Writer 4.2 Guide Chapter 12 for review

The updated Chapter 12, "ToCs, Indexes, Bibliographies" is available
for review, along with other chapters.
http://www.odfauthors.org/libreoffice/english/writer-guide/drafts-v4.2/

This completes the draft book. As soon as chapters have been reviewed,
and revised as necessary, I will publish the chapters and compile the
full book. Please note that any major changes suggested (that is,
improvements rather than correcting errors) will probably be postponed
to the next update of the book. Improving the book is a very good
thing to do, but not at this stage of production... unless nobody
(except me) cares whether this book gets done in a reasonable time or
not. It's already very late.

--Jean

Forwarding message to list for someone to answer.

I am no longer coordinating this group. Messages to the list are more
likely to get a reply. I hope.

Peter,

Have you had any luck getting involved? If not I will try my best to get
you some work - I know we need the help and appreciate the offer to help.

Best,
Joel

Hi Peter,

The workflow for the guides is here, you can see what is currently work
on or need review, etc.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development/UserGuideTasks

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi :slight_smile:
All the way at the bottom of that page
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development/UserGuideTasks#Base_Handbook
It looks like the Base Handbook has plenty of chapters ready to review.
For example chapter 4 about Forms is ready to review.

Gary Collins expressed interest in working on the Base Handbook too and
might want to take on Chapter 3 about Tables.

Jean or Sophie (or Alan or Dan)
Should i add a column for proof-reading? I like the idea of skipping
proof-reading the Base Handbook for this version, in the interests of
expediency but now that it looks more possible should i add the column back
in?
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

The Base Handbook is being updated in a different way from the other
books. Translated material is being integrated. Alan Cook can explain.

I would certainly be happy to review the chapter on forms. How do I let others know thta I am reviewing it , how do I down load the chapter? How do I submit corrections etc and then upload it?

Regards

Peter Goggin

Hi Peter,
[...]

I would certainly be happy to review the chapter on forms. How do I let
others know thta I am reviewing it , how do I down load the chapter? How
do I submit corrections etc and then upload it?

This is explained here on the wiki
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development#Workflow
But as Jean said, you should ask Alan Cook how to process for the Base
Handbook.

Kind regards
Sophie (still learning the whole workflow too :slight_smile:

Hi Peter,

I just checked if you have already an account on ODFAuthors. You had, but
you were missing some rights, which I fixed now.

If you are currently logged in, please log out and back in. Then you should
also have the option to retract a chapter (which means, that other people
see, that you have it checked out). This does not prevent them from
downloading it themselves, but at least they should realise, that they
might be duplicating some work.

If there are still some open questions, don't hesitate to come back here
and ask. The people working with the site for a long time might be "blind"
to those little things that make getting started easier for newcomers.

Thanks again for your willingness to help. :wink:

Sigrid

I have found where to download the Base chapter on forms. I cannot see where to mark that I have down loaded it to review and correct. I am sorry for being a bit slow but I will eventually get the hang of your system.

Regards

Peter Goggin

Hi :slight_smile:
Thanks :slight_smile: I have put you into the wiki;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development/UserGuideTasks#Status_of_tasks_BH_v4.2
I mis-spelt your surname in the comments :frowning: and can't edit it. Hopefully
when you sign the chapter back in i can put the correct speeling in
Apols and regards from
tom :slight_smile:

When i bring up my version of LibreBase the menus are somewhat different to those in the documentation. I was unable to find the forms options described. I downloaded my copy from the ubuntu repository. It says it is libreoffice-base 1:4.2.6.3-0ubuntu1. There are a whole heap of optional extras which I did not download initially.

1. Is this the right version of the database software, i.e. the one the documentation is intended for?
2. Do I need all of the optional extras?

I intend to work my way through the document , page by page to ensure that whatever it says can be done works as described.

Regards

Peter Goggin

Hi Peter,

When i bring up my version of LibreBase the menus are somewhat different
to those in the documentation. I was unable to find the forms options
described. I downloaded my copy from the ubuntu repository. It says it
is libreoffice-base 1:4.2.6.3-0ubuntu1. There are a whole heap of
optional extras which I did not download initially.

Base hasn't been changed since the start of LO with LO 3.3. There aren't
any extras installed for the forms.

