Kirsten wrote:
Anyway, I found my way here. The OOo site says there's something for
everyone to contribute, but I wonder. Here's what I'm good at:
Spelling, grammar, and (with review) clarity. That's what I was hoping
I could help with, since I copy edit complusively anyway.
Is this the place for me? Is there a place for someone who can't
discuss programs very intelligently? I'm just easily overwhelmed by
lots of information.
Kirsten, I can certainly appreciate your frustration at trying to
find anything on the OpenOffice.org website... and the feeling of
being overwhelmed by so muchinformation. Don't think it's just
you! I'm glad you managed to find Documentation eventually.
So, welcome! Indeed, yes, this is the place for you. Although a
lot of the recent talk on the list has been about technical
issues, much is going on behind the scenes with writing, editing,
and reviewing user guides, how-to's, faqs, and other material
mainly aimed at ordinary users.
I have some specific suggestions for things you can work on:
1) The draft User Guide (produced by the late Gerry Singleton)
needs serious editing for grammar, clarity, and consistency.
Someone else has offered to recapture the screenshots for
consistency, but AFAIK no one is really working on the words.
This is a very large book, so it can be quite daunting for
someone to tackle, but it is broken up into separate chapter
files. Work can be done one chapter at a time -- not quite so bad.
2) A slightly different set of user guides is being produced at
the OOoAuthors website (because many of us find it easier to use
than the OOo website for the production of materials). The
results of that work is then posted on the OOo Documentation
Project's website. OOoAuthors has quite a lot of material needing
editing and reviewing. It is also in separate chapters that are
then combined into books for the different components of OOo
(Writer, Calc, Impress, etc).
3) We are in the process of collecting scattered FAQs into one
place (the wiki), editing them and bringing them up to date. FAQs
are small, bite-sized chunks of information, so some people
prefer to start with them.
In all cases, in addition to copy-editing, the documents do need
to be checked against the software. This is fairly easy (just
follow the instructions and see if it works, or if steps have
been missed or don't make sense, or if the screenshots are
out-of-date) but it does take attention to detail.
If any of these interest you, let us know and we can give you
more specific instructions on how to get the necessary files,
where the style guides are, and so on -- and answer any other
questions you may have. And if none of the above appeals to you,
we've got lots of other things around that you could help with too.
So... I hope you will stick around and enjoy working with us.
Regards, Jean
Jean Hollis Weber
Technical Editor
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