Welcome Kirsten,
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.
And I hope we will soon come to a stage where all of this will
be much more transparent for everyone.
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.
Jean, I posted a query for that a while ago. Can you tell me where the
sources for Gerry's User Guide are and what its status is?
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.
Yes, please stick around and if you feel lost just call out to the
list again. We're currently trying to move the project into a
more collaborative direction to make it easier to contribute
(and benefit).
So if, on your journey through doc.oo.o, you have suggestions
about how things could be made better, say it out loud here :-)
best
Frank
