[tdf-discuss] Re: A proposal for effective, volunteer-friendly user support in LibreOffice

Hi Robert et al:

Here is the information from Jean Hollis Weber from the documentation 
team. Jean is one of the senior leads on the documentation team.

==================


Marc, thanks for passing this on.

Some factual info regarding the OOo user guides:
1) The ODTs of the OOo user guides are available as well as the PDF
versions. At one point we were not allowed to put the ODTs on the main
OOo website because of license differences, but there are links to where
one can get them.

2) In most cases, the PDFs are *smaller* in filesize than the ODTs.

3) The PDFs of the OOo Writer Guide and the other user guides in their
current form (for V3.2) are NOT formatted for 5X7, although at least one
older version of those books was made available in the PDF used for the
pre-printed guide sold through Lulu, which is close to that size. The
current are formatted for reading on screen and for printing 2-up on
A4/US paper.

After complaints from users who wanted to print them, the draft V3.3
guides (and the first draft of the LibO guides) have been reformatted
for printing on A4/US paper size.

4) OOo provides the user guides in chapters as well as full books,
because we know that often people want only a subset of the
information.

5) Surely the answer to "if you are a new user, this is the one you
want" is the book titled _Getting Started with OOo_.

Having said all that, I agree that improvements could (and should) be
made. I think the current "Getting Started with OOo" book, at over 350
pages, is much too long. My original intention was to have it no more
than 200 pages, but it grew... people kept adding things and it's hard
to decide -- or agree upon -- what to cut out. Turning some of the
chapters, particularly the chapter on Writer, into stand-alone books of
about 100 pages, is a good idea. Expand a bit on what's there and
include pointers to more detailed into in the full Writer Guide, which
runs around 500 pages.

Aside: I would like to split the Writer Guide into two books, one with
basic info and one with more advanced topics like master documents and
forms. The book of basic info does need to include the basics of style
use, because styles are fundamental to so many features of Writer.

Shipping a user guide with the product is a good idea, but runs into the
practical difficulty of getting stuff written/updated in time. The docs
always run behind, mainly because there are not enough people to work on
them.

--Jean

================

As well, other personal emails suggested that adding it to the download 
would probably not be acceptable, for the same reasons discussed before.

Cheers

Marc


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