wiki page

Hi :slight_smile:

I have started editing the wiki page a bit, using tables to spread the
information out as rows are getting a bit crowded now. Finding the dates the
chapters were last modified is not as easy as i thought so i will login to
Alfresco later to check the dates there. I might experiment with a bit of
colour but will probably keep experimenting a bit over the next hour or so.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Tom, don't use the "last updated" dates on Alfresco as a guide to when a
chapter or book was actually *published* -- the Alfresco dates are often
quite a bit later, because the files may have been moved or some details
changed in the Alfresco metadata or some other change may modify the
date displayed there without affecting the contents of the files
themselves.

I think at this point the easiest way to find a date for most of the
chapters is to open the compiled book PDF and use the publication date
from its copyright page for all the chapters in that book.

Improving the layout of the wiki page is good; that was on my to-do
list, so I'm glad you're doing it instead of me.

--Jean

________________________________
From: Jean Hollis Weber <jeanweber@gmail.com>
To: documentation@global.libreoffice.org
Sent: Sun, 31 July, 2011 23:14:29
Subject: Re: [libreoffice-documentation] wiki page

On Sun, 2011-07-31 at 22:09 +0100, Tom Davies wrote:

Hi :slight_smile:

I have started editing the wiki page a bit, using tables to spread the
information out as rows are getting a bit crowded now. Finding the dates the
chapters were last modified is not as easy as i thought so i will login to
Alfresco later to check the dates there. I might experiment with a bit of
colour but will probably keep experimenting a bit over the next hour or so.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Tom, don't use the "last updated" dates on Alfresco as a guide to when a
chapter or book was actually *published* -- the Alfresco dates are often
quite a bit later, because the files may have been moved or some details
changed in the Alfresco metadata or some other change may modify the
date displayed there without affecting the contents of the files
themselves.

I think at this point the easiest way to find a date for most of the
chapters is to open the compiled book PDF and use the publication date
from its copyright page for all the chapters in that book.

Improving the layout of the wiki page is good; that was on my to-do
list, so I'm glad you're doing it instead of me.

Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks :slight_smile: It's an interesting balance of frustration and intrigue. Things like
&nbsp; don't work and it's difficult to get decent spacing between columns
without creating extra spacing elsewhere. Still, it is intriguing :slight_smile:
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom,

I have started editing the wiki page a bit, using tables to spread the
information out as rows are getting a bit crowded now.  Finding the dates the
chapters were last modified is not as easy as i thought so i will login to
Alfresco later to check the dates there.  I might experiment with a bit of
colour but will probably keep experimenting a bit over the next hour or so.

That's great, and thank you for that work. Me, too, I'm also busy with
stuff. media.libreoffice.org is taking shape, and soon I'll be doing
that Alfresco upgrade, so I'm not writing to the list much, because I
know Jean is there to guide us and take the docs work forwards.

BTW, Jean is right about the dates. Soon enough, we'll start using the
meta data in documents properly, and that data will be available in
Alfresco. Right now, it's better to take the manually-recorded
publication dates as the best record.

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks :slight_smile: I have finished messing with the wiki for now. I hope to complete
the other sections in the same way and then do the bit that i set out to do, ie
put the dates in!! lol. Sorry!

Hopefully the layout makes it easier for people to edit the wiki and looks
reasonably ok. I chickened out of playing around with colours. Perhaps
tomorrow. The chapter title for Ch12 in the Writer Guide was a tad long so i
gave it 2 lines. Is it better that way or shall i put it back tomorrow?

It was great to actually get on with something closer to real work for a change
:slight_smile:
Thanks and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Two lines for very long titles is good IMO. I suggest the same for
Appendix B of the Getting Started guide (drop "OpenDocument") to the
next line. BTW, there should be no space in "OpenDocument" -- that is
probably a typo from long ago that no one has got around to fixing.

Minor suggestion: is the word "Chapter" needed? It seems a bit redundant
when the heading is "Separate chapters:" so perhaps doing it this way
would work?

1 Introducing LibreOffice
2 Setting up ...
3 Using Styles ...
...
...
A Keyboard Shortcuts
B Open Source ...

What do people think?

--Jean

Hi :slight_smile: I'm happy to take out the word "Chapter" but then the formatting would
look strange for "Appendix". If i drop "Chapter" then i think we should drop
"Appendix" too. I do think it might look nicer without both. I could test it
out tomorrow and see what people think for a day.

I will take out the space in OpenDocument tomorrow. I think we should also drop
the space in OpenSource in the 2nd release. I added the space tbh to make it
fit with the rest of the title but now it's inconsistent with the front page of
the guide.

It's awkward to make tables all the same width. I don't know how to set them as
a percentage of screen width so some people would get horizontal scroll-bars
which tends to make the page even more inelegant than having a little local
variation.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile: I'm happy to take out the word "Chapter" but then the formatting would
look strange for "Appendix". If i drop "Chapter" then i think we should drop
"Appendix" too. I do think it might look nicer without both. I could test it
out tomorrow and see what people think for a day.

Well, that's what I meant, and what my example showed. :wink:

I will take out the space in OpenDocument tomorrow. I think we should also drop
the space in OpenSource in the 2nd release. I added the space tbh to make it
fit with the rest of the title but now it's inconsistent with the front page of
the guide.

Open Source is two words. If it's not that way on the document itself,
the doc is wrong.

--Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
Ok, i have removed "Chapter" and "Appendix" from a couple of the guides and
definitely prefer it.

The way i have split long titles onto 2 lines is not ideal. I tried putting
borders around the table but it looked mad. Perhaps a - mark at the beginning
of each title?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

If there is a wiki table cell attribute for "align=top" or similar, that
should take care of it. I don't recall the exact syntax, but I've used
something like that in other wikis.

--Jean

it's valign=top, I just added it. Looks a bit better now :slight_smile:

Nino

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks, i will copy&paste that to the other places as i update the dates.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: