Documentation on the Templates and Extensions Sites?

Hi All,

I had previously seen references to this subject in posts to this list,
but never really paid much attention. However, this became much more
relevant in another "Change our practice of linking back to NextCloud"
thread.

It is unclear to me and others why anyone would think to search the
Templates or Extension sites to find user guides. In fact the 30
documentation files only exist on the Extensions site:
https://extensions.libreoffice.org

With the greatest respect to whoever set up
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/?Tags[]=53
The Extensions site does not lend itself well to an organised, easy to
follow layout.

While I understand and agree with the philosophy of making our
documentation as widely available as possible, the Extensions site
appears to to be a strange choice.

Best Regards
Dave

Hi Dave, All

Hi All,

I had previously seen references to this subject in posts to this list,
but never really paid much attention. However, this became much more
relevant in another "Change our practice of linking back to NextCloud"
thread.

It is unclear to me and others why anyone would think to search the
Templates or Extension sites to find user guides. In fact the 30
documentation files only exist on the Extensions site:
https://extensions.libreoffice.org

With the greatest respect to whoever set up
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/?Tags[]=53
The Extensions site does not lend itself well to an organised, easy to
follow layout.

While I understand and agree with the philosophy of making our
documentation as widely available as possible, the Extensions site
appears to to be a strange choice.

Best Regards
Dave

Blame it on me. I'm sort of restless in promoting our docs.

I pushed to reuse the homegrown extension developed website to store the
Guides and other community docs. I was aiming at 1/ an easier way to
manage book/doc upload and release updates and 2/ good user experience
for navigation and download, as when you use a book shop e-commerce
website...

At the reality check-point I have 1/ is OK and upload/management/display
of guide is straightforward, but 2/ fell short, is unfinished (1).

I didn't made any big-bang announcement or pushed on the extension
website because of 2. I beg to wait a bit to let the issues be sorted
out until we can re-evaluate the results. The 30 documents uploaded are
a sample for evaluation, nothing is definitive. Community has its voice.

So your remarks proceed. The name "extension" that very few knows about,
is bad at least. But people can catch immediately if we rename it to
"appstore". Right?

Kind regards
Olivier
(1) https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/issues/3229

Hello Olivier,

I'm glad that topic to be sorted out, finally.

Hi Dave, All

Hi All,

I had previously seen references to this subject in posts to this list,
but never really paid much attention. However, this became much more
relevant in another "Change our practice of linking back to NextCloud"
thread.

It is unclear to me and others why anyone would think to search the
Templates or Extension sites to find user guides. In fact the 30
documentation files only exist on the Extensions site:
https://extensions.libreoffice.org

With the greatest respect to whoever set up
https://extensions.libreoffice.org/?Tags[]=53
The Extensions site does not lend itself well to an organised, easy to
follow layout.

While I understand and agree with the philosophy of making our
documentation as widely available as possible, the Extensions site
appears to to be a strange choice.

Best Regards
Dave

Blame it on me. I'm sort of restless in promoting our docs.

I pushed to reuse the homegrown extension developed website to store the
Guides and other community docs. I was aiming at 1/ an easier way to
manage book/doc upload and release updates and 2/ good user experience
for navigation and download, as when you use a book shop e-commerce
website...

At the reality check-point I have 1/ is OK and upload/management/display
of guide is straightforward, but 2/ fell short, is unfinished (1).

I didn't made any big-bang announcement or pushed on the extension
website because of 2. I beg to wait a bit to let the issues be sorted
out until we can re-evaluate the results. The 30 documents uploaded are
a sample for evaluation, nothing is definitive. Community has its voice.

So your remarks proceed. The name "extension" that very few knows about,
is bad at least. But people can catch immediately if we rename it to
"appstore". Right?

I do share Dave's remarks. And the "appstore" thing you propose won't help in the *documentation* field.

When someone looks for documentation, s-he looks to... documentation, not some kind of strange place. Note that the documentation pages of the LibO website do *not* lead to the extensions website (and that's fortunate because, I can't see any relationship there).

If I take the Basic macro refcards as an exemple (which refcards are stored in the extensions pages), I don't think anyone with a sane mind would go there to get them. People would go to the documentation page or the macro pages but certainly not to the extensions/whatever strange name page!
-> put them back to where they belong.

The extensions and templates (whatever the hosting pages name might be) are *not* related to documentation. At all. Please, stop this nonsense!

Best,

Hi,

I fully support Jean-François statement regarding documentation location:

- The extensions site is *not* the right place for LibreOffice documentation
content

If the Extensions site were the only location offering the documentation
I would have to agree with you & Jean-François.

However, we do and always will have:
* Documentation on the website:
  https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/
  Plus other languages.
* Documentation on the wiki:
  https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
  Plus other languages.

At the moment the Extensions website is just option being explored for
development as another possible avenue to make our documentation more
wisely available. What you currently see there is work in progress.
There is no plan or intention that the Extensions website will ever
become the exclusive source for our documentation.

Best Regards
Dave

Over the last five or so years, there has been a subtle encouragement to
migrate everything that is to be downloaded, other than installable
binaries, to the extensions part of the LibO website.

In a strange sort of way, it makes sense to have everything findable in
the extensions site. However, one of the big issues with the extension
site, is how difficult it is to find things, if you don't know the exact
name. (The only fix I can think of, is requiring everything to have
either a Dewey-Decimal Number, or Library of Congress Classification
Number, something that I suspect 99% of creators would be unable to
provide.)

jonathon