PING David: user-docs needing a writer

(Others are welcome to jump in too, either with ideas or with offers to
write something.)

David, here are some of the topics I've identified as needed to
supplement our user guides. I've added them to the wiki page if they
weren't there already.
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Production#Wish_List_for_User_Documentation

* Tutorial on using XForms. We have some background info and a paper (by
J David Eisenberg) that we can revise, if we wish. See links on wiki
page.

* Guide aimed specifically at technical writers and/or other "power
users". There is a DocPlan and some work done by students earlier, which
could be a starting point, but IMO it's really too low-level. Their work
might go better into a guide aimed at high-school or university
students. I've got a more detailed draft table of contents for the Tech
Writers' Guide on the OOo wiki, which I haven't had a chance yet to copy
over to our wiki (but will try to do soon, if no one else does it
first).
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Dashboard/Tutorials/Targeted

* Guide aimed at students: List of possible topics is also on the OOo
wiki page given above.

* Guide aimed at small business and volunteer organisations. The same
OOo wiki page has a short list of topics to cover in such a guide, but
I'm sure there are more.

* Guide to using assistive technology with LibO: see Ron Faile's first
cut at this, linked from the wish list on our wiki page.

--Jean

Hi Jean,

(Others are welcome to jump in too, either with ideas or with offers to
write something.)

David, here are some of the topics I've identified as needed to
supplement our user guides. I've added them to the wiki page if they
weren't there already.
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Production#Wish_List_for_User_Documentation

I'll chew the list over and post back...

Hi :slight_smile:
The Accessibility list has suddenly started being very active this week. If
anyone is bored and looking for something to do then the Assistive Tech guide
might be appreciated. Apparently Orca causes LO to crash.

It seems that Tagged Pdfs are only about 5% (or much less) larger than normal
Pdfs so that's less of a worry than i thought.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom,

Hi :slight_smile:
The Accessibility list has suddenly started being very active this week. If
anyone is bored and looking for something to do then the Assistive Tech guide
might be appreciated. Apparently Orca causes LO to crash.

It seems that Tagged Pdfs are only about 5% (or much less) larger than normal
Pdfs so that's less of a worry than i thought.

Are you sure? The mail from Malte Timmermann said something that tagged pdf's are 30 - 50 % bigger than the non-tagged ones. And in this case I trust Malte, because he's the developer working on that stuff.

Sigrid

Hi :slight_smile:
Ahah, i thought i had a good reason to think they would be larger. I might have
another go at the weekend but this time using the chapters. I could easily be
mistaken and certainly would trust the dev rather than a tiny sample.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi :slight_smile:
The Accessibility list has suddenly started being very active this week. If
anyone is bored and looking for something to do then the Assistive Tech guide
might be appreciated. Apparently Orca causes LO to crash.

Info on using assistive tech with LO is definitely needed. Not that I
have time to even look at the discussions, and certainly not get
involved in producing doco on this topic... so I hope others have time.

It seems that Tagged Pdfs are only about 5% (or much less) larger than normal
Pdfs so that's less of a worry than i thought.

See my other note, and Sigrid's. It really depends on the doc, I think.

--Jean

Hi Jean,

* Guide aimed specifically at technical writers and/or other "power
users". There is a DocPlan and some work done by students earlier, which
could be a starting point, but IMO it's really too low-level. Their work
might go better into a guide aimed at high-school or university
students. I've got a more detailed draft table of contents for the Tech
Writers' Guide on the OOo wiki, which I haven't had a chance yet to copy
over to our wiki (but will try to do soon, if no one else does it
first).
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Dashboard/Tutorials/Targeted

I've long had a little bookmark in my head to one day work on the
"Power User's Guide", working from that "Tech Writer's Guide" that
those two students did. That would logically include some good
coverage of macros, by the way. I'd need to brainstorm with you and
other power users about that, but I guess you could put me down for
this not-so-little task.

But I need to finish wrestling with the alligator Alfresco as top
priority, and with the Drupal site at media.libreoffice.org. As you
know, I'm working on preparing the Alfresco upgrade, which promises to
be no mean feat.

So I'm guessing that I wouldn't envision being able to think about any
power user's guide until sometime in September... But let's say I'll
take that as a project.

Hi Sigrid, Jean, Tom,

Are you sure? The mail from Malte Timmermann said something that tagged pdf's are 30 - 50 % bigger than the non-tagged ones. And in this case I trust Malte, because he's the developer working on that stuff.

My 2 cents that it might be worth the extra download size to improve
the usability. Specifically, what would we need to mark up with tags?
Does anyone have any idea what's required in terms of actual work?

Hi :slight_smile:
No extra work! :slight_smile: You just tick a box when exporting to Pdf. The box is in the
pop-up that appears when you choose to export as Pdf. Job done.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Great! That's a non-urgent, but IMO important, project, and one of my
personal interests, so I'm really glad to hear you'll take it on. I'll
contribute however I can: brainstorming, reviewing, whatever.

--Jean

Tom answered that question: tick a box when producing the PDF.

My concern is still with filesize bloat, especially for the full book,
so I'm still advocating two files: tagged and non-tagged. The individual
chapters may not be such a big issue if provided only the the tagged
version.

I need to think a bit more about the tradeoffs.

--Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
I just tried it with the Macro Chapter and it came out as just under 1Mb, 905Kb
to be exact, compared against 542.3Kb without tags. I don't know how to upload
it to the wiki and there are probably other things i haven't done too.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: