Hi, Martina, and thanks for these thoughts, well-based (apparently) and well-presented. It appears to me that your suggestion is based on the foundation that OOo documentation should follow (a) a consistent and logical pattern, discernable on inspection of any page (perhaps aided by first reading the TOC), and
(b) best practices well-known and accepted in the Electronic and/or Printed Publishing and Visual Communication arts/sciences, perhaps modified a bit to follow most-modern styles in well-liked documentation of similar products. I could not agree more, and this implies one step to be inserted before your set: OOo documentation stewards and our "elected representatives" (mostly, those actually working on the docs) should learn about (b) above, and agree on and publish the pattern. If you, dear reader, _are_ a steward/acknowledged expert on OOo documentation, please so identify yourself and comment on my suggestions and support them, or discredit them before they hang around long enough to do more damage. :-) Thanks again for a great product and all the good work on documentation; I know it's hard to do well. Sincerely, Jim Harris >>> [EMAIL PROTECTED] 1:09 AM 6/19/200719/2007 >>> Hi all, Visualization in documentation aims to facilitate the communication of knowledge through the use of graphics, icons, tables, screenshots, colors and artful guidance of the reading direction. When I looked through the documents on http://documentation.openoffice.org/HOW_TO/index.html and the online help I found several insufficiencies with respect to visualization. In order to dispose of these flaws I would like to make the following suggestions: Assure a consistent layout in ooo documents to enable easy orientation within the documents. Reduce the icon size in the documents. Their actual size constrains the flow of reading because they get too much attention. In the table of contents of the OpenOffice User Guide highlight chapter titles, do not provide more than three chapter levels and create chapter groups. The current table of contents is too confusing. The user does not easily know where a new chapter begins. Do not indent bullets and numbers in lists. Bullets and numbers already indicate a list. Indentation means over-formatting. In online help use tables also for action alternatives. Tables are a good means to present contents clearly arranged. If we use normal text for menu selections, we could use tables for action alternatives (for example, context menus and icons). Users can then find quickly what they need. What do you think of it? Martina --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
