On 08/19/10 13:35, Jennifer Gutsche wrote:
Where should I start? I'm a little overwhelmed right now. I think I need author access to start, correct? I requested it the the other day. How do I know when I've got it?



Hi Jennifer.

You only need author access to check out a document from the content management system. It's not necessary to get started. I don't have admin access there so I can't bump up your rights.. the people with admin rights are all on vacation this week :-P It's just bad timing :-)

To get started, first you need to think about what part of the documentation interests you... what part is your favorite. Do you enjoy working with spreadsheets.. or drawing.. or text documents? From there... what documents hold an interest for you? The FAQs? HowTos? Tutorials? User guides?

Jean started a task list for the User guides:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/Dashboard/User_Guides
and some of the team members are working on things in the list. These particular tasks will require the Author access.

Other more introductory tasks are with things like the FAQs. The FAQs are all on the Wiki. This is a good opportunity to learn about Wiki editing at the same time as working on bite sized chunks of text. The FAQs are one question, one answer so do not require loads of work.
The FAQs start here:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/FAQ

If you look here, you will see several Wiki pages that are in the "Needs help" Category. http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Category:Documentation/NeedsRework

Working on an FAQ from there is not too difficult. You pick one, look at it... research the answer... does it still apply to the latest OOo release? IS it well formatted? Does it follow the style of the "corrected" FAQs.

Look at this FAQ for example:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/FAQ/Writer/FormattingPagesAndDocuments/Where_is_the_gallery

It's easy to validate it... but it really needs to be rewritten into something more accurate and more clear.

This FAQ for example has been checked and validated. It's technically correct, and formatted nicely (consistent with the style used by other FAQs)
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/FAQ/Writer/FormattingPagesAndDocuments/How_do_I_perform_a_word_count_of_my_document%3F

The same thing applies to the HowTos.
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/How_Tos/Adding_More_Languages
needs to be validated. Last time it was formally checked was with OOo2. It has not been confirmed with OOo3.

If you need guidance working on the WIki, let us know. The nice thing about Wikis is... you can't break things permanently. If you make changes that are not correct, or cause problems elsewhere, it's easy to fix things up. Nothing is ever lost if you delete things.

There are tools for Wiki editing that you might find helpful with getting started... for example the GUI editor. The instructions for enabling it in your options are here: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Help:FCKeditor and you'll have a full WYSIWYG editor with handy buttons for most Wiki edit functions. This isn't a perfect solution, but it covers the vast majority of what you want to do.

C.
--
Clayton Cornell       [email protected]
OpenOffice.org Documentation Project co-lead

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