Andrew Jensen wrote:
>
>
> > You know this make a lot of sense. So maybe we could move Help to the
> > wiki and fix OOo buttons to go to the wiki for whatever is needed.
This
> > has the advantage to the community of being a resource like wikipedia
> > that can be maintained by the community, reduces the bloat from OOo
> > introduced by the continuous increasing size of Help and it would
make
> > the project more attractive to contributors who would no longer
have to
> > deal with the current restrictive practices imposed on us.
>
> And how would that work when one is not connected to the internet? Not
> to say that this necessarily is a show stopper for the idea, only "How
> to best handle the situation?"
>
How about the same way we handle extra dictionaries? I mean that the
wiki could have a complete copy that users could choose to download or
not.
--
Ah, simple question, simple answer..yes that would work.
I see several technical issues with that but I also like the idea
a lot. In this context we discussed a wiki solution but
ran into following issues:
- help contains > 2,500 topics, we'd need someone to watch these
to observe and verify/approve changes. How can this be done
automatically?
- help is localized in many languages. Wiki localization is still
an unresolved issue.
- there are multiple versions of the help, basically one for each
version (not strictly). And there would be the development version
of the help. How do you keep them separate?
I suggest we try to take a step-wise approach and see what we can
learn and how to overcome the obstacles while we go:
Step 1: Have a HTML copy of the help online on doc.oo.o
I am working on bringing the online help to the web which may
sound more trivial than it is to allow for more collaboration.
But which version of the help do I put online? The latest
release (2.2), the latest milestone (m209), the current help
child workspace (hcshared09)? Or a mixture of all?
Benefits:
- users can *link* to help pages by pointing to the online
versions. OOo application help pages can contain a link
to the online version of that page.
- we would be able to quickly distribute fixed or updates
outside the release cycle
Step 2: Allow for commenting and dicussions on help topics
I posted a question (well hidden, I presume) a couple of days
ago if anyone knows if commenting/ranking functionality
is available on collab.net.
One idea was to link the help HTML pages to wiki pages that
can be used to discuss the pages, or post comments, suggestions,
fixes. We would only need one wiki page per help topic that gets
a discussion, not for each and every help topic.
Or to use an external commenting and ranking service, like
http://js-kit.com/comments (does anyone have any experience
with that)?
Benefits:
- anyone can post comments and notes to help pages and add
links to other resources
- feedback is much faster
Step 3: Allow for online editing
Maybe wiki is the solution here? We'd need to resolve issues
like the ones mentioned above.
Opinions, anyone?
Frank
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
