May I introduce myself...

Hello,

I'm interested in getting started as a documentation volunteer contributor. As a former newspaper journalist with more than 10 years' experience, my strengths would be in writing, editing, proofreading, researching, etc. I've been using OpenOffice.org/LibreOffice for several years, mainly Writer and Calc. While I have little formal training in a technical field, I do have experience explaining complex and technical issues to a general audience.

I'm very interested in giving something back to the community that keeps this worthwhile enterprise moving forward. I'd be happy to contribute in any way you think is appropriate to my background.

After reading the Contributor's Guide and this forum, I'm not clear whether you're using ODFAuthors or Alfresco, or both, so some guidance would be appreciated.

Thank you,
David Blymire (pronounced with long-i sounds and emphasis on the first syllable.)

Hi :slight_smile:
An excellent question.  At the moment people are using ODFAuthors and have been for a couple of months.  They used to use the Alfresco place and may well return but the decision has not been made yet.  So, ODFAuthors for now.

Oh, welcome in btw!!  Excellent to have another strong team member.  Hopefully our leader Jean or perhaps someone else will give you a login for both sites so that you can help choose.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Welcome, DavidB (to distinguish from DavidN and any other Davids who may be involved).

Several parts of the Contributor's Guide are a bit out of date. In particular, we've been using the ODFAuthors website while Alfresco was being fixed. DavidN has just given us the good news that Alfresco is available again, so the active team members need to decide whether to move back. You'll have seen the other thread on that topic

Meanwhile we can continue to use the ODFAuthors website. IMO, the most helpful thing you could do right now is review the chapters in the Drafts folders for Getting Started and Writer Guide. Both books are nearing completion for LO v3.4. I did a quick-and-dirty pass through them and marked some some screenshots that need replacement and some things that I know need to be checked, but they also need a more thorough review than I gave them. Review in this context means checking against the 3.4 software to see if instructions and screenshots are still correct and any important new features are covered. We'll leave other enhancements (structure, wording) for the v3.5 version of those books. (We've been doing incremental improvements with each revision.)

BTW, work on the other books is going directly to v3.5. You are welcome to help there, particular with Calc, if you prefer. You are also welcome to work on anything else that interests you; we have a lot of miscellaneous documents that could use some work. I can point you to some of them. One that I'd really like to see updated is a tutorial on using Xforms, but there are others.

Jean

Thanks Jean.

I guess I'll start with Getting Started and Writer Guide. Usually, my next question on such occasions would be "what's the deadline?" but maybe I don't need to lose any sleep over it? :slight_smile:

David B.

I forgot to add that I'll need to set up an account for you on ODFAuthors. I'll do that when I next get to my computer, probably in about an hour from now.

After that is done, and you have logged in, you will see a Review List in the left-hand navigation bar. Scroll down to (or near) the bottom to find the English docs that have been submitted for review.

An easier way may be to go to English, Getting Started, Drafts, which should give a list in the navbar of files in that folder. The files in orange have been submitted for review.

--Jean

Hi David,

I've created an Alfresco account for you and mailed you the
credentials. Welcome to the team. :slight_smile: