Re: [libreoffice-l10n] Improving the usage of help.libreoffice.org site

Hi :)
I agree it's frustrating.  There is too much to do and so targeting the most useful and productive 
system is fairly vital.  

The documentation team are hoping to work on the in-built help but it's unlikely to be completed 
any time soon!  The 40% already completed  will be useful especially if it's done as strings.  Even 
if it is translated as an entire document(s) then when the updated version becomes available then 
"Compare documents" may help minimise the amount of extra work needed to update the 40% already 
done when/if those updates become available.  

For the Guides the most useful one, the one that has the biggest impact and is the most downloaded 
one is the "Getting Started Guide" and that is already complete for the 4.0.x branch.  The most 
useful chapters in that guide are; 2, 3 and 4.  Each chapter is fairly self-sufficient and can be 
published separately.  

The Getting Started Guide has 1 chapter for each module/app.  Chapter 4 is the first of those and 
deals with "Writer" which is the most used app/module in LibreOffice.  Chapter 3 deals with the 
biggest jump in productivity between MS Office and LibreOffice.  Once people learn how differently 
"Styles" work in LibreOffice they find it can be much faster to get a far better document by using 
LibreOffice.  Chapter 2 is about setting up LibreOffice.  Screen-shots are mostly to show position 
of options, such as where to find things in menus.  So the screen-shots rarely need to be in the 
right language, it's nicer when they are but it's not a priority.  

The Title page and 1st page are fairly generic and much the same for all chapters in all guides.  
Then the next page or 2 are the Table of Contents which are generated fairly automatically from the 
rest of the guide of course.  


Since you have already done 40% (nearly half already)  i am not complete certain  whether it is 
better to stop
 translating the in-built help and start on the guides or just finish it off fairly quickly.  If 
you carry on with it then perhaps just don't worry so much about quality nor about bringing it 
up-to-date.  Finishing the remaining 60% might be the fastest way to ensure 1 
completed help-system in your language.  If you had done less than 20% the choice might have been 
easier!  

Right now i think the best bet is probably to finish off the in-built help but only because you are 
already half-way through so your work-flow is probably very efficient.  

One other question i am not sure about is whether a previous translation of the in-built help can 
be used to replace some or all of the in-built help for 4.0.0 and then used completely for 4.0.1 
and subsequent releases.  
Regards from
Tom :)  





> ________________________________
> From: Donald Rogers <donr2648@clear.net.nz>
> To: Christian Lohmaier <lohmaier+ooofuture@googlemail.com> 
> Cc: LibreOffice-l10n <l10n@global.libreoffice.org>; website@global.libreoffice.org 
> Sent: Monday, 18 February 2013, 1:04
> Subject: Re: [libreoffice-l10n] Improving the usage of help.libreoffice.org site
>
> Hi Christian
>
> Thank you and Adolfo for your replies. My main point was simply the huge amount of work and that 
> small teams are trying to do. (EO team in my case). Obviously we have to prioritize our tasks. I 
> am trying to get a better feel for what is most important. We have the UI done, but the help is at 
> about 40% done. I have stopped working on it because I found that some of the menus have changed 
> in LO 4.0 and I personally don't want to translate stuff now and have to do it again when the help 
> has been updated for v 4.0.
>
> On 18/02/2013, at 1:15 AM, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
>
> > Hi Donald,
> >
> > On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 7:15 AM, Donald Rogers <donr2648@clear.net.nz> wrote:
> > > It seems to me that there is a lot of duplication of effort and fragmentation of the help. We 
> > > have at least the following:
> > >
> > > LO Help from the Help menu
> > > help.libreoffice.org
> >
> > Those are identical. That's the whole point of help.libreoffice.org
> That's good. (I mostly use the menu help)
> > > wiki.documentfoundation.org
> >
> > this is more developer / active contributer oriented and less for
> > endusers, although stuff is published there. But there's another
> > discussion (or actually in this thread, I lost track) about not
> > "abusing" wiki to publish large files, etc.
> >
> > > the guides
> > > FAQ
> >
> > How can these be extra points when these are hosted on the mentioned sites?
> They all add to the work that could be done.
> > > ask.libreoffice.org
> >
> > A user-helps-user platform, no static documentation, but
> > answeres/solutions for specific problems. You cannot cover every
> > cornercase in regular documentation.
> >
> > > accessibility info
> > > features
> >
> > See above, not really belong here as separate points, as they are
> > found on sites. Otherwise you could just make separate bulletpoints
> > for whetever you like.
> > But the new-features page surely is also a marketing tool.
> >
> > > installation instructions
> >
> > Nobody reads those anyway :-) But what is wrong with having those?
> I am not saying there is anything wrong with having them. They have to be accessible before 
> installing LO, so obviously aren't part of the menu help.
> > > mailing lists
> >
> > similar to ask.libreoffice.org, but most mailinglists are for
> > coordination of active contributors. And while ask.libreoffice.org is
> > fine for easy problems, more complex ones are better off on the maiing
> > list.
> >
> > > Nabble
> >
> > That's just an interface to the mailinglists. Not everybody likes
> > using their mailclient. And you forgot gmane/newsgroup interface, that
> > also is an additional way to access/participate in the mailing lists.
> >
> > > IRC
> >
> > (near) real-time discussion - so again a different scope, useful for
> > different stuff than the other ways to get help.
> >
> > You did happily mix passive sources of information with interactive stuff...
> Each has a separate focus, as I see it.
> > > The guides are very good but to localize them requires not just translation and adaption, but 
> > > also all the screen shots and other pictures need to be redone for each language. This would be 
> > > a huge task. There are no guides yet for version 4.0.
> I just checked. EN has guides for 3.4, 3.5, 3.6 or 4.0, and ID has the full set of about 80 
> documents for LO 3.3, 3.4 or 3.5. FR has 36 (by my count) for LO 3.5 or 3.6. All other languages 
> apparently have none. (I looked on wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications/fr and 
> equivalent pages.)
> > The principles of usage are the same, so no big deal really... And
> > whether you do the screen shots or not is also a matter of taste...
> > But doing screenshots of dialogs is getting easier and easier thanks
> > to the "gladification" of the UI.
> What is "gladification"?
> > > If we are to continue to have both the Help menu help and help.libreoffice.org help, can 
> > > someone write some code to generate the help.libreoffice.org help from the same .po files that 
> > > are used for the Help menu help?
> >
> > That was already answered help.libreoffice.org is what is in the help-module.
> >
> > > What sort of help is meant to be in the wiki?
> >
> > See above. I see it mainly as a source for information for active
> > contributors/developers, less so for the enduser.
> >
> > > Is there any possible synergy between the FAQ and ask.libreoffice.org? Are they to be localized 
> > > too?
> >
> > well, apart from people monitoring what kind of questions get asked
> > the most on ask.libreoffice.org, there is no synergy. Questions are
> > too widespread/too special in most cases.
> >
> > > LO apparently doesn't have the people power to keep even the English helps up to date, let 
> > > alone all the other languages. Some of the localization teams are very small and can't keep up 
> > > with even one of the help systems.
> >
> >
> > Please explain / give an example what you are talking about here. I
> > hate statements like that.
> LO is about to publish version 4.0.1 but we have not yet finished the help for 4.0.0.
> > > The Wiki is easier to work with than the CMS.
> >
> > What CMS please. There are tons of them.
> I refered to the Silverstripe CMS that we use in xx.libreoffice.org. This is not an important 
> point, and I am biased because I have used Wikipedia for editing and I am quite familiar with it, 
> but I have not used Silverstripe much yet.
> > ciao
> > Christian
>
> Thanks again.
> Donald
>
>
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