Base documentation volunteers

I would be interested in assisting with the documentation for base, primarily
the proofreading. I don't currently use base (or any database) and feel that
this would help me to also understand the concepts and utilization of this
portion of LibreOffice.

I use both Linux and Windows although primarily Linux. I have been a moderator
for the LO mail-list for about a year and wish to contribute more. I am a
retired engineering technician (electro-mechanical) and have been involved in
producing user documentation and technical manuals for the medical and
automotive fields.

Thanks for your consideration, Tom Taylor

I would be interested in assisting with the documentation for base, primarily
the proofreading. I don't currently use base (or any database) and feel that
this would help me to also understand the concepts and utilization of this
portion of LibreOffice.

I use both Linux and Windows although primarily Linux. I have been a moderator
for the LO mail-list for about a year and wish to contribute more. I am a
retired engineering technician (electro-mechanical) and have been involved in
producing user documentation and technical manuals for the medical and
automotive fields.

Thanks for your consideration, Tom Taylor

      Welcome to the document group! My first suggestion is to use the following link to download the Introducing Base chapter. In the Contents section, click on 1.8 LibreOffice Base Guide. Then you will find this chapter listed. (Download the 4.2 version.
      Proofread the chapter. Two things you need to do: Edit > Changes > Record; and Edit > Changes > Show. The one records the changes, and the second one shows what you have changed. These place a line through what you want to change and also adds what you want to change it to.
      This is a good beginning point, and there will be more directions given when you have completed this.

https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications#LibreOffice_Base_Guide

Dan

Hey Tom,

Well there really is no "consideration" per say. If you want to help,
we'd love to have you assisting! That being said - I'm not terribly
familiar with "where to begin" in documentation. Perhaps someone else
could give the first steps and get you started.

Thanks for offering to volunteer.

Best,
Joel

Hi :slight_smile:
I think the immediate one to work on is the Base Handbook rather than the
full guide. I agree that reading the single chapter in the Getting Started
Guide might help prepare you for Base.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
The first book there has a chapter to introduce each of the
modules/programs/apps within LibreOffice.

The Base Handbook is much shorter than the full guide so it might not go
into as much depth as you'd like but it is good to get a broad overview
before getting tooo bogged down in too many of the intricacies. Also it is
currently being updated quite significantly so it'd be great to do
proof-reading for the chapters as they get completed. It is the Handbook
that is in most need of proof-reading at the moment.

If you manage to catch up with the translation-update then going on to the
full guide would help gain a much deeper understanding. The full guide is
more of a longer-term project and is being written from scratch by Dan
Lewis.

Errr, this guide might help you work with the published guides;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development

Hopefully someone might register you at ODFAuthors while you are reading
through that.
Many thanks and regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hello Tom T.,

Welcome to the team! I'm a volunteer (at the moment, the only one, it seems) working on updating the Base Handbook. I'd like to supplement the information that Tom D. has provided you with and let you know how you might start out getting involved with the project.

As Tom indicated, the Base Guide and the Base Handbook are two different documents, which is confusing. Base is the only LO product for which this is the case; for all the other products, the user manual is just called the Guide. However, there is not now, nor has there ever been, a complete Base Guide; all there is is the drafts of three chapters.

The reason that there's both a Guide and a Handbook is that the German documentation team got tired of waiting around for the English team to finish the Base Guide, so they took the draft chapters, translated them, finished the book, and published it as the Base-Handbuch. That document was then translated back into English as the Base Handbook.

Contrary to what Tom D. indicated, the Handbook is /not/ shorter or less thorough than the Guide. Each is intended to be a complete and comprehensive user manual; the difference is that the Handbook is finished (although not up-to-date in English.) The current German version of the Handbook has 448 pages in 11 chapters; the plan for the Guide includes 10 chapters, of which only 3 are complete.

The current English Handbook is for version 3.5 of the product. The most recent German Handbuch is for version 4.2. What I'm doing right now is updating the English Handbook from the more up-to-date German version. Someone else has done the translating; I'm basically just cutting-and-pasting (although I am finding that I have to do a fair amount of translating and editing work as I run across things that don't make sense.)

