LibreOffice Base Guide

Hello everybody.

All our guides now reflect LibreOffice 7, apart from the Base Guide which currently describes LibreOffice 6.4. As far as I can see, nobody is working on an update to the Base Guide but please correct me if this assumption is wrong.

As discussed at the most recent Documentation Team meeting, I propose to start updating the Base Guide so that it reflects either 7.2 or 7.3 (depending how long the update takes).

I do not claim to be particularly knowledgeable about Base, but I can read the document and check its text and figures against the software. I expect the update to be mostly cosmetic because the various release notes list only a few changes.

If anybody is interested in helping with this update, please let us know via this mailing list. All assistance will be extremely welcome!

Regards,

Steve

Hi Steve,

there has nothing been changed in Base in LO 7.*. Only thing which
should be part of the description: Since LO 6.4.3 Firebird has been set
back to experimental feartures. So you could only create a new Firebird
dabase when "experimental features" are choosen.

Don't know the whole content of the Guide but could be the feature "Auto
Grow" in reports, introduced since LO 6.4, is also missing.

Regards

Robert

HI
From a standpoint of keeping our guides in synch with the software version and branding, I think it is advisable to publish a 7.x release of the Base Guide, even with minor feature updates.

Regards
Olivier

I think there may be some changes in Writer that might affect the
discussion of using Base with Writer. I’ll take a look.

Jean

I agree, and I suggest 7.2. It would be nice to have a complete set of
guides branded for the same release. If Peter does Draw and Steve does Base
and someone (who?) does Math, we could have a full set for 7.2.

Jean

Hi everyone!

An update to the Base Guide is surely needed. You can count on me for
reviewing chapters.

Rafael

Greetings - I am available for updating and reviewing chapters.

Thank you
-Dev

Hello everybody,

In my experience so far working within the Documentation Team, we don't tend to describe experimental features within the guides.Therefore, given its current status, would I be better off removing discussion of the internal Firebird engine from the 7.2 Base Guide?

This would avoid references to a "large number of bugs", "instability" and warnings to "be extremely careful here". These don't read well when trying to convince users that LO is a quality product.

The material could easily be re-instated later, if and when Firebird is promoted from experimental to operational.

Any opinions please?

Regards,

Steve

Hi Steve,

creating a new internal Firebird database has been set to experimental.
Using the created Firebird database isn't experimental. So there are
many people, who had created such a database (thinking HSQLDB will be
deprecated) and won't notice any difference to versions before LO 6.4.3.

We need a description of Firebird for this people, but having a look at
the English Guide there is not much description for Firebird. Only an
Appendix B, which shows the difference betwenn HSQLDB and Firebird.
German "Base Handbuch" contains many more descrition about Firebird, but
another translation form German to English won't be a good idea.

Regards

Robert

Hi Robert,

Thanks for that and apologies for my daft questions (I'm not always aware of the history of the project).

I'll give some more thought to improving this area in the (English) Base Guide, although I probably won't be able to do much during this iteration. I do, however, believe passionately that we should not be using the guides to highlight implementation problems, bugs, and instability!

Translating German materials doesn't sound a great idea for me - it would be too big a step for my schoolboy German (even with the help of Google Translate).

Based on what you've read in the German "Base Handbuch", are there any particular areas that we might be able to improve in the Base Guide by extracting information from the Firebird 3.0 documentation (https://firebirdsql.org/en/reference-manuals/)?

Regards,

Steve

Hello everyone,

Congratulations to Steve, Peter and everyone involved on the recent published guides! Very nice!!

Steve,

I do not have much experience with LO Base, but I can help with the reviews!

Best regards,

Felipe Viggiano

Robert,
Can we identify portions of the German book about Firebird that could
be translated and go into the English version? Or are the books too
different now?

Steve, FYI the English Base Guide started out as a translation of the
German Base Handbuch; it has been revised and portions rewritten since
then. But once or twice, several years ago, new or changed parts of
the German book were inserted into the English book, translated (by
various people, plus Google), and edited (often by me). I think it
worked well. But if the books have diverged too much, this may not be
practical.

Jean

I have now checked Chapter 7 of the Base Guide, which covers (among
other things) the Mail Merge function, which uses Writer. There have
been some changes: relatively minor, involving a few of the Mail Merge
dialogs and including at least one extra function. I can update these
in the BG chapter using material from the WG chapter. Someone else
(perhaps you) will need to do the part of BG Ch7 on Calc.

I also think there may have been a minor issue with one of the sample
databases, but I will have to check on that and get back to you.

Jean

Hi Jean, hi Steve,

Can we identify portions of the German book about Firebird that could
be translated and go into the English version? Or are the books too
different now?

Have a look at the chapter "Tabellen"→"Direkte Eingabe von SQL-Befehlen"
of "Base Handbuch 7.2"
(https://de.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/). I have integrated
the difference of HSQLDB and Firebird for every SQL-code written there.
I marked all with green colored "HSQLDB", which will work with HSQLDB
and all with green colored "FIREBIRD", which will work in Firebird. Also
the parts, which won't work, were marked red colored and cancelled.

There is another chapter "Abfragen"→"Abfrageerweiterungen im SQL-Modus"
which will show many of this differences between HSQLDB and Firebird..

The English guide will ha a chapter "Appendix B", which won't appear
here. It has been integrated by me in "Appendix A". There is the same
structure for Functions and data types. I marked it the same with
"HSQLDB" and "Firebird".

I haven't removed much content to the Base Handbuch. I only added new
content. So the structure of the Base Handbuch will be the same as the
structure of the Base Guide. One new chapter I have seen directly was
the chapter about SQLite - 1 page - in chapter "Datenbanken erstellen".
There are many more chapters like the chapter about charts in forms or
gridcontrols in dialogs. But all this isn't essential for showing the
difference between Firebird and HSQLDB.

Regards

Robert

Hello Team,

Many thanks for the offers of help with updating the Base Guide to LO 7.2.

I have created the folder structure in NextCloud, included a tracking spreadsheet, applied the LO 7 template to all ODT files, and placed those files in the Work in Progress folder. I have also checked out BG7200 Preface to update it. Meanwhile Jean is proposing some updates to Chapter 7 and so others would be better avoiding that chapter for the moment.

The task could take a long time if one person updates all chapters, and it would be helpful if others could select chapters for which they can perform the update. Since the software hasn’t changed much since the 6.4 Base Guide was published, this shouldn’t be more complicated than your normal review activities (e.g. does the software accurately describe what Base does; does the text make sense; etc). Please consider doing some updates!

One systematic problem I have noticed is that the figures need some work throughout the document. Some appear to have been edited with photo editing software and many don’t have captions. I will regenerate a complete set of figures for the document and insert them into the chapters later – doing it that way will ensure a consistent appearance. However, please could those updating chapters add captions where they are missing.

I will review all updates and comments, as I have when updating the Calc Guide.

Good luck to all!

Regards,

Steve

Hi all,

Just to add, in my trying to convince local libraries to purchase sets
of guides for LibreOffice, I am often asked if there is a whole set that
they can purchase. The answer thus far from me has been no. Having a
full 7.2 would greatly help in promoting the guides as complete sets to
libraries. I know that is quite challenging, but, most helpful for the
marketing of LibreOffice docs if a full set is available.

Thanks to all of you for your monumental work on getting these guides
out in such order. Truly amazing!

Cheers,

Marc
LibreWaterloo.ca support group lead in Canada