On Thu, 2010-10-07 at 11:09 +0100, Michele Zarri wrote: > [snip] > > > > I don't think a Getting Started book is the place for telling people > > stuff we might want them to know but they mostly have no interest in > > (the background info part). I'm not sure about the file format lists; do > > they serve a useful purpose here, in this book? > > > > In fact, one could ask the same question about Appendix A on keyboard > > shortcuts, but we used to get requests to put that in. Even though the > > shortcuts lists are in the Help, people wanted something easy to print > > out and use as quick reference. With Alex Dunne revising the > > descriptions to be more readable by ordinary users, I think that > > Appendix will remain a valuable part of the GS book. > > > > But I think Appendix B can go. Comments? > > > > --Jean > > > > Hello Jean, All, > > Though I agree that the vast majority of the people is not quite so > interested in the information in Annex B and just want to know how to > get the best from OOo, I still see the "educational" value of the > Annex B. I think it is important for people, particularly those who > associate word processing with MS Word, to understand the value of the > open document format and of open source in general. > A possible option could be to delete Annex B, but add its contents to > the foreword of the printed edition of the guide (or even of all the > guides). As normally the foreword is written by someone else than the > author(s) of the book, maybe we could ask one of the funding members > of the TDF to do it.
Michele, You have given me an idea. Intead of a Foreword or Preface, which most people don't read, perhaps we could have two pages titled something like "Liberate your documents" which includes those sections of Appendix B. This might look interesting enough that more people will read it. This idea works better for LibreOffice because of the similarity of names, but would be okay for OOo too (possibly with a different heading). I don't think it needs to be attributed to anyone, and I'm sure the TDF founding members are much too busy on other matters. Let me work on this. (Others are welcome to have a go, too, of course.) --Jean --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