Here's one task we need done right away. The screen captures in the German manual are, as one would respect, from the German version of the app, and are in German. We need someone to work through the procedures described in the Handbook using the English version of the product and capture the needed screenshots in English. Moreover, this needs to be done by someone who's running Base on Linux. For reasons I don't understand, screen captures don't always work correctly when done using Windows, and Windows is what I'm running.

If this is something you'd be willing to do, respond to this e-mail and I'll send you more details on how to get started.

Best,
Alan C.

The reason that there's both a Guide and a Handbook is that the German
documentation team got tired of waiting around for the English team to
finish the Base Guide, so they took the draft chapters, translated them,
finished the book, and published it as the Base-Handbuch. That document was
then translated back into English as the Base Handbook.

Why the difference in name? Is the Handbook written in a different
style than our other guides?

Contrary to what Tom D. indicated, the Handbook is /not/ shorter or less
thorough than the Guide. Each is intended to be a complete and comprehensive
user manual; the difference is that the Handbook is finished (although not
up-to-date in English.) The current German version of the Handbook has 448
pages in 11 chapters; the plan for the Guide includes 10 chapters, of which
only 3 are complete.

Hmm... if they're roughly the same type of manual, then perhaps
name/content harmonization would help avoid confusion. (Apologies if
there's already been a conversation on this matter; please feel free
to point me at it)

...Moreover, this needs to be done by someone who's
running Base on Linux. For reasons I don't understand, screen captures don't
always work correctly when done using Windows, and Windows is what I'm
running.

IIRC, most projects take screenshots in GNU/Linux for
1) Consistency
2) Avoiding any question about including screenshots of a proprietary WM

Best,
--R

Hi :slight_smile:
Wow, that was all very interesting.

To me the word "handbook" suggests a reasonably comprehensive book that
covers most simple cases and/or maybe look-up tables or "cheat sheets" to
nudge me in the right direction without going into anything in tooo much
depth. For the greater depth i'd expect something heftier, a manual or
something like that.

I hadn't thought about how translation to and from German might change
nuances and implications such as that. That changes quite a lot of things
imo.

Taking screen-shots is more like part of a final review process. I don't
think it's something a new proof-reader is likely to be able to do. I
suspect it's better to do them after a proper review so that the person
taking the screen-shots isn't distracted by other issues and can
batch-process them to make sure they are all consistent.

As far as taking screen-shots goes, it is a little more painful and less
obvious in Windows but that is not really the issue. The main problem is
that MS sometimes choose to clobber people who disregard their Eula and
stuff but most of the time they seem to let it slide. However it might be
worth bearing in mind that MS Office is a significant part of their profits
and anything that helps anyone reduce their profits could easily be seen as
a threat by them. It's not even as though LO helps MS gain greater market
share (an alleged reason why so many pirated versions of their stuff is up
for grabs in so many countries).

Apple might also choose to clobber us for screen-shots and allegedly they
have a reputation for being quite heavy handed - however LO does not
threaten a core income stream of their's. It may even be helping them look
more viable in the markets they seem to be aiming for at the moment. So i
can't really imagine them doing it unless we make their icons look bad or
some other bit of bad design.

To take a screen-shot in Gnu&Linux;
1. press the PrintScreen button on your keyboard
2. click on save or press enter.

To take a screen-shot in Windows
1. press the PrintScreen button on your keyboard (that copies the image
into the clipboard)
2. open some program such as Word or an image editing program or something
3. do Ctrl V or Edit - Paste
4. go to File - Save
5. create a name for the file
6. choose where to save it
7. click on save or press enter.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

> The reason that there's both a Guide and a Handbook is that the German
> documentation team got tired of waiting around for the English team to
> finish the Base Guide, so they took the draft chapters, translated them,
> finished the book, and published it as the Base-Handbuch. That document
was
> then translated back into English as the Base Handbook.

Why the difference in name? Is the Handbook written in a different
style than our other guides?

Because the Base Guide had several chapters in draft form before we decided
that translating the German Handbuch would be a faster way to get a book on
Base done in English, we used a different name, Handbook, to avoid
confusion with the draft guide. I note that all the German translations
of the English User Guides are Handbooks; I assume that's the German
equivalent term.

And yes, the translated Base Handbook is written in a somewhat different
style, though not greatly different.

