Boy is my face red.
After all this discovered something that I had been overlooking in the
OO Help System interface. As I said I would, I went in search of the OO
documentation project. After finding it I was reading the document,
"http://documentation.openoffice.org/online_help/HelpAuthoring.pdf";. In
it I found this paragraph, "The help is divided into six different help
modules that can be selected using the drop
down list at the top left of the help viewer." Sure enough, I've been
using OO and the help for two weeks and never saw that drop down
control. In fact I avoid these in my designs just because, for some
reason, they just don't register in my mind.
In fact, I'd like to hear from anyone else who has had this experience.
Is it just me or is it at all common to overlook this control?
Still, I stand by most of my statements quoted below. Suggestion 3 is
covered by this drop down list. But I would suggest that some text be
placed near it to make its function more noticeable. I jumped to the
erroneous conclusion that the Contents tab was displaying the entire
contents of all the help. Now I know that there are six individual help
modules; one basic and one for each tool in the suite.
Peace, Love, Laughter,
Rob:-]
Robert Shaver wrote:
Hi Everybody,
First let me say, "Great job everybody working on OpenOffice." It is
remarkable how good this application is. I wouldn't be bothering to
make these comments if I didn't think to was worth my time.
I'm new to OO so, like any new tool I start using, there is a learning
curve at the beginning. I'm sure in a few weeks of puzzling over this
wonderful tool I'll have forgotten all these initial frustrations. But
it's also a good time to record some of the problems a new user like
me encounters. So here goes...
THE OO HELP SYSTEM
I got a MS Word document from a friend with a list of names and phone
numbers. The document page has some centered text at the top followed
by a two column table. I'm planning to call each of these people and
set an appointment with each one so I decided to add a third column to
the right of the other two. This was no problem. I found in the tool
bar a nice clear icon that does just that. The problems started when I
tried to adjust the width of each column. Suddenly the whole table
jumped to a new page leaving the three line header on the first page
by itself. Now I'm sure I'll eventually master this problem but I want
to comment on my attempts to find the answer to these issues in the OO
help system and perhaps suggest some areas where improvements could be
made to help a new user navigate the OO help.
1. HELP PAGES HAVE NO CONTEXT INDICATION
Since I'm pretty computer literate, I can usually use the index or
search features in a help system to quickly home in on the answers I
want. So the first thing I did was to go to the OO Help | Find tab. I
searched for "table" and in the results I clicked on the first item
"Table". This displayed a page with the header "Table". As I started
reading the page I realized that it is talking about database tables,
not a table in a word processing document.
At this point I began to suspect that, while I'm pretty sure all the
pages exist in some kind of hierarchy, this structure is not visible
on any particular page. I took another look at the search results and
discovered that there are three "Table" entries, two "Tables" entries
and two "Table Design" entries. After looking at each of these pages I
came to the conclusion that there is no easy way to tell what part of
OO these pages are referring to. I'm quite sure that, once I'm
conversant with OO, it will be quite obvious but right now it isn't.
That leads me to my first suggestion
SUGGESTION 1: Give every page a hierarchical context. That is, if a
page about tables applies only to Write then its heading should be
"Write Table". If a page applies to all tools then it might start with
"General" or "Basic". If it applies to two of the tools then perhaps
the page could have two headers or their might be a text convention to
indicate this like "Write, Calc - Stuff".
2. ITEMS IN THE CONTENTS TAB ARE NOT VERY ORGANIZED
So after the adventure above I decided to go to the contents tab and
get more familiar with the overall organization of OO and the OO Help
System. Much to my surprise I couldn't find any general overview of OO
in the help system. It may be there but I haven't found it yet. That
leads me to...
SUGGESTION 2: The very first item in the help should be an
introduction or overview of OO. This overview should tell me how to
best use the help system and give me a road map to the whole suite of
OO tools.
One question I haven't discovered the answer to is, what tools are in
the OO suite? I know about Write and Calc and Draw and the
presentation tool who's name I can't find in the help. (Oh, I just
found it, three layers deep; Impress". Why is the help for Draw and
Impress lumped together under "Presentations and Drawings"? ) What I
haven't figured out is if there is any kind of database included with
OO. I do know that it can link to external databases but I'm not
absolutely sure there isn't some kind of database built in. I did see
a tool that lets me define database tables but that could just be part
of the external database referencing system.
SUGGESTION 3: Each tool in the suite should have a single separate
well named entry in the help system at the root level of the help tree.
For example I clicked on the "Formulas" help item expecting to find
information about Calc formulas. Instead I was lead two layers down to
"Welcome to the oo Math Help". It seems to be a separate tool for
creating mathematical formulas that display Write documents but do not
execute.
CONCLUSION
I could go on but I'm not sure it would be useful. Perhaps I should
contact the documentation folks and actually contribute to that
project. If one of the people in that project reads this and thinks I
can be helpful, please contact me. Meanwhile, I'll see if I can find
them myself.
Peace, Love, Laughter,
Rob:-]
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