Now that we are close to completing all the user guides (except for the Base Guide), we are moving into a phase of maintenance (mainly updates due to changes in the program) and enhancement. Given the small number of active contributors, we also need to look at how to work smarter. I plan to write several notes giving some of my ideas. Here is the first. Please comment and also contribute your ideas too.
Many ttopics are the same or very similar in more than one book. Keeping all up to date without forgetting something or writing different descriptions can be both time-consuming and prone to error. So we need to look at ways to reuse the same pieces of text, with minor differences as required. OOo provides several tools to help us do this. We need to keep it as simple as possible, to avoid confusing volunteers, especially newcomers, so we'll need to develop a set of instructions as well as the required files. Many of you will be familiar with the concepts, even if you haven't used OOo's tools. Michele Zarri has made a start with revising portions of the Draw and Impress Guides, and some of what he is doing will be reused in the Getting Started book as well. There are overlaps between GS and the first chapter or two of the Writer Guide and Calc Guide, as well as some GS material that is covered in several books. These topics include PDF creation, digital signatures, extensions, and some of the info on styles, templates, toolbars, menus, customizing, keyboard shortcuts, setting up options, and others. Some of the techniques available in OOo are variables, hidden text paras & sections. Michele, TJ or others may be able to tell us of other methods. These come under the general heading of conditional topics. I think the first things to do are (1) compile a list of topics used in more than one book, which chapters of which books these topics are in, and any differences (details that vary among modules) and (2) compile a list of methods to work with conditional material and when each of those methods is most useful. Some how to info is in the WG, but it will need more development to be explicit for our needs. Item (1) should be easy to start: could someone set up a wiki page with a table so people can fill in info? Don't wait for me to get back from my travels. Jean --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
