Thank you **Mike Meyer**
for taking the time to rationally explain the frustration
non-developers/non-programmers and dolts like myself have in climbing
the learning curve in OOo.
My feeling (which is offered with kind intentions) is that until your
"users" suggestions are addressed, OOo will remain tilted toward the
esoteric side, rather than toward that of the general user. The unpaid
but willing slaves answering questions on this list are only a part of
the story necessary to achieve a level of general usefulness for OOo.
The other part is not there yet. It is bogged down in the
"documentation" maw -- somewhere.
Great graphics would help.
We appreciate the marvelous work which is the OOo project. But if the
public is not invited to the party, wots the point?
Richard
[Actually, I haven't gotten to point of caring whether Writer links to
Calc; I'm worried about HTML.]
*************************************************************************************
Mike Meyer wrote:
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, G. Roderick Singleton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> typed:
Don't know about a tutorial but http://documentation.openoffice.org/ has
User Guides and HOW-TOs that will likely help you. Have a look.
I hate to complain about people trying to help me, but this advice is
only slightly more useful than "Try googling for your key terms." The
problem is that the documentation web site is apparently designed for
authors developing documentation, *not* for people trying to find
documentation. While documentation authors are important, have my
utmost respect, and certainly deserve a web site - that's not the web
site you want to present to people trying to find documentation.
Look at the page. The first real content - ignoring the banners and
nav bars and the like - is "If you were registered and logged in, you
could join this project." I'm not interested in registering, logging
in, or joining the project - I just want to know how to get my work
done. The top banner includes a graphic and login/registration widgets
- again, not of interest to someone looking for documentation. The
left-hand nav menu starts with project tools, including such things as
version control and the issue tracker. The only thing that looks
interesting to users is the "Documents & files" link - but it takes
me to a list of things like templates for people writing OOo
documentation. Not of interest - which means the Project Tools nav
entries are not of interest. Below that we find the Ooo Search tool -
the first thing might actually help me solve my problem.
That's what makes your advice similar to suggesting googling for it -
it basically points me to the OOo search facility. That's useful, but
I've already tried that, and turned up nothing. I tried it again, and
still got nothing. Below that is a short nav with generic OOo links -
nothing specific to documentation.
Continuing down the main content, I find project info, which is of no
use to me. Then comes a combo box of projects by language. That's
already set to English, so apparently it's a nop for me (*). I try
Dutch, and sure enough, it takes me to a Dutch documentation
page. Oddly enough, that one looks like it's organized for users, not
authors. To bad I don't read Dutch. After that comes a list of recent
additions. Potentially interesting, but it still seems to be designed
for authors, not users, as authors are more likely to know the
documentation set well enough for this to be useful. Next comes links
to a task list - not for me - and documentation forums. Gotta log into
that so I suspect it's for authors, not users. Finally - so far down
the page I have to scroll to see it - comes a list of available
documents, organized by type. That's the first content on the page
that's useful to users looking for documentation.
Finally, the title on a lot of the pages seems to be
"documentation:". That really doesn't help when it shows up in
bookmarks, history lists, and window titles.
Informing users of the existence of the documentation project is
certainly worthwhile. It would be a *lot more* worthwhile if the page
you referenced were designed to help users instead of authors. I know
this hasn't been very construtive, as I haven't made any suggestioons
for improving the site, other than the implication of removing those
things that aren't useful to users. That's because I know I don't have
the skills to do a good job of this (just check out my home page for
proof). It's not meant to be destructive, or just to complain. I'm
hoping you'll take it to heart, and redesign the page - or provide a
different page - for users, thus improving the OOo expereince for
everyone.
I didn't find anything obviously relevant to cross-document linking in
the FAQs, How to's and User guides. I've got some non-obvious things
to look through, but I'd still appreciate pointers or documentation on
the correct way to create dynamic cross-document links.
<mike
*) This uses the common ugly hack of a JavaScript select event to
trigger the jump. That makes it unusable for users who worry about
security. The solution is to add something like <NOSCRIPT><INPUT
TYPE=SUBMIT VALUE="GO"></NOSCRIPT> along with the appropriate form and
server-side support. Not hard, and it's the kind of thing that
separates a quality site from the vast majority of the web.
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