> Contrary to what Tom D. indicated, the Handbook is /not/ shorter or less
> thorough than the Guide. Each is intended to be a complete and
comprehensive
> user manual; the difference is that the Handbook is finished (although
not
> up-to-date in English.) The current German version of the Handbook has
448
> pages in 11 chapters; the plan for the Guide includes 10 chapters, of
which
> only 3 are complete.

Hmm... if they're roughly the same type of manual, then perhaps
name/content harmonization would help avoid confusion. (Apologies if
there's already been a conversation on this matter; please feel free
to point me at it)

>...Moreover, this needs to be done by someone who's
> running Base on Linux. For reasons I don't understand, screen captures
don't
> always work correctly when done using Windows, and Windows is what I'm
> running.

IIRC, most projects take screenshots in GNU/Linux for
1) Consistency
2) Avoiding any question about including screenshots of a proprietary WM

Those are the reasons for preferring to take screenshots using Linux. It
has nothing to do with "don't always work correctly when done using
Windows". I note that those in the Writer Guide are taken from Windows, and
the Getting Started Guide has a mixture of Windows, Mac, and Linux pix. In
both cases it's either be inconsistent or not get the book done. IMO having
some Windows pix in the Base Handbook is not a problem, though others
disagree.

--Jean

Hello Alan,

The reason that there's both a Guide and a Handbook is that the German
documentation team got tired of waiting around for the English team to
finish the Base Guide, so they took the draft chapters, translated them,
finished the book, and published it as the Base-Handbuch. That document
was then translated back into English as the Base Handbook.

I have written most of the content of the Base-Handbuch. So let me say:
We haven't translated anything from the Base-Guide (or the
draft-chapters of it ...) for the Base-Handbuch. I have written it,
because there wasn't much information available for Base and it seems to
be needed in mailinglists and forums.

Regards

Robert

Dear Alan,

I respond to you mail from the "Base documentation volunteers" thread.
At the LO conference in Bern I presented a workflow, which addresses
exactly what are you doing now: translating a new version of some text
by taking advantage of translation of an old version. You can find
details in the presentation:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/m83raie79tqqvn4/AAD6J-96dDaFlAfqQsY9maU9a?dl=0

Maybe we can try it in case of a chapter you have not updated yet. For
this, I would need the German odt files with the old and new version and
odt file with the translated old version. From them I will create a
translation memory file for the new version with translations from the
old version - thus you don't have to manually check and copy&paste. This
may save a lot of work.

best regards
Milos

Dňa 09.09.2014 o 17:53 Alan Cook napísal(a):

Hi Milos,

Maybe we can try it in case of a chapter you have not updated yet. For
this, I would need the German odt files with the old and new version and
odt file with the translated old version. From them I will create a
translation memory file for the new version with translations from the
old version - thus you don't have to manually check and copy&paste. This
may save a lot of work.

The German version you could find here:
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/de#Handbuch_f.C3.BCr_Base
The newest version is only availible here:
http://de.libreoffice.org/hilfe/dokumentation/

Regards

Robert

Hi Milos, all,

Dear Alan,

I respond to you mail from the "Base documentation volunteers" thread.
At the LO conference in Bern I presented a workflow, which addresses
exactly what are you doing now: translating a new version of some text
by taking advantage of translation of an old version. You can find
details in the presentation:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/m83raie79tqqvn4/AAD6J-96dDaFlAfqQsY9maU9a?dl=0

Thanks a lot for your work on this and your presentation. I've gone
through the presentation and will try to use the process as test for
French. I'm afraid it will be a bit too technical but if we document it
well on the wiki and help to set it will become easy :slight_smile:
Beside the fact to reuse already existent material, I like the ability
to use the UI po files, that avoid a lot of errors in translations of
the menus and dialogs.

Maybe we can try it in case of a chapter you have not updated yet. For
this, I would need the German odt files with the old and new version and
odt file with the translated old version. From them I will create a
translation memory file for the new version with translations from the
old version - thus you don't have to manually check and copy&paste. This
may save a lot of work.

I think Alan is working under Windows, in your slides, there is two ??
for this OS, you mean that you didn't test it or will it simply doesn't
work? (I don't use Windows).

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi :slight_smile:
It sounds like Alan has developed a good work-flow for what he is doing.

