Proposal for official documentation page

Hi :slight_smile:
I really like this page created by Tim of Kracked-Press fame for the North American Dvd Project. 
http://libreoffice-na.us/English-3.5-installs/documentation-2d.html

I particularly like the little Odt icons and the back-ground colour-coding.

On our current wiki-page we use colour-coded backgrounds too but it grew organically and i am not sure the colour choices are still relevant. 
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
Green was originally just to show that you had completed those chapters when the team was racing to complete 3.3.x guides.  The tan colour was taken from other wiki-pages that looked quite attractive.  The tan seemed to go well with that particular shade of green.

My thought for the official page
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/
would be to have 1 column instead of 3 but it would be different colours for different guides.  At the moment the Calc Guide can only show the 3.3.x

At the moment i think the official page looks good because it's very simple and avoids confusing people.  I'm not sure we should offer separate pages there because that does make things much more confusing for people.

My proposal for copying Tim's NA Dvd page does assume that we want to show individual chapters but now i am not so sure we do. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

The icons Tom lists is part of the "theme" set created by the LO server/web-site team, and was copied for the NA-DVD web pages to show what the MIME type of the file linked. Sometimes it does not work correctly, and sometimes the system causes problems during page editing. BUT, it is a nice touch that the TDF/LO web site developers created in the CSS system for the page theme.

I am working on the 3.5.x documentation page so it works well for me and my potential DVD and web site users. I really need to have some good column indications that help with showing which links are for which version of the documents.

As for the colors, well I chose the most least-offensive ones without going deal into custom color options in Kompozer the WYSIWYG HTML editor which I use as my default web page editing software on Ubuntu/Windows. It is free and sometimes you see an update to it.

Later I might change the colors to the "official" colors of the LO project as listed in one of the LO marketing pages.

To be honest, it would be nice to see the LO documentation wiki page having some way to separate the "columns" for the 3.3.x, 3.4.x, and the 3.5.x line documents. What will happen when you add a forth column for the 3.6.x docs? For me I will just add another color column and remove the 3.3.x one when all for the chapters of the 3.4 line is filled in. Then will remove the 3.4 column when all of the 3.5 doc chapters are filled in.

The "-2d" part of the documentation page is for the fact that this is a work in progress and not the default documentation page, YET. But that will come soon, as I work out a few things in the editing process this week, as I have the time.

Hi :slight_smile:
My thought was (once the 3.5.x branch guides start appearing) to shrink the 3.4.x column in the same way as most of the 3.3.x are at the moment.

I think it's a good idea for the most recent legacy guides.  When the 3.6.x branch guides start appearing the 3.3.x can be shrunk down even more without losing the guides themselves.  Even old CRT screens in 4:3 aspect ratio (like mine) could hold quite a few branches attractively fairly easily.

Unlike with the Dvd Project there is no need to worry about byte-wise size within reason and i think it's important for us to keep the beautiful guides, particularly the 1st set, for historical interest. 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

I agree, it's a nice page and has some features we could use or adapt
for either the wiki page or the official website page
(get-help/documentation), in particular the ODT icons (something I've
been intending to add to the website page). I don't think the website
page should like the individual chapters, as it did originally. I
think it should be as short as possible, but have essential
information. It does need work, though, to cut down on talk and make
links easier to identify and follow. Tim's page provides some
excellent ideas. Tom, thanks for pointing it out.

--Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks Jean.  It's a new work-in-progress and Tim only let me see it quietly behind-the-scenes to proof-read it or something.  I don't think he was expecting it to be broadcast far-and-wide!  Ooops! :slight_smile:

Still, i thought it was ready.  There are a few things i would want to change but mostly it makes me want to upgrade the wiki a little.  I don't know how to add tiny icons elegantly.  In my experience it's usually been a Pita trying to add just 1 tiny pic to a website and involves floating frames and just a ridiculous amount of fuss otherwise the pic just pushes all the text down a bit and looks messy.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

The icons can be added through a template, so they appear
automatically when a particular code is entered on the page. That way
they behave themselves. (The website is handled in a similar way.) I
can set that up... unless one of the other wiki hackers reading this
does it first. Or it might turn out the template has already been set
up but we haven't been using it. :slight_smile:

Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
Template??  In a wiki?!  Blimey!  That sounds like it could be great :)  Is that likely to be able to easily simplify the page? 
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Tom,
I'm not sure how much can be "simplified" using wiki templates, but they are great for automating some things and providing consistency of presentation and appearance (not that different in functionality from LO templates). I am far from an expert on this topic. We used a lot of them on the old OOo wiki, but most were set up by other people. I've put this on my to-do list, including copying some of my favourites from OOo.

Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks Jean :)  I think the Calc Guides are more important.

Although the wiki-coding looks quite complex i think enough people have figured out how to use it.  The main tricky bit and bottle-neck is getting the finished chapters from ODFauthors or Alfresco and uploaded to the wiki.  Hmmm, that probably means only 1 person knows how to do it?

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Several people know how to upload finished chapters to the wiki. Why
do you think it is a bottle-neck? The longest delay that I know of
between finishing a chapter and uploading it to the wiki has been
about 1 day. Mind you, when I go gallivanting off around the world
again, that situation could change. :slight_smile:

As for Calc Guide vs some wiki template tweaking... the fact that I
might spend some time on wiki issues makes no difference to getting
Calc Guide chapters done, unless you are suggesting I should do them
myself. BTW, I have contacted Andrew Pitonyak about his two chapters
for the Calc Guide; he said he'd do them when he gets back from an out
of town trip (the end of this week, I think).

--Jean