Hi,
today I installed build m187 on Solaris, and a new feature surprised me.
Now StarOffice (may be also OOo) on Solaris / Gnome shows a working
Quickstarter, like previously only the Windows versions and some Linux
distributions did. Then I found the feature mail of last week by Michael
Meeks.
Don't get me wrong - I love this feature and I will never say anything
negative about Michael Meeks, who surely is a programming genius. ;-)
But...
How am I supposed to deliver a timely Help for this feature when
- there is no Spec Doc
- there is a feature mail very short before the new build that contains
the feature
- there is no one to send questions or issues to?
I have many questions, for example
- will the feature be visible on Linux too (I see it in m187 Sols/Gnome)
- will the feature replace existing quickstarters on Linux or be in
parallel?
- the text string on Tools/Options/OOo/General is different from the
existing text string on former Windows versions. I have no idea if this
change also changes the existing text string for Windows versions to be
the same as now on Solaris.
- what about the start parameter "-quickstart"? Will that work now on
UNIX? Must I change the Help here too?
- why is the Help/Guide check box in the feature mail not marked? We did
mention the (Windows-only) Quickstarter at numerous places, as did the
OOo community in their printed and online documentation. The fact that a
real developer never scans through Help or Guide pages does not mean
that a feature is never Help/Guide relevant.
- on Windows, installing a patch will first close the application
including the Quickstarter. Will it be the same on UNIX?
For me, and may be for a lot of other community members, it is important
to get information about new or changed or removed features *early*.
Best practice would be if every Help relevant feature has the
helpcontent2 module added, so I (or the developer) can change the help
files and have them integrated the same time as the feature.
Uwe
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Technical Writer
StarOffice - Sun Microsystems, Inc. - Hamburg, Germany
http://www.sun.com/staroffice
http://documentation.openoffice.org/
http://documentation.openoffice.org/online_help/index.html
http://blogs.sun.com/oootnt
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