Now that we are getting close to having a full set of rebranded user guides for LibreOffice (based on the OOo guides), I would like to put forward for discussion some major changes to the Getting Started guide. (I have made the same proposal to the OOo group, but the two guides do not need to remain in parallel if the two groups choose different paths to improve them.)
The Getting Started guide was originally intended to be no longer than 200 pages, but it is now closer to 400 pages. I would like to cut out some chapters and make them into standalone guides, drop some material that is covered in other books and IMO is no longer needed in this one, slightly reorganise what's left, and add some pointers to the other books and documents. Details below. The main goal is to improve the book's usefulness for new users; decreasing the page count is a secondary goal. 1) Remove Chapter 8 (Getting Started with Base) and make it a standalone document. It is 52 pages long (longer than the Math Guide) and I think would be more useful to beginning Base users if it's standalone. Also, I think the vast majority of new OOo users will NOT be using Base. 2) Remove Chapter 9 (Getting Started with Math) because it duplicates the first part of the Math Guide and is therefore not needed here. 3) Remove most of Chapter 12 (Creating Web Pages) because the info is given in the guides for Writer, Impress, etc and is really little more than an export function; it could be mentioned briefly in the chapter on Printing, Exporting etc. Info on hyperlinks needs to be put somewhere else; I don't have a specific suggestion on this, but it didn't really fit in this chapter anyway, since it's relevant to more than web page creation. 4) Combine Chapter 2 (Setting up OOo) and Chapter 14 (Customizing) and leave the result at the end of the book. This is similar to the way the topics are handled in the other books. 5) Drop Appendix A (Keyboard Shortcuts) and put a brief mention in Chapter 1 with a pointer to the Help. That's the major changes. I have a few other changes to suggest in various chapters. In total the reorganisation should cut the page count down below 300 pages and make the book more useful for the majority of new users. Comments? --Jean -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to [email protected] Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
