Scott Carr wrote:
We have a Style guide. If you want to look it over, and make
recomendations:
http://documentation.openoffice.org/servlets/ProjectDocumentList
It hasn't been updated in a bit.
Martina, can you go over the style guide and make
suggestions? We should also with moving more content
to the wiki have some explicit sections about wiki
publishing. We should also make the style guide more
visible to authors. Many "should"s, I know.
Scott, I am on business in the US this week so I may
be not very responsive (and I'm struggeling with US
keyboard layout :-)
A lot of interesting things came up recently that
I would like to follow up next week.
Thanks
Frank
Jim Harris wrote:
Hi, Martina, and thanks for these thoughts, well-based (apparently)
and well-presented.
It appears to me that your suggestion is based on the foundation that
OOo documentation should follow
(a) a consistent and logical pattern, discernable on inspection of any
page (perhaps aided by first reading the TOC), and
(b) best practices well-known and accepted in the Electronic and/or
Printed Publishing and Visual Communication arts/sciences, perhaps
modified a bit to follow most-modern styles in well-liked
documentation of similar products.
I could not agree more, and this implies one step to be inserted
before your set: OOo documentation stewards and our "elected
representatives" (mostly, those actually working on the docs) should
learn about (b) above, and agree on and publish the pattern.
If you, dear reader, _are_ a steward/acknowledged expert on OOo
documentation, please so identify yourself and comment on my
suggestions and support them, or discredit them before they hang
around long enough to do more damage. :-)
Thanks again for a great product and all the good work on
documentation; I know it's hard to do well.
Sincerely,
Jim Harris
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 1:09 AM 6/19/200719/2007 >>>
Hi all,
Visualization in documentation aims to facilitate the communication of
knowledge through the use of graphics, icons, tables, screenshots,
colors and artful guidance of the reading direction. When I looked
through the documents on
http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/index.html and the online
help I found several insufficiencies with respect to visualization. In
order to dispose of these flaws I would like to make the following
suggestions:
Assure a consistent layout in ooo documents to enable easy orientation
within the documents.
Reduce the icon size in the documents. Their actual size constrains the
flow of reading because they get too much attention.
In the table of contents of the OpenOffice User Guide highlight chapter
titles, do not provide more than three chapter levels and create chapter
groups. The current table of contents is too confusing. The user does
not easily know where a new chapter begins.
Do not indent bullets and numbers in lists. Bullets and numbers already
indicate a list. Indentation means over-formatting.
In online help use tables also for action alternatives. Tables are a
good means to present contents clearly arranged. If we use normal text
for menu selections, we could use tables for action alternatives
(for example, context menus and icons). Users can then find quickly
what they need.
What do you think of it?
Martina
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