Collecting small things in the Wiki

Hallo David,

David Paenson schrieb:

Over the past three years have been writing a documentation specifically
aimed at students (and authors in general) in German.

It is available at:

http://www.fb4.fh-frankfurt.de/tips/openoffice/dokumentation/ooo_fuer_studenten.pdf

The documentation reflects criticisms and suggestions made by my students -
240 per semester participate in my 3 hour introductory course - and their
concrete needs when it comes to formatting longer texts such as research
papers etc.

I was thinking of adapting it to LibreOffice and also translating it into
English.

In my view, there are loads of introductions to various aspects of the
program and also very good systematic introductions written from a technical
point of view. But I haven't yet come across one written specifically for
students and limiting itself to their specific needs. Students don't have
the patience, the time or indeed the need to learn about all aspects of the
program, they just want to produce nicely looking documents in as short a
time and with the least effort possible.

My question: where can I publish my introduction? Have been looking around,
but can't find anything on the web.

For The German version I think, you can upload it to http://www.libreofficewiki.de and add a chapter in
http://www.libreofficewiki.de/StrukturierteDokumente and links it there.

A link to the download from the above mentioned www.fb4.fh-frankfurt.de/... is already placed on http://de.libreoffice.org/hilfe-listen/probleme-2/.

Kind regards
Regina

Thanks Regina,

Just installed LO 3.4 and discovered an enormous bug: in editing modus, i.e.
when correcting someone else's text, so he/she sees the results, deleted
text simply disappears instead of just being overwritten with dashes. So now
I've gone back to OpenOffice 3.2.

Yours
Dave

What I see is a strikethrough but with no text. And rejection of the deletion leaves it blank than what the original text was. (It also appears that showing changes is off by default in 3.4.0 but recording changes is on.)

It is (relatively) safe to use LibreOffice 3.3.2. The bug seems to be new in 3.4.0. I haven't checked this with 3.3.3rc1.

- Dennis

PS: In making a sample file to demonstrate this defect, I notice that the deletion shows as text with a strikethrough at first. It is when I do anything else that it suddenly changes to just strikethroughs without the text. I think this is a bug I've seen before but made worse in some way. The bug is that the subsequent re-rendering of a deletion actually changes it something else in a way that the original deleted material cannot be recovered by rejecting the deletion. That gives me some ideas of some test files that isolate this, though I am not equipped to actually fix the code.

PPS: I sternly object to 3.4.0 not being a stable release and meant to be treated the same as a beta. This was a terrible move, especially since it was widely-announced as availability of 3.4 without qualifications. It should have remained at least 3.4.0rc2 until there was time to discover what regressions and show-stoppers had arisen. The need for a 3.4 release celebration was not justifiable under any circumstances. This regression business is very discouraging.)

This is also my co-workers. So I have been collecting short instructions for them. In their case even shorter than your summary. I think the organisation of the information is important. I think of layers, the very simple common things on top because no one wants to look for these and more and more detail as you dig deeper. A wiki is well structured for this.
steve

Computers, hypertexts, and collaborative structures like Wikis are powerful instruments for progressive refinement and disclosure. I would love to see much more of that.

My experience suggests that authoring for progressive disclosure is rather difficult, since people navigate and associate their conceptualizations differently.

Just the same, I'm all for it!

- Dennis

PS: An example of difficulties has to do with on-/off-line help files. (First, the off-line files should have ways to go off-line for more/newer detail rather than it being an exclusive choice to have one or the other.) The search is weak and if consistent terminology is not used everywhere the same concept is being referenced, it is easy to fail to find something that you may even know is there from a previous encounter. And we know that a Wiki can be terrible for users unless it is well-curated. I wonder what answers there are for all that. I merely recognize the problems.

Dennis, I concur fully.
It could work very well or be a mess. Some form of control (committee) for addition of content may provide consistency and structure. If this gets too big, then its not collecting small things, so defeats its purpose.
steve

I concur; LO version 3.4 is utterly useless for any real copyediting purposes where edit-tracking is desired or necessary. Releasing an alpha or beta version as if it were a stable release was a terrible marketing decision.