Experimenting with a different system might be useful for updating the Base
Handbook to the 4.4.x branch when that comes out in a few months time.
There is a lot else for the team to do and limited resources to do them.

On the other hand if experimenting with it shows it makes things really
quick&easy then maybe there could be a 4.3.x before the end-of-life of the
4.3.x branch!

There is the danger that trying to do too much could easily result in
nothing getting done so i tend to think it is probably better for Alan to
keep using the work-flow he has developed to complete the 4.2.x = but it's
not up to me and not my decision.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi Tom,

Hi :slight_smile:
It sounds like Alan has developed a good work-flow for what he is doing.

Experimenting with a different system might be useful for updating the Base
Handbook to the 4.4.x branch when that comes out in a few months time.
There is a lot else for the team to do and limited resources to do them.

I was not speaking about the Base book, but about documentations in general.

On the other hand if experimenting with it shows it makes things really
quick&easy then maybe there could be a 4.3.x before the end-of-life of the
4.3.x branch!

Are you willing to help?

There is the danger that trying to do too much could easily result in
nothing getting done so i tend to think it is probably better for Alan to
keep using the work-flow he has developed to complete the 4.2.x = but it's
not up to me and not my decision.

I've never seen danger in adopting tools that help to save time and
resources. And yes, it's Alan decision to work with the tool he choses,
so nothing to say here, however Milos work is a very interesting
alternative that we should explore and document.
Kind regards
Sophie

Thanks, everyone, for your input. I think it's best that I continue doing what I'm doing for the 4.2 iteration of the Handbook, since the actual translating is 99% complete. We should definitely look into using OmegaT for future versions, and can start doing that before 4.4 is complete.

Alan

Dňa 11.09.2014 o 00:11 Alan Cook napísal(a):

Thanks, everyone, for your input. I think it's best that I continue
doing what I'm doing for the 4.2 iteration of the Handbook, since the
actual translating is 99% complete. We should definitely look into using
OmegaT for future versions, and can start doing that before 4.4 is
complete.

This makes sense.
To switch to OmegaT in the future, it would be best to clean the current
German version prior to updating it for 4.4 (or whichever version will
be the next). This will save some work. I volunteer to do that.

Milos

Hi Milos, all,

Dňa 11.09.2014 o 00:11 Alan Cook napísal(a):

Thanks, everyone, for your input. I think it's best that I continue
doing what I'm doing for the 4.2 iteration of the Handbook, since the
actual translating is 99% complete. We should definitely look into using
OmegaT for future versions, and can start doing that before 4.4 is
complete.

This makes sense.
To switch to OmegaT in the future, it would be best to clean the current
German version prior to updating it for 4.4 (or whichever version will
be the next). This will save some work. I volunteer to do that.

Thanks a lot for your proposal Milos :slight_smile: For information, I've installed
OmegaT on my Debian and have also converted the UI.po files to .csv to
get them in the glossary. Next, I'll add an old translation to the
auxiliary TM. Once done, I'll document that on the wiki as the first
step to use OmegaT for those who would like to use it in this project.

And I have a question, was Google translate really useful during your
translation process? may be it depends on the language but I found most
of the time that it adds a lot of work (breaking tags, structure...) for
small advantages.

Kind regards
Sophie

I don't know about Base but I found it impossible to make sense of Google's version of the annual report. I had to go back to the German version.

Dňa 11.09.2014 o 16:31 Sophie napísal(a):

And I have a question, was Google translate really useful during your
translation process? may be it depends on the language but I found most
of the time that it adds a lot of work (breaking tags, structure...) for
small advantages.

We have used Google translate to translate between Czech and Slovak. It
worked very well, most of the sentences were completely correct.
However, Czech and Slovak are very close languages. Translating English
-> Slovak was poor.

We used GT in batch mode to translate tmx files. Nearly all tags were
broken but one could repair them by a sed script.

Perhaps you can try it out: I've translated and corrected tmx file of
chapter 10
(https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/images/7/73/GS4210-PrintingExportingEmailing.odt).
You can find it here:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/m83raie79tqqvn4/AAD6J-96dDaFlAfqQsY9maU9a?dl=0

Copy the en-fr-corr.tmx file to the tm directory a you will see if it us
usable or not.

best regards
Milos