Styles template for doc team products.

[drewjensen]

Howdy,

On Wednesday with sometime available I looked to help start the task of
updating the Calc Guide to LibreOffice 6.2.

As a very fist step I took the files from the ODFAuthors website under the
version 4.1 directory and renamed each of the chapter odt files for 6.2.

Those files where then placed on The Document Foundation nextcloud server
for shared editing availability in the shared folder under ODFAuthors ->
English -> Calc Guide -> 6.2 -> Draft

At this point I was going to take each of those odt chapter files and apply
the template styles found in the file LO6_chapter_template.ott and update
those files on the server.

In the template however there are a few open questions by way of comments.

if you don't already have that template file used to produce the 6.0
Getting Started and Writer (I think) Guide you can down load a copy at
https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/9msEZJZcZxRz8Rs

Most of the comments are about fleshing out the text in the template used
as how to or help for future Guide authors, there is a question or two on
actual style needs for lists however.

I don't see those open questions as hindering using it today, but some may
and so I wanted to put this email to the list and ask about ideas to
resolve the questions in the template before I apply it.

Maybe even raise a additional questions myself.

Thanks

Drew

[daveb]

Hi Drew,

Thanks for getting things underway with the preparation of the Calc
Guide for 6.2

I was the one who raised the issue at the last meeting regarding the
template. Unfortunately, I was not able to spend more time on IRC that
day and did not get to explain my issues with the current 6.0 template.

Obviously we can work on the guides without resolving the questions in
the template, but it would be good to finalize the template questions
and save extra unnecessary work later.

As you say most of the open questions are about fleshing out some of the
styles in the template and it would be good if the docs team members
could consider their ideas for this and discuss those ideas at the next
meeting.

However, the open questions are not my real issue with the template. I
make it my practice to carefully check that my reviews/edits comply with
the styles, anchoring and other aspects of the template. In terms of
"Figure" anchoring there appears to be some conflict between the
template and the actual requirements for "publication". The template
specifies:

    Paragraph Style = Figure
    Frame Anchor = As character
    Image Anchor = As character

There appears to be consensus on the first 2 aspects, but disagreement,
or at least differing requirements, about image anchoring for the
different publication formats.

I have discussed this 2 or 3 times with Olivier and it seems that the
requirement for master document creation of the published ODT/PDF files
is that the images should be anchored "To Paragraph", but when Jean
prepares the files for print, having the images anchored "As Character"
seems to be the most appropriate.

This might seem like a trivial issue to raise, but here we have two of
our main contributors spending their valuable time correcting things
that should not have been wrong in the first instance. It may be that,
due to production requirements, there is no "one size fits all"
compromise possible, but I would at least like to understand the issue.

One thing new and/or inexperienced contributors want/need is clear
guidance and the template is an important aspect of that guidance.

Best Regards
Dave