Perhaps, not enough competent QA folks from OOo have yet defected.

Gary

On my to do list for several years is a project to write (in English)
exactly what you are talking about, but I have not found the time to
do so. If you could translate your document into English, that would
be so good. We can put it into the English wiki (in ODT format or wiki
format or both; your choice).

Jean

Hi David,

David Paenson schrieb:

Thanks Regina,

Just installed LO 3.4 and discovered an enormous bug: in editing modus, i.e.
when correcting someone else's text, so he/she sees the results, deleted
text simply disappears instead of just being overwritten with dashes. So now
I've gone back to OpenOffice 3.2.

That is https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=37584
It can be found in the release notes
http://www.libreoffice.org/download/release-notes/#LO340
Remember, LO3.4 is marked as "It is targetted to early adopters".

Kind regards
Regina

Hi Jean,

OK, will get my hands on it. Perhaps with your help? I would do the raw
translation etc., but if you could have a look at it, that would be
wonderful. I guess it will take me a few months.

Yours
Dave

Hi David,

Hi Jean,

OK, will get my hands on it. Perhaps with your help? I would do the raw
translation etc., but if you could have a look at it, that would be
wonderful. I guess it will take me a few months.

Would you happen to have the document available in .odt form? I would
attempt an automatic translation, to see if the result is in any way
usable, and we could maybe then re-write it into real English...

Hi :slight_smile:
Machine translations are not perfect and often give quite humorous results.
They do seem a good start to doing a translation as it's 'just' proof-reading
after that. It's a task that humans are much better at even if they only have a
very basic grasp of one of the languages involved.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

From: David Nelson <commerce@traduction.biz>
To: documentation@global.libreoffice.org
Sent: Mon, 13 June, 2011 10:01:39
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-documentation] Collecting small things in the Wiki

Hi David,

> Hi Jean,
>
> OK, will get my hands on it. Perhaps with your help? I would do the raw
> translation etc., but if you could have a look at it, that would be
> wonderful. I guess it will take me a few months.

Would you happen to have the document available in .odt form? I would
attempt an automatic translation, to see if the result is in any way
usable, and we could maybe then re-write it into real English...

--
David Nelson

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deleted

Hi David,

David Nelson schrieb:

Hi David,

Hi Jean,

OK, will get my hands on it. Perhaps with your help? I would do the raw
translation etc., but if you could have a look at it, that would be
wonderful. I guess it will take me a few months.

Would you happen to have the document available in .odt form? I would
attempt an automatic translation, to see if the result is in any way
usable, and we could maybe then re-write it into real English...

http://www.fb4.fh-frankfurt.de/tips/openoffice/dokumentation/ooo_fuer_studenten.odt

Kind regards
Regina

Hi Nino,

here the answer from Martin Bayer. It is in German.

<quote>
Das LibreOfficeWiki ist schon jetzt komplett zweisprachig, was Systemtexte und Hilfeseiten anbelangt. Die Auswahl erfolgt nach Browser-Einstellungen oder - bei angemeldeten Benutzern - über die Einstellungen im Profil.

Damit die einzelnen Seiten (topics) aber bei Namensgleichheit nicht in Konflikt zueinander geraten, könnte man das Wiki z.B. so umorganisieren:

de.libreofficewiki.de
en.libreofficewiki.de
...

Technisch gesehen wären das dann zwar getrennte Wikis, aber man kann natürlich für eine Verlinkung verwandter Themen untereinander sorgen und auch ein einheitliches Erscheinungsbild (Logo, Name usw.) schaffen.

Diese Verlinkung kann aber nur dann automatisch geschehen, wenn die jeweiligen Seiten in den unterschiedlichen Sprachversionen den selben Namen haben. In der Praxis heißt dies, eine automatische Verlinkung wäre nur bei Seiten zu Eigennamen wie "LibreOffice" oder "OpenDocument" möglich, bei allen anderen wäre eine Verlinkung Handarbeit (was sich aber nicht wesentlich von der Lage z.B. bei MediaWiki unterscheidet).

