Hi all, Below (far below) is a compilation of answers to several questions I had about LibreOffice's documentation and processes. I have a few remarks at this time (more later):
A couple of people (those from the User group as well), talked about video. I have to say that I think that thinking about Video is way beyond our capacity in terms of resources. As has been said over and over by those who responded, there is just too much to do and too few people to do it. (But I, of course, understand that anyone can do whatever pleases them in this environment.) There's been lots said about translation and L10N. Seriously, I'm not sure what points were being made. In my view, we as the documentation team ought do everything we can to make translation as available and efficient as we can, but that is the extent of our work concerning it. I have one specific question that maybe someone can answer for me. Someone said, “* Excluding people whose legal residence is in a jurisdiction that prohibits them to do these tasks, unless they are being paid to do so.” What does that mean? Someone somewhere in the world would be legally prohibited from volunteering? In any case, I would think that, if that were the case, that's not our concern or responsibility. It would be the volunteers. We can't police that. I have been working on the “UsingAssistiveTechnologyInLO” doc. And I am finding that information on LibreOffice is widely scattered. So far, I've found info on Assistive Tech in the following locations. (I know many (most probably) of you know this. I just want to bring it up.) https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Accessibility http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/accessibility/ https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Assistive_Tools_in https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Accessibility_in https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Shortcuts_Accessibility https://help.libreoffice.org/Common/Accessibility Not only is tech information scattered, but even information about writers and writing is scattered. It makes it hard to keep track and focus. At least for me. We are really low on man(woman) power. And I think one reason for this is because things are really scattered. I think that organization would attract or at least keep resources. As I had said before, it seems that the doc team does get volunteers, but these volunteers seem to have no direction, and so fade away. LibreOffice has, as you all know, three completely separate documentation teams. Three groups writing about essentially the same thing. Has the idea to consolidate this effort ever come up? I know that some think that online help and printed help ought be different. I don't disagree, but I think this is a separate issue from that of consolidation. Even with differences, there is still a great deal of duplicated effort. This duplication and wasted effort is the real question I have for the group. I am certainly aware that a consolidation or merging would take a lot of effort. However, once that were accomplished, even if we had no new talent coming to us, what talent we did have would be far more efficiently utilized. Now I know I'm not saying anything that most of you don't already know. I just want to bring up the discussion to see if we can't do something with it. I have more thoughts, but I'll leave it as this for now. (Once again I'm going to say that I hope I haven't offended anyone with anything I have said. That surely isn't my intent.) Thanks for everyone's responses. Davidaa Documentation Production Online help comes from the developers of the project. Historically, the group that produces the PDFs, and the group that produces the built in help file have been entirely separate groups. As best as I can tell, information available to one, has not been passed onto the other group. This works both ways. There is information in the help file that is current, and accurate, but not reflects in the PDFs. There is information in the PDFs that is current and accurate, but not reflected in the Help File. We don't know who is currently responsible for the creation of the online help. We are trying to find a way to simplify the process. But it's not all about the process, we also need people to participate to it, for the moment there are very few interested, so anybody is welcome :) … There are very few people producing anything in the way of documentation. This applies both to creating original content, and translating existing content from one language into another language. … There is a lot of work to be done, but no single document that either lists everything that needs to be done, or even lists everything that is currently being worked on. The User Guide Tasks page is supposed to be updated by people when they check out files (from the ODFAuthors website) for updating, review, editing, etc, and when they return the files they've been working on. Unfortunately, many people fail to do this. No one in particular maintains the page. At the moment, it's essentially empty because very few people are working on anything, AFAIK. We don't have anyone coordinating documentation or mentoring new people. Three groups? 1) pdf 2) Online help 3) Built-in Help. The PDF files are produced by the documentation team, Online help is what you find on the wiki help but also off line, maintained by developers and l10n team. The third group is the Native Language projects where documentation, marqueting, websites, QA etc are translated and documented. Technically there are two issues: * Finding people that are willing to do it; * Excluding people whose legal residence is in a jurisdiction that prohibits them to do these tasks, unless they are being paid to do so; Research priority should be how to find and keep documentation contributors. What is needed, is a reduction in the barriers that new contributors face, in creating/maintaining documentation. For starters, there are three different groups that are involved in creating/maintaining documentation. Each group has its own templates, set of procedures, priorities, and barriers to participation. With the documentation produced at ODFAuthors, the primary issue is, quite literally, getting them started in the (¿easy?) things, like proof-reading and copy-editing. Something that isn't clear to most new contributors, is that whilst the focus is on the six core manuals, there are a score of other manuals that are on the wish-list. Most of the focus is on the core manuals: * Getting Started; * Writer; * Calc; Secondary manuals are: * Draw; * Impress; Tertiary manuals are: * Math; * Base; The wish list consists of: * Intermediate usage of those components; * Advanced usage of those components; * _Migrating from MSO to LibO_; * _Site Administration of LibO_; * _Creation and Distribution of Templates and Extensions_; * _Using R in Calc_; * _Project Management Using LibO_; * _Accessibility and LibreOffice_; I've forgotten the other topics. The first documentation available to all users, whatever the language, is the off line help, which is then duplicate to the wiki help. This documentation needs much more love and is more and more outdated. We are aware of it and would like to set a group to work on it. Multiracio dispensed with PDFs, with the expectation that users will hit F1. Consequently, the helpfile in EuroOffice, for Linux, is more accurate, and much more useful than that of either AOo or LibO. The major reason the documentation is not also available in ePub format, is because there have been precious few requests for it to be in that format. Nonetheless Jean has modified the template used by ODFAuthors, so that export to ePub format is more reliable, consistent, and professional looking. and, for community/contribution interested users: + collaborativly created (like a wiki) - (which is different from comment function!) + nice2have: views/downloads counter L10N Related to the issue of Documentation, is the issue of Translation. There are also a dozen or so other documents, that would be useful, if translated into English, and other languages. Most people don't realize that L10N teams are responsible for translation of the UI, the Built-In Help, the documentation on the website, and creating/translating user guides in the local language(s). We aren't yet at the point where machine translation is as good a human translation is. -- To unsubscribe e-mail to: [email protected] Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ 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
