Thoughts on Rafael Lima's suggestions in updated Preface of Writer Guide

Rafael Lima has made some suggestions in his update to the Preface of
Writer Guide. I thought I would mention them here because they are
relevant to more than just this document. Thank you to Rafael for the
thoughtful comments.

Rafael points out that this web page (or links on it) needs updating:
https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/install-howto/
He says, "For example, the snap version refers to LO 5.2. Also, I did
not find any mention of the AppImage version."
Could someone file a bug report, if one has not been filed already?

Rafael asked about the What's This? item on the Help menu. "This
feature does not seem to be working in LO 7.0. It still exists in Help

What’s this but it does nothing. Apparently it was not working on

6.4 either. Shouldn’t we remove this from the guide? And also from the
Help menu via a enhancement request at Bugzilla?"

Olivier said some time ago that What's This? is working in some
dialogs but not all, and the non-working ones are being fixed, but it
will take awhile. I forget the details. The question of whether to
remove the item from the Help menu until working everywhere is not one
we can answer. But as long as it is there, it needs to be mentioned in
the user guides, without going into details. I note that the Preface
to the GS guide for 7.0 has a longer explanation, but I think that
explanation is incorrect or incomplete. The Calc Guide 7.0 has the
same explanation as om GS but also a Note: "The What’s This? facility
and extended tips are being improved but in LibreOffice 7.0 this work
is incomplete and so they are not fully functional." I think that is a
good approach, though I would prefer to leave out the somewhat
detailed explanation.

Rafael suggests leaving the link to OpenOffice Forum off the table of
free support for LO, as LO moves away from AOO in terms of
functionality. All of the books (AFAIK) have the same table, so this
is a wider matter than just Writer Guide. I haven't looked at the
forum recently to have an idea how helpful it might still be for LO
users, but I'm inclined to agree with Rafael. Would appreciate some
discussion on this.

Lastly, Rafael says the "Check for Updates" Help menu item does not
exist on Linux. It does on my Linux installation.

Jean

Hi All

I like to add an issue
Help - User Guides refers to English documentation | LibreOffice Documentation - LibreOffice User Guides and in Dutch to Documentatie in het Nederlands | LibreOffice Documentation - LibreOffice User Guides.
However the Dutch community does not support the guides there. Maybe other languages also do not support that page.
The Dutch Guides are to be found at Documentatie | LibreOffice - Een aantrekkelijk, leuk project.
So it would be preferable to be able to change the link there, maybe via Weblate.
I already logged a change request in Bugzilla, but no response yet.

Regards, Kees

Jean Weber schreef op 05.12.2020 23:50:

Please file any requests related to web things to https://redmine.documentfoundation.org/projects/infrastructure/issues instead of Bugzilla.

Ilmari

Hi Jean, Rafael et al,

Lastly, Rafael says the "Check for Updates" Help menu item does not
exist on Linux. It does on my Linux installation.

Jean

I usually "lurk" this list.

My Mageia7 Linux "packaged" version of LibreOffice 6.4.7.2 does not have
the "Check for Updates" as the package manager(s) usually remove this
menu item. However, my LibreOffice version of LibreOffice v.7.0.3.1
downloaded from LibreOffice.org does have the "Check for Updates" menu
item as per usual.

Perhaps this discrepancy could be noted of the two possibilities. That
various packaged linux versions may have this menu line removed and the
downloaded LibreOffice.org versions have this menu line..

Cheers,

Marc

Hello everyone!

Thank you Jean for your feedback. I believe you're right bringing this
discussion to the mailing list because it might affect other guides as
well. I'd like to make some additional remarks:

1) I checked out the AOO forum and there are some recent questions made by
users, but it's nowhere near the amount of questions we receive in Ask
LibreOffice. I believe that the link to OpenOffice forums should be removed
because many features work differently now (menus, dialogs, etc) and this
might confuse users instead of helping them. An alternative to removing the
link is to add a Caution note explaining that there might be differences
between OO and LO.

2) The "Check for Updates" feature is not available in my installation of
LibreOffice. I'm using LO 7.0.3.1 on Ubuntu 20.10 (the PPA version). AFIK
the PPA maintainers disable some features in their build of LO, which might
explain the lack of the "Check for Updates" feature. Maybe we could add a
Note explaining that the "Check for Updates" may not be available in
packages provided by third-parties.

Regards,
Rafael