Wichtig ist natürlich, dass es ausreichend Beteiligung gibt, d.h. dass das neue Wiki dann auch mit Inhalten gefüllt wird. In diesem Zusammenhang sollte man sich auch Gedanken über die Lizenz machen: Der deutschsprachige "Altbestand" ist unter GFDL lizenziert. TDF/LO hat sich jedoch für eine CC-Lizenz entschieden. Für ein englischsprachiges Wiki könnte man sich also entscheiden für GFDL, CC oder GFDL+CC (oder etwas ganz anderes).

Natürlich müsste man für das neue Wiki auch noch ein neues Logo entwerfen und dieses von der TDF absegnen lassen, da die allgemeinen Regeln für die Verwendung des Namens "LibreOffice" und des Logos eine Lösung ähnlich wie die für das alte OpenOffice.org-Wiki nicht decken.

Ansonsten ließe sich die hier angerissene Lösung in relativ kurzer Zeit realisieren, d.h. innerhalb von ungefähr einem Tag bis einer Woche. Was die Ressourcen anbelangt, so ist der Betrieb dank der großzügigen Unterstützung durch WikiWikiWeb.de und Freies Office Deutschland e.V. bereits bis Mai 2013 gesichert. Wenn man Anderes/Besseres wollte, müsste man das jetzt klar formulieren, um weitere Möglichkeiten auszuloten.
</quote>

Kind regards
Regina

Regina Henschel schrieb:

Hi Nino, hi *,

thanks for your synopsis.

Writing book-like documentation does not attract so much authors and my hope is, that those, who have only little time and are scared away by the document writing workflow, might help getting content into a wiki. Other reasons why I like a wiki:
* You can easily search it with Google, by restricting the domain in the search.
* The wiki can contain information for a special group of users, for example 'installing in a network'.
* The wiki can provide background information down to implementation details.
* The wiki can contain information and tips for advanced users

I personally wish to get a writable section in [D] http://help.libreoffice.org, so that we get an English end-user knowledge base in one place over the time.

But I can continue to write in German into [B] http://www.libreofficewiki.de, and the English part of the community should say, what they want.

Kind regards
Regina

Nino Novak schrieb:

Sure:

http://www.fb4.fh-frankfurt.de/tips/openoffice/dokumentation/ooo_fuer_studenten.odt

Hope something useful comes out of the automatic translation, though I'm
very sceptical about that.

Best
Dave

Hi Regina, all,

(I don't know if it's good to involve myself into this discussion as I
probably won't have enough time to add/translate content to the wiki,
but, however)

Hi Nino,

here the answer from Martin Bayer. It is in German.

Thank you.

I'm trying to translate Martin's main points and to add my comments.

Maybe you can forward this posting to Martin, I don't know if he is
subscribed here.

Das LibreOfficeWiki ist schon jetzt komplett zweisprachig, was
Systemtexte und Hilfeseiten anbelangt. Die Auswahl erfolgt nach
Browser-Einstellungen oder - bei angemeldeten Benutzern - über die
Einstellungen im Profil.

His point here is, that the GUI is already international (with browser
detection).

Nice - but it does not help to have an English Wiki GUI if the Content
is German :wink:

Damit die einzelnen Seiten (topics) aber bei Namensgleichheit nicht
in Konflikt zueinander geraten, könnte man das Wiki z.B. so
umorganisieren:

de.libreofficewiki.de
en.libreofficewiki.de
...

The idea is to keep the different Language versions in separate Wikis.
That's fine, I'd say. We should go for it, or better "Martin, please do
it" :wink:

Maybe a domain like libreofficewiki.org could better serve the i18n
idea?

Technisch gesehen wären das dann zwar getrennte Wikis, aber man kann
natürlich für eine Verlinkung verwandter Themen untereinander sorgen
und auch ein einheitliches Erscheinungsbild (Logo, Name usw.)
schaffen.

The look&feel of each language wiki should be adapted.