In the first versions all Toolbars for forms where shown automatically
when starting to create a form. They had also been closed afterwords. I
will have a look for the version where it had been changed. Could be
many peole see the screenshots and thin there are some extras.
Open a form for editing.
Go to
View → Toolbars → Form Controls
View → Toolbars → Form Design

Are these the "optional extras" you are missing?

Regards

Robert

Peter,

2. Do I need all of the optional extras?

Off-hand, check that you also have the following packages :

libreoffice-base-drivers
libreoffice-report-builder
libreoffice-report-builder-bin

Alex

Hi :slight_smile:
Are you using Windows, Mac or Linux? I am not sure how to do that in
Windows but in Linux it would be something like;

sudo apt-get install libreoffice-base-drivers

Rinse and repeat for the other 2. In some distros you might need to
replace apt-get with something else, usually "yum" or something.
Alternatively just open a package-manager and have a look for those
packages/programs in there.

Sorry i have no idea how to check this in Windows! :frowning:
Regards form
Tom :slight_smile:

So, what was the final resolution on this?

Was it decided that:

1. There have been changes that until now no one has noticed.
2. The Linux distribution specific versions break things apart and you simply needed to install the rest of the bits and pieces.
3. The Ubuntu assembled distribution is just different
4. Something I missed?

Hi Andrew,

When i bring up my version of LibreBase the menus are somewhat
different to those in the documentation. I was unable to find the
forms options described. I downloaded my copy from the ubuntu
repository. It says it is libreoffice-base 1:4.2.6.3-0ubuntu1. There
are a whole heap of optional extras which I did not download initially.

1. Is this the right version of the database software, i.e. the one
the documentation is intended for?
2. Do I need all of the optional extras?

I intend to work my way through the document , page by page to ensure
that whatever it says can be done works as described.

Regards

Peter Goggin

So, what was the final resolution on this?

None for the moment. I think that we should stick with the TDF
LibreOffice version because there is always integrations made by the
distro packagers.

Was it decided that:

1. There have been changes that until now no one has noticed.
2. The Linux distribution specific versions break things apart and you
simply needed to install the rest of the bits and pieces.
3. The Ubuntu assembled distribution is just different
4. Something I missed?

I haven't checked for all, but I think that the distributions assembled
by packagers are all different because of the integration. Also
depending on your desktop environment, you won't access the same
shortcuts. May be we should add a small text explaining it.

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi :slight_smile:
Peter Goggin's email seems to have been broken shortly after posting his
first message in this thread. I don't think we have any other way of
contacting him.

I think the established policy, at least for screen-shots, is to install
the version of LIbreOffice from the official LibreOffice website. It makes
sense to either have it in parallel alongside whichever version you use for
normal work or to rename the User Profile just to make sure your version
has been set to factory defaults and then apply the appropriate theme and
icon-set. Mostly this is probably unnecessary - except in cases like this,
where there appears to be a significant discrepancy to figure out. This is
covered in the Preface that is common to all guides, see pages 5-6.

Wrt the KDE issue i think it might be handy to have a section about the KDE
keyboard-shortcuts issue under the section about using LibreOffice on
Macs. That's on page 6 at the moment.

I'm not sure if it'd be unhelpful to have a disclaimer mentioning that
there might be similar issues on all DEs. Detractors might use that to
point out that LO is not the same on every platform when really such issues
are fairly trivial for most normal users. On the other hand all these
guides seem to be refreshingly honest compared to most tech guides.

At the moment the Preface neatly fits onto 8 pages, which is very
convenient for printing. There is a lot of white-space on pages 2 and 3.
Page 2 has a section called "Contributors" but on page 7 there are 2
sections that might fit well with that;
"Who wrote this book" and
"Acknowledgements"
The space on page 3 looks like it might be able to fit the first 2 sections
of page 4;
"Who is this book for" and
"What's in this book"

However i don't really like the idea of moving stuff around because
1. it might then become inconsistent with other chapters and those other
chapters might have varying amounts of white-space on the equivalent pages
so changing those too might lead to some really bad layouts
2. the whole Preface looks very well laid out and it looks like
considerable thought went into it all.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

I solve most of my problems with Base. I removed it and then did a full install with all of the extras, whether they looked as if they may be needed or not. I am now more than halfway through reveiwing the Forms chapter, checking that the documentation and the program match. Once I have a list of comments and suggestions I will e-mail them out.

Regards

Peter Goggin