Thank you, Clayton. This is very helpful. I'm going to start with the
FAQs while I get my bearings.
As for using the corrected FAQs as an example, that brings up another
question. Is there a style guide, or is writing documentation for OOo
mostly intuitive?
Clayton wrote:
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.