Ok :slight_smile:

Diese Verlinkung kann aber nur dann automatisch geschehen, wenn die
jeweiligen Seiten in den unterschiedlichen Sprachversionen den selben
Namen haben. In der Praxis heißt dies, eine automatische Verlinkung
wäre nur bei Seiten zu Eigennamen wie "LibreOffice" oder
"OpenDocument" möglich, bei allen anderen wäre eine Verlinkung
Handarbeit (was sich aber nicht wesentlich von der Lage z.B. bei
MediaWiki unterscheidet).

Automatic interlinking works only for identical Page Titles.

My suggestion would be to go for manual interlinking first but to keep
the possibility open to switch to automatic interlinking later or - if
possible - for a certain section of the Wiki. I.e. if the different
languages have completely different content, there is no need for
automatic linking. But if the amount of direct translations rises,
automation can help a lot.

Wichtig ist natürlich, dass es ausreichend Beteiligung gibt, d.h.
dass das neue Wiki dann auch mit Inhalten gefüllt wird.

Heavy contribution is desired :slight_smile:

(Aggreed)

In diesem
Zusammenhang sollte man sich auch Gedanken über die Lizenz machen:
Der deutschsprachige "Altbestand" ist unter GFDL lizenziert. TDF/LO
hat sich jedoch für eine CC-Lizenz entschieden. Für ein
englischsprachiges Wiki könnte man sich also entscheiden für GFDL,
CC oder GFDL+CC (oder etwas ganz anderes).

Licensing question should be solved.

(What is the best Licence for LibO documentation? I'm not an expert
here.)

Natürlich müsste man für das neue Wiki auch noch ein neues Logo
entwerfen und dieses von der TDF absegnen lassen, da die allgemeinen
Regeln für die Verwendung des Namens "LibreOffice" und des Logos eine
Lösung ähnlich wie die für das alte OpenOffice.org-Wiki nicht decken.

Logo + Theme should be negotiated with TDF.

(Who can do this? Martin?)

Ansonsten ließe sich die hier angerissene Lösung in relativ kurzer
Zeit realisieren, d.h. innerhalb von ungefähr einem Tag bis einer
Woche. Was die Ressourcen anbelangt, so ist der Betrieb dank der
großzügigen Unterstützung durch WikiWikiWeb.de und Freies Office
Deutschland e.V. bereits bis Mai 2013 gesichert. Wenn man
Anderes/Besseres wollte, müsste man das jetzt klar formulieren, um
weitere Möglichkeiten auszuloten.

The above solution could be realized in short time and the server
hosting is granted for the next two years.

I'd say, this is a good starting point for English/international Tips &
Tricks or similar collections. But nobody can know if it will be
accepted and filled by the community. But it's good to offer this
possibility. After a year or two, we will know better.

Apropos, when set up, maybe the internationalisation of
libreofficewiki.de should be announced on the website and i18n lists?

Nino

Hi David,

Hope something useful comes out of the automatic translation, though I'm
very sceptical about that.

Well, I just fed it through Google Translate. If one is used to
dealing with mangled English, it would potentially be possible to use
the result and rewrite it into correct English - although very
time-consuming. But it would be just as quick for an experienced
translator of German to do a faithful, high-quality translation - or
it might possibly be quicker if one takes into account the formatting
work also involved.

Google Translate is not yet at the point of putting efficient
translators out of a job...

Moreover, it's going off-line as a free service later this year...

I must admit that I wouldn't have time for this job myself in the
coming months, as I'd see myself working on developing
alfresco.libreoffice.org and contributing to the large quantity of
work already waiting to be done on existing English-language
LibreOffice documentation.

Is there anyone else able to take on the job of translating David's
student guide?

Hi David,

I think I'll do it during the summer. I guessed google wouldn't be much
good. Have been doing translations all my life and studied linguistics in
London a long time ago. Human languages are just too complex and too
different from each other to be tackled by any programme.

Once the translation is done, it would be nice if somebody would check it
and eventually perhaps 'adopt' it for the future.

Yours
Dave

Google Translate can be useful for us to decide whether a document in
another language is much the same as an existing doc (and thus may not
be worth the effort to translate and edit).

Jean