LO Math Help

Hi,
I would like to help with LO documentation. I noticed that help has been requested creating examples of LO Math (here <https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development#Wish_Lists_for_Documentation>). Would this be a stand-alone document, or in the wiki here <https://help.libreoffice.org/Math/Math_Examples>?

I was thinking of a doc that is similar to programming by example. There would be a few sections (Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, perhaps). Each section would contain a table with rows like this:

Display Command
[Actual LO Math Image] LO Math Commands required to generate that image

By the way, are html messages acceptable on this list?

- Glen

Hi :slight_smile:
They are allowed and most people prolly can deal with them but it's best
avoided.

The links worked for me and i suspect people reading using a plain-text
email-client were prolly able to deal with those links so don't worry about
it this time. I tend to try to put urls on a new-line and then start
another newline immediately afterwards. I've seen people put full-stops
and other punctuation after them which messes up the link whereas the way
you did it inside a tag-bracket prolly means people didn't have trouble.

Thanks for asking! :slight_smile:
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Thanks for the note Tom.

As I mentioned in my previous email, I would like to help creating documentation for LibreOffice. I have created a list of common constructions for LO Math (exponents, roots, matricies, integrals, limits, piecewise functions , etc) and some common formulas (Pythagorean Theorem, quadratic formula, slope, binomial expansion, etc).

As far as I can tell, these would belong here:
https://help.libreoffice.org/Math/Math_Examples

The odfauthors.org website appears to be setup for creating and review libreoffice docs. What process is used for creating/reviewing/publishing parts of help.libreoffice.org?

What would be my next step in contributing this work?

Thanks in advance,

Glen

Glen,
The help files at help.libreoffice.org are a copy of the help files
supplied with the LibreOffice program itself). AFAIK, they are
created/reviewed/published by the developers and translators, due to
the requirements of tools used in the process. The best person to ask
is probably Sophie Gautier, whom I have copied on this note.

My guess is that, at this time, the best way to contribute your work
is through the Docs wiki, from where it can be picked up and reused by
the Help team. We can certainly make a place for it on the wiki,
either in wiki format or in ODT/PDF format -- or all of those. What
form is your list in now?

--Jean
Team Leader, LibreOffice Documentation

My list is in ODT format right now. I would have no problem putting it in wiki format. Thanks for passing my note along to Sophie Gautier.

- Glen

Glen,

If you'd like to make your list available for content review and
comment in its present form, you could put it on ODFAuthors and/or on
the wiki. For ODFAuthors, I'll need to create an account for you (let
me know if you'd like me to do that); for the wiki, you can create an
account for yourself.

--Jean

Hi Glen, all,

My list is in ODT format right now. I would have no problem putting it
in wiki format. Thanks for passing my note along to Sophie Gautier.

Thanks Jean for passing the note. Glen, currently the helps file are in
.xhp file format and contains a lot of xml tags, making them difficult
to manage for non technical persons. Also this is the basic
documentation available to all languages, hence the master in English
and the fact it's not editable in the wiki.
What is possible is the same than for some Calc functions: detailed
examples in wiki and a link in the help files that points to it. That
way we keep the help files light and have more resources in the wiki.

Kind regards
Sophie

So it looks like I should upload my examples for review either on the ODFAuthors website or at
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development

Jean, where would you prefer I put it?

Jean and Sophie, when I first looked at the help docs at
https://help.libreoffice.org/Math/Math_Examples

I thought it was a template waiting to be filled in. I had no idea that the titles were actually links to help content! Perhaps a usability issue? When it comes to examples for LO Math, I think a very usable presentation would be to have all examples on one page, thereby allowing readers to quickly scan and find what they're looking for.

My two cents.

- Glen

Hi Glen,
[...]

Jean and Sophie, when I first looked at the help docs at
https://help.libreoffice.org/Math/Math_Examples

I thought it was a template waiting to be filled in. I had no idea that
the titles were actually links to help content! Perhaps a usability
issue? When it comes to examples for LO Math, I think a very usable
presentation would be to have all examples on one page, thereby allowing
readers to quickly scan and find what they're looking for.

What is here is what is in the product, so it's not on one page in the
product, this is why you see it under links. What we have to think about
also is that the help is translated in all LO languages and we should be
careful when asking for resources here, team are very short with a lot
of work. This is why I propose to have a link in the product help that
points to the wiki.

Kind regards
Sophie

Thanks for the clarification Sophie. I will work with Jean to make it available for review somewhere.

- Glen

Would it be possible to both include that content in the help files, and
also as a stand-alone downloadable document?

jonathon

Hello Jonathon,
I was wondering the same thing. However according to Sophie, this would then need to be translated, and the translation team is tight on resources. See Sophie's message of November 13 in this thread.

By the way, I have put my examples document on the documentation wiki under "Other Documents". Feel free to provide feedback.

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development

- Glen