Re: [libreoffice-l10n] Kendy's Work in LO GUI+Help

Hi

I tend to agree with Martin comments and I also praise the work and 
committment of Kendy to the project, as well as each individual 
developer trully commited to the project goals.

LO went into a new and frenetic development pace which concerns me if no 
strong leadership and planning is not well conducted.

Tha include proper collaterals.

For example, I missed the help for the new Writer title pages of the 
latest releases, and I know they are not there because I have not found 
them for translation.

On top of the need for specs (often seen as a unimportant and cumbersome 
task by casual developers) I am struggling with the radical changes of 
the configuration of the software since release 3.2 that has almost no 
document on how to make it work for you, much less on examples and snippets.

For me, no new feature should be released without proper 
/help/user/admin documentation, even if this is is slowing the pace of 
the release schedule.

Thanks for the attention as well. I do speak for myself but I know this 
is what a large enterprise want.

Olivier



Em 31-03-2011 07:22, Martin Srebotnjak escreveu:
> Hello,
>
> I was flabbergasted by the forced-unto-us not-so-functional online help
> system, as you might have read several times on this list. This is something
> that mostly targets the non-English speaking communities (at least on Linux
> and OS X) - and we were not asked how the end product should look like.
> Since it was implemented there were no major enhancements and the
> non-functionality of that online help is still obvious to all.
> Now the thing will go further:
> http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~kendy/blog/archives/monthly/2011-03.html#2011-03-31T11_35_21.htm
> What are the OFFICIAL specs, confirmed by the LibreOffice community for
> further development of the online help? What is "our approach", who is "us"?
> Does it include us, the L10N community, translating and updating the help,
> or who? Did the L10N teams leads give their perspective on this issue?
>
> The online help system developer has also revamped the search toolbar "to
> behave more like in [...] Firefox":
> http://artax.karlin.mff.cuni.cz/~kendy/blog/archives/monthly/2011-03.html#2011-03-29T09_43_06.htm
> and he is now also mentoring students cleaning the UI. While some tasks in
> http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Gsoc/Ideas#UI_cleanup
> look like real cleanup, some might really be re-designs.
>
> I am wondering if LO is (unlike OOo) going in the direction that every
> developer can change the UI without consent from the community. (That could
> lead to LO developers thinking loud on their blogs like this: "Playing with
> the LO code yesterday I decided that LO will now drop the Base component,
> because I don't like it, it just takes place on disk, it should be an
> extension.") Or maybe there are some individuals (or employees of some
> companies) with greater rights and privileges than others in the LO
> community?
>
> Should not the UI changes be discussed in length? With some usability
> studies etc.? Will the disappointment with the decision-making process lead
> to further forks of LibreOffice or to the return of translation teams back
> to the OOo project?
>
> I am writing here, because I think this is not a single-developer decision
> nor just a GUI/developer-people-thing, and because I would like to know the
> official specs for the Help and GUI redesign/cleanup as well as the opinion
> of the L10N teams, because international help system is very much in the
> hands of the L10N teams.
>
> I do like Kendy and his commitment to this project, I do know that he means
> well and is spending a lot of time working on the development of
> LibreOffice. But some things just need major consensus of all the people
> deeply involved. Maybe there should be a sandbox for that kind of
> enhancements and people should then vote if they like the feature enough so
> it would be further developed and included into vanilla LO.
>
> Thank you for your time and attention.
>
> Martin

--
Olivier Hallot
Founder, Steering Commitee Member - The Document Foundation
Voicing the enterprise needs
LibreOffice translation leader for Brazilian Portuguese

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