LibreOffice WikiHelp

Ah, nevermind. The real main page is

http://help.libreoffice.org/Main_Page.

Hi Kendy, :slight_smile:

Hi all,

Either way, the good news is that I am currently uploading the files,
and I'll make the site online as soon as it finishes, and I do few
trivial checks; it should be later today (ETA 5 more hours, I am
populating the database through the Mediawiki API, not directly).  So
far I am uploading only the English version.

It will be read-only until RC2, so that it is easy to report bugs
against the tooling that converts the help from the format that is used
in the source code.  After RC2, I plan to open it for your edits &
improvements :slight_smile:

http://help.libreoffice.org is now up and running.  As explained above,
it is not open for public editing yet.  There are few known bugs already
filed in the bugzilla, should you find more, please report them too,
with 'wikihelp: ' in the subject, and assign them directly to me.

The already reported bugs are:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32173
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32174

You can either test the wikihelp directly from LibreOffice RC1, by
issuing help on various parts of the suite (if you find something that
leads to non-existing page, please report it too), or just from your
browser, using 'Random page' in the left hand menu, and visually
scanning it :slight_smile:

I'll improve the tooling according to your findings, and upload the
improved versions of the pages.

I'll be exploring it and will give you constructive feedback.

David Nelson

Hi *,

http://help.libreoffice.org is now up and running.

Can someone post the IP address of that site?

help.libreoffice.org. 86365 IN A 195.135.221.70

ciao
Christian

Hi,

I must miss something really trivial, but I do not see where to start
reading. :slight_smile: The only way to find pages from the main page is to use the
Random page or Recent changes feature.

Did I miss the point? :slight_smile:

Thanks.

Can you provide instructions for accessing the help wiki from inside
LibreOffice.

This should answer Miklos' question also.

Please, let us decide of how we are working. Again, we are not newcomers
here. We take care to provide a product of very good quality since years. If
you don't want to speak with us, please, do not try to provide tools and
systems we don't need and want at all.

I am slightly confused by this statement. Clearly there is a dialogue
going on in each functional team to achieve the best outcome possible.
This discussion is case in point.
Sophie, It seems you are feeling left out of the decision making
process. How are we able to resolve this?

Idea: The i10n team currently does not have wiki page. Could I suggest
that if the i10n team create their own page so the requirements for
native language teams can be coordinated and other projects can meet
those requirements.

You will end by having people using other tools to fit their needs, that's
all, I'm not sure this is what you want. Clearly, if you don't want to
understand how it works, how we work, you're going to loose your time
because the language groups will use their own CMS and tools and will go
away from the main site.

Sophie, it might be good for you to contribute here in a positive way
to ensure your needs are met by this fantastic new tool that Kendy has
built.
Kendy, you might be able to comment on this. But as I understand it
there is not going to be the option for language groups to break off
and create their own help wiki?

Great work so far Kendy, I can't wait to see the system working to
export the help files into the LibreOffice help. Great work!

Hi,

Please, let us decide of how we are working. Again, we are not newcomers
here. We take care to provide a product of very good quality since years. If
you don't want to speak with us, please, do not try to provide tools and
systems we don't need and want at all.

I am slightly confused by this statement. Clearly there is a dialogue
going on in each functional team to achieve the best outcome possible.
This discussion is case in point.
Sophie, It seems you are feeling left out of the decision making
process. How are we able to resolve this?

Does Kendy come to discuss the wiki idea with the l10n groups? No. Does he answer the question we asked? No. So as part of the team taking care or the help files and it's quality, yes we are left out, it's even not a question.

Idea: The i10n team currently does not have wiki page. Could I suggest
that if the i10n team create their own page so the requirements for
native language teams can be coordinated and other projects can meet
those requirements.

You will end by having people using other tools to fit their needs, that's
all, I'm not sure this is what you want. Clearly, if you don't want to
understand how it works, how we work, you're going to loose your time
because the language groups will use their own CMS and tools and will go
away from the main site.

Sophie, it might be good for you to contribute here in a positive way
to ensure your needs are met by this fantastic new tool that Kendy has
built.
Kendy, you might be able to comment on this. But as I understand it
there is not going to be the option for language groups to break off
and create their own help wiki?

The tool we work with is Pootle and we don't want a wiki or anything else. Pootle allow us to work offline which is very very important.
Pootle allow us to use our translation memory, we are able to let comment for each segment and make proposal. We have syntax rules and several checks tools available (punctuation, marks, tags, etc). We are able to ensure the quality of the file we are delivering with it. Why should we change our way of work when we are efficient and happy with it, without even asking us what we think about it. The help files are as important as the product in itself, so why should anybody be able to edit it without any idea of the process that ensure the coherence and the cohesion of it?

Kind regards
Sophie

Nobody has stated anything like "We will not be using Pootle" in fact
I know that Drupal supports the use of .po files and I am pretty sure
that Mediawiki does also.
As I mentioned before, it might be worth mentioning this first to see
if your concerns have been considered rather than jumping to
conclusions in an accusing way.

Kendy, you might be able to field these concerns further.

The tool we work with is Pootle and we don't want a wiki or anything else.
Pootle allow us to work offline which is very very important.
Pootle allow us to use our translation memory, we are able to let comment
for each segment and make proposal. We have syntax rules and several checks
tools available (punctuation, marks, tags, etc). We are able to ensure the
quality of the file we are delivering with it. Why should we change our way
of work when we are efficient and happy with it, without even asking us what
we think about it. The help files are as important as the product in itself,
so why should anybody be able to edit it without any idea of the process
that ensure the coherence and the cohesion of it?

Nobody has stated anything like "We will not be using Pootle" in fact
I know that Drupal supports the use of .po files and I am pretty sure
that Mediawiki does also.

It's not the use of .po files that is important here, it's about the tools provided by Pootle to manipulate .po and .xliff files online and offline

As I mentioned before, it might be worth mentioning this first to see
if your concerns have been considered rather than jumping to
conclusions in an accusing way.

"For now, editing features are disabled, so that we can fine tune the conversion tool. We plan to open it for your improvements with the LibreOffice 3.3 RC2. " RC2 is next week.

Kind regards
Sophie

Hi Miklos,

I must miss something really trivial, but I do not see where to start
reading. :slight_smile: The only way to find pages from the main page is to use the
Random page or Recent changes feature.

Did I miss the point? :slight_smile:

No you didn't. In fact you are spot on. If I were to put myself in the
position of a first time user of LibO and was directed to that page, I
would literally say "you gotta be joking !". What use is an online help
system in a wiki that doesn't show index links to the main topics. This
is a minimum for any help system. As for the search engine, well, I've
never been very impressed with most of the search engines used in
default wiki implementations.

The user must be given the possibility to browse through the pages of
help via links that appear, as they did in the "inline" help system of
OOo, otherwise as far as I'm concerned it is absolutely useless. If and
when the user comes across a topic for which they know the keyword to
search for, then they could of course use the search engine to enhance
their browsing experience, but IMHO you can not forego the immediate
visual need of a user. An example to look to in this case would be the
API documentation of OOo, yes, you can search for the terms using the
search engine that Collabnet provided, but you can also drill down via
links through the various API descriptions.

Whilst I appreciate that it must have taken a lot of work to get this up
onto the wiki, IMHO the visual accessibility of the information really
needs to be addressed.

Alex

Hi Kohei,

> > http://help.libreoffice.org is now up and running.
>
> Can someone post the IP address of that site? For me, that leads to the
> old go-ooo source code documentation by doxygen. It could be a DNS
> caching issue if we are trying to change the sub-domain routing.

Ah, nevermind. The real main page is

http://help.libreoffice.org/Main_Page.

How comes it is not redirected? Here it works just fine, ie. when I
type help.libreoffice.org in the browser, I get the Main_Page. I am
confused :slight_smile: - ideas appreciated.

Regards,
Kendy

Hi Miklos,

> http://help.libreoffice.org is now up and running. As explained above,
> it is not open for public editing yet.

I must miss something really trivial, but I do not see where to start
reading. :slight_smile: The only way to find pages from the main page is to use the
Random page or Recent changes feature.

Did I miss the point? :slight_smile:

You did :wink: The point is not to browse the help per se (even though it
can of course evolve into that), but the real usage is to hit F1 in
LibreOffice without a help installed, and you'll get _directly_ to the
right page - eg. if you navigate by keys in the File menu to 'Save
As...', and hit F1' you'll get directly to

http://help.libreoffice.org/Swriter/.uno:SaveAs

:slight_smile:

Similarly for the checkboxes/input fields/anything in the dialogs, or
wherever you can hit F1 and get some help.

Regards,
Kendy

Browser cache is the answer. Ctrl-R to the rescue.

Kohei

Hi Muthu,

I guess we should tie the 'help-welcome' (the page that opens when the
user clicks Help->Help from menu) pages to the wiki/Main_Page or
probably create a LibreOffice welcome help page (to point to the Writer,
Calc, and other applications help-start pages)...
I too felt it odd for it not to have it. Just my thought...

We have these, eg. when you hit F1 in a freshly opened Writer, you get
to:

http://help.libreoffice.org/Swriter/start

Actually - if anyone volunteers to improve the Main_Page (eg. collect
links to swriter/start, scalc/start, ...), I'll be happy to create the
account for him to do that; or I can cut and paste any improvements sent
to this thread directly as an wiki update.

Though - as I already explained, first it is necessary to fine-tune the
conversion tooling, the things like the exact wording of the Main_Page
can be fixed as soon as I feel confident with the result of the
conversion so that I can open it for everyone to edit.

Regards,
Kendy

> Did I miss the point? :slight_smile:

You did :wink: The point is not to browse the help per se (even though it
can of course evolve into that), but the real usage is to hit F1 in
LibreOffice without a help installed, and you'll get _directly_ to the
right page - eg. if you navigate by keys in the File menu to 'Save
As...', and hit F1' you'll get directly to

http://help.libreoffice.org/Swriter/.uno:SaveAs

Oh, I see. Thanks for the explanation.

Actually - if anyone volunteers to improve the Main_Page (eg. collect
links to swriter/start, scalc/start, ...), I'll be happy to create the
account for him to do that; or I can cut and paste any improvements sent
to this thread directly as an wiki update.

I guess it's not so hard to collect all the start pages if you have
access to the SQL db under the wiki - but without having that I would
put something like:

"For ease of access, the LibreOffice help has been split up into several
sections.

Yes, this main page needs a lot of work. Once we get around to doing
a good conversion, it will improve. We promise.

* [[Swriter/start|Writer]]
* [[Scalc/start|Calc]]
* [[Sdraw/start|Draw]]
* [[Simpress/start|Impress]]
* [[Smath/start|Math]]"

Hi Miklos,

> Actually - if anyone volunteers to improve the Main_Page (eg. collect
> links to swriter/start, scalc/start, ...), I'll be happy to create the
> account for him to do that; or I can cut and paste any improvements sent
> to this thread directly as an wiki update.

I guess it's not so hard to collect all the start pages if you have
access to the SQL db under the wiki - but without having that I would
put something like:

Cool, thank you a lot! Now it's there :slight_smile:

Regards,
Kendy

Hi all,

> Either way, the good news is that I am currently uploading the files,
> and I'll make the site online as soon as it finishes, and I do few
> trivial checks; it should be later today (ETA 5 more hours, I am
> populating the database through the Mediawiki API, not directly). So
> far I am uploading only the English version.
>
> It will be read-only until RC2, so that it is easy to report bugs
> against the tooling that converts the help from the format that is used
> in the source code. After RC2, I plan to open it for your edits &
> improvements :slight_smile:

http://help.libreoffice.org is now up and running. As explained above,
it is not open for public editing yet. There are few known bugs already
filed in the bugzilla, should you find more, please report them too,
with 'wikihelp: ' in the subject, and assign them directly to me.

The already reported bugs are:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32173
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32174

You can either test the wikihelp directly from LibreOffice RC1, by
issuing help on various parts of the suite (if you find something that
leads to non-existing page, please report it too), or just from your
browser, using 'Random page' in the left hand menu, and visually
scanning it :slight_smile:

I'll improve the tooling according to your findings, and upload the
improved versions of the pages.

I got just 2 additional bugreports, I am not sure it is enough :wink:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32290
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32291

All four are fixed now, but please - really test it. Until we are sure
that the quality of the conversion tool is good enough, it makes no
sense to upload the l10n versions of the help - it would unnecessarily
blow the size of the database with every improvement of the conversion
tool.

I have heard quite some complaints about the missing native language
versions already; I am not sure I've explained it well enough
previously, but this testing is blocking it. So please - help me :slight_smile:

Thank you,
Kendy

Hi Kendy, :slight_smile:

I got just 2 additional bugreports, I am not sure it is enough :wink:

https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32290
https://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=32291

All four are fixed now, but please - really test it.  Until we are sure
that the quality of the conversion tool is good enough, it makes no
sense to upload the l10n versions of the help - it would unnecessarily
blow the size of the database with every improvement of the conversion
tool.

I have heard quite some complaints about the missing native language
versions already; I am not sure I've explained it well enough
previously, but this testing is blocking it.  So please - help me :slight_smile:

Personally, I'm taken up this weekend with other work for LibO but,
next week when I have more time, I will definitely look at the
WikiHelp and do my best to provide practical help.

David Nelson

Firefox warns that the connection is untrusted. (I think the warning comes from Google, which analyzes the threat from each site).

I did not visit the site because of that. Many more people may be avoiding the site in a similar manner.
Please ask the web master to take care of the issue (or contact Google to remove the false positive).

Then you will get many more volunteers.

Thanks.

-Narayan

Known problem related to the free cert used. For some reason browsers do not accept the cert which leads to the report.