The topic of this note is USER GUIDES, one of several possible types of user documentation. What I say here is not necessarily relevant to other types of user doc.
I assume that user guides similar to the existing ones are a desirable subset of user documentation, and that we wish to continue producing them. Therefore, I propose that we agree the SOURCE FORMAT for the USER GUIDES will continue to be ODT. (The alternative is wiki format for the source.) Reasons: 1) Writing documentation for an office suite using any method other than the office suite itself strikes me as a very bad advertisement for one's product. 2) ODT source enables us to publish guides in numerous formats relatively quickly and easily. This is what we're doing now. From wiki format, conversion to ODT and PDF (and other formats?) is possible but the results need a lot of manual tweaking to be of high standard. 3) Using ODT files as source enables people to work on the user guides without needing to have Internet access while doing the work. 4) Tracking changes during edit and review is easy using OOo's change tracking tools. Wiki "change tracking" is cumbersome and AFAIK one cannot accept or reject individual changed items; one can only revert a set of changes or re-edit the revision. 5) For these reasons, the people who have been producing the OOo user guides over the years have expressed a clear preference for working in ODT, not wiki. --Jean
