getting involved with helping with LO docs

hi, my name's rob day and since i'm about to dive into LO 3.4.1 in a
big way, i figured i might as well offer to help out with the docs.

  besides being a linux person, i also have a history of editing,
proofreading, reviewing, etc. most recently, i was the technical
editor of the book "linux kernel development (3rd ed)" by robert love,
as well as the pre-pub reviewer of at least a dozen other technical
books.

  i just this morning installed LO 3.4.1 on my ubuntu 11.04 system so
my first question is -- is there corresponding documentation for
3.4.1, since the docs i find here:

  http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/

all seem to be based on 3.3.3. or is that the documentation that's
currently being updated?

rday

p.s. in terms of submitting suggestions/corrections/whatever, what's
the standard way? it would be easy for me to just mark up the current
ODT files and pass them back where someone is welcome to peruse my
added comments and decide what to do with them. or is there another
way? thanks again.

hi, my name's rob day and since i'm about to dive into LO 3.4.1 in a
big way, i figured i might as well offer to help out with the docs.

besides being a linux person, i also have a history of editing,
proofreading, reviewing, etc.  most recently, i was the technical
editor of the book "linux kernel development (3rd ed)" by robert love,
as well as the pre-pub reviewer of at least a dozen other technical
books.

i just this morning installed LO 3.4.1 on my ubuntu 11.04 system so
my first question is -- is there corresponding documentation for
3.4.1, since the docs i find here:

http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/

all seem to be based on 3.3.3.  or is that the documentation that's
currently being updated?

We wanted to finish a set of docs for 3.3.x before updating them to
3.4.x. We're still doing the Impress and Draw guides for 3.3.x, but
people could start updating the other guides to 3.4.x if they prefer.

p.s.  in terms of submitting suggestions/corrections/whatever, what's

the standard way?  it would be easy for me to just mark up the current
ODT files and pass them back where someone is welcome to peruse my
added comments and decide what to do with them.  or is there another
way?  thanks again.

The working copies are held in our Alfresco CMS. If you want to get
properly involved, you should get an account on that site (just ask
here for one to be set up for you). Also, do look on the wiki for
links to draft copies of several chapters in our Contributors' Guide
(for the Documentation Team), which should answer some of your
questions and point you in the right direction.
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development

--Jean

The working copies are held in our Alfresco CMS. If you want to get
properly involved, you should get an account on that site (just ask
here for one to be set up for you).

  ok, consider yourself asked. :slight_smile:

Also, do look on the wiki for links to draft copies of several
chapters in our Contributors' Guide (for the Documentation Team),
which should answer some of your questions and point you in the
right direction.
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development

  great, thanks, i'll pop over there shortly.

rday

The OOo-based, rebranded LO docs are not updated anywhere as often or are as precise as to incremental-version updates as you think they are. The major differences between their underlying, original OOo documents are mostly their being rebranded from the OOo documents with newer LO screen captures and their original OOo references changed to those of LO.

Perhaps, you might care to review and rewrite the various user guides in whole or in part more critically? I am in the process of making the current 3.3.2 template more usable, with fewer errors. Perhaps, you might care to critique it.

As to markup: One thing a reviewer or technical editor should do is to first update the latest version of the subdocument you are working on onto the most current template version, if necessary. Then, with edit-tracking toggled on (via Edit > Changes), set both recording and showing the changes on, and then edit, rewrite, or whatever you choose to change. Also, you could add some comments (aka the notes in MS Word) via the Insert and View menus. (You can also add other comments via the Edit > Changes > Comment command to the edit tracking items.)

Gary

Hi Robert,

Thanks for volunteering. I've created an account for you on our
Alfresco platform and I sent you the credentials off-list.

Alfresco is where we are storing the English documentation. Go to
http://alfresco.libreoffice.org and log in there. Then navigate to
"Company Home > (en) English [English] Content > Documentation".
You'll see the various spaces where the various user guides are being
stored.

Hi :slight_smile:

Welcome in :-bd
The priority at the moment is to complete documentation for the 3.3.x series as
that is the stable branch aimed at corporate users. Within that the priority is
re-branding and replacing screen-shots, especially ones done in Windows. Once
the full set is done then that would be a good time to branch out in various
ways.

The work is usually done in Alfresco. David or Jean will send you a personal
email once they have set your account up. If you have a good suggestion for a
user-name there then please tell the list asap otherwise they might just go with
something obvious.

Afaik the idea is to download a guide and sign it out to let people know you are
working on it. Then edit off-line, change version number (?) and re-upload to
the relevant section of Alfresco. There have been various good instructions
posted to this list but i have lost the best one. I did find this follow-up
from David

<quote>
When you're using the Alfresco Share interface (at
http://documentation.libreoffice.org therefore), you go to the space
containing the document you want to "check out" (edit offline). Hover your mouse
over the document and you will see a menu appear to the right of the document
name. Click on the "More..." item and a further menu opens. Click on "Edit
Offline" and you'll be prompted to downloada working copy of the document.

Beware! You will have been whisked away from the space you were previously in,
and will have been taken to a space called "Documents I'm Editing (working
copies)". If you want to return to the space you were previously in, you can use
the "Repository" tree structure of folders (spaces) on the left-hand side and
get back there in probablyone click.

To "check in" the working copy you've edited, you would return to the document's
space (or your "Documents I'm Editing" space), hover yourmouse over the
document, and click on "Upload New Version".

We'll get this properly documented very, very soon.
</quote>

The guides that need working on at the moment are Draw, Impress, Math although
people are working on parts of those (i think) so co-ordinating with them
through the sign-in/out sheet in Alfresco would be good. The documentation for
Base is really bad, practically non-existent although a couple of people have
managed to pull a few things off the website. Hopefully they are stored in
Alfresco ready to pull together. Base is a bit awkward as there seems to be
regressions and quirkiness that is completely different between 1 release and
another. There are no devs working on it right now although hopefully that
might change at some point.

Sorry for such a verbose email!
Welcome in
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Thanks, Tom. This is very useful to ME, as a newbie here. Especially true since my sole documentation interest is Base.

Tom Cloyd, MS MA
tc@tomcloyd.com
(435) 272-3332
St. George/Cedar City, Utah

Hi Tom,

Thanks, Tom. This is very useful to ME, as a newbie here. Especially true
since my sole documentation interest is Base.

Yes, thank you indeed for a great briefing. :slight_smile: