Re: [libreoffice-documentation] workflow on oooauthors (was: Re: Need of a documentation framework for LibreOffice?)

[Jean Hollis Weber <jeanweber@gmail.com>]

On Thu, 2010-11-04 at 00:44 +0100, Nino Novak wrote:
> On Thursday 04 November 2010 00:23, Jeff Prater wrote:
> > What is the order in which documentation will be published? Will it
> > be created in ODT documents first, then the information is published
> > to the website/wiki?
> 
> This indeed has been the case for the User Guides, while developer docs 
> were created often first/only in the wiki. 
> 
> But we will see how people will decide to work here. 
> 
> For me it seems nice to have both or all three options available as some 
> people love to work with wiki while others prefer ODT. 
> 
> As for the website, this has been in some teams used only as download 
> container for ODT and PDF documents. As far as I have understood Drupal 
> discussions so far, it's possible to write books and chapters directly 
> in Drupal, so this opens up a third possibility which should be 
> explored, too.
> 
> so we have: 
> odt  -> pdf 
>      -> web &/or wiki 
> wiki -> odt -> pdf
>      -> web
> web  -> odt & pdf 
>      (wiki is not needed in this case in my eyes as wiki is just 
>      a quick web)
> 
> But maybe other people have different opinions?
> 
> Nino
> 

Some comments from my (limited) experience:
wiki -> odt generally produces a poor result even when a good template
is applied IF the material includes a lot of graphics, as in the user
guides. Much manual tweaking is then required to end up with an
attractive, well laid out odt to convert to pdf.

Starting with odt and then outputting to other formats generally works
well, IF the odt is created using an appropriate template and layout
rules. However, some of the layout in the current OOo books does not
work when output to HTML and some is a bit messy when output to wiki
format. Post-processing may clean it up, but more manual intervention
may be necessary. I have not found time to rework the layout and
template to avoid (or at least minimise) these problems. I should have a
list somewhere of the specific problems I've noted; I'll try to find it.

This is something to consider --and test-- when deciding which output
formats and layouts are wanted.

--Jean


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