina
--
Scott Carr
OpenOffice.org
Documenation Co-Lead
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