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

On 11/23/2010 8:07 PM, Marc Paré wrote:
> 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

I'm just trying to catch up with this discussion, but how about if the installation process included 
an offer to download documentation, and provided some options about that (e.g., basic introductory 
material for Writer/Calc/Impress/..., the current Getting Started, the full guides, or whatever) as 
well as links to the online documents? If this material could be captured for later use, too 
(perhaps as a Documentation option in the Start menu or the equivalent), that would be good.

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