Hi Frank, Frank Peters wrote: > Season's Greetings! > > *Dear project members,* > > 2007 is almost at its end and many of you will be looking forward to > spending the > holidays with their families, or otherwise take a break and rest. This > is traditionally > the time to look back to the past year and see what's in front of us, > and I will not > stand back from this tradition.
:) > > 2007 brought some changes to our project, the saddest of which was that > Gerry Singleton passed away unexpectedly in May. He lead the project and > used to be one of the supporting pillars of the project for many years. > Certainly long before I joined the project. He will be sorely missed. Yes, you're right. > > During the year we have also seen some changes to the structure of the > project > and how we work on and present documentation. We shifted our focus from the > web to the wiki allowing more and more of you to *easily get engaged* > and work > on documentation pieces. > > Since we started putting things up there, the wiki gained more and more > interest, starting off at around 200 page views in May to an incredible > *72,000 page > views* in November! But the Documentation web page remains to be popular > with *average monthly page views of 200,000*. This surely proves the > importance > of the Documentation project. oh, yes, it's incredible and great :) > > The reorganization has just yet begun and we're still cleaning up the > web attics > to put more and more on the wiki. Jean started to *consolidate the > several FAQ* lists > that were out there and we now have them all in one place, ready for > *all of you to > add, edit, and extend*! The very productive folks OOoAuthors moved > their guides > to the wiki as well, so we are getting close to having one access point > for the users. Thanks to Jean. > > Sun - and I won't try to hide that this is my employer who generously > allows me to > spend time on this exciting and wonderful project - has *open sourced > all of its StarOffice > documentation* which is now available under open source license in the > wiki. The > Administration and BASIC Guide are out there. The *Developer's Guide* > will follow > early next year after the update to a new Mediawiki version is completed. This is a long awaiting publication and thanks to Sun also for open sourcing it. > > The *new OpenOffice.org User Forum* opened its portal in November and > the speed at which they grew a forum community is just unbelievable. > They already > have *more than 1,400 members* and accumulated *more than 3,800 > postings* on nearly > 1,000 topics. I am deeply impressed and I am looking forward to > collaborating with > these fine folks in the future to our mutual benefit. I'm happy for that and I hope the NLC will participate to this new adventure :) > > I could rattle on for a while because so many more things have happened. > Instead > let me just *thank all of you* for your interest in the Documentation > project, for the > small or large things that you contributed to make this project grow. > Just a short and > highly subjective collection of highlights: > > *Jean*, thanks so much for your cooperation, we're so sorry to hear you > "resign". > *Mariano and Drew*, how is the tutorial doing :-) > *David*, thanks for your tutorial contributions, how is the mag doing? > *Andreas, Sophie, Jacqueline*, all you wanderers between the languages. > Thanks for your > contributions and your amazing level of commitment! > ** Thank you and all of the participant. The Documentation project is really important and needs our attention. > And here are the *top 5 wiki editors* for 2007 (drum roll): > > 1. Ccornell > 2. Drking > 3. Fpe > 4. Kirk > 5. Jeanweber > > Thanks to you and *keep going*! See if *YOU* can make it to the top 5 > reasonable edits, please ;-) > > I also want to *apologize* for the occasional lack of response and the > many, > many, many, many gaps that still need to be filled to make contribution > easier. > Bear with me, or yet better: *help me fill these gaps*! We will try, but I fear we battle with the same component as you : I named "time" ;) > > There are some quite challenging endeavors on the list for 2008 and the > project > can need any help it can get. Here are some *highlights for 2008*: > > * move to a *new Mediawiki version* (1.11) in January that will > allow us to use some > new neat features allowing to make the wiki pages yet more appealing > * finally publish the *Developer's Guide* (depends on the wiki > update). There is lots > of room for your participation! I think that will need a large announcement through the project and should be in the OOo newsletter when the guide will be available. > * continue to *consolidate* the FAQs, and the Howtos > * work on a *publication framework* allowing to export ODF and PDF > from aggregated wiki content I'm really excited by this, we have still a lot of people wanting to have a paper edition of the documentation, or simply want to adapt it to their professional context. > * put the maintenance workspace of the *application help* to the wiki +1 even if I'll need some how-to to understand ;) > * work with the *Native Language Confederation* to find a common way > of presenting multi-lingual > documentation on the wiki as well as allow for cross-language > sharing of documentation content not easy, but I'm sure we'll find the way > * find a collaboration practice with the *OOo forum* to pull > documentation content to the wiki yes and include licenses in that collaboration practice. > * ...and probably much much more. :) > > As you can see, *Documentation is all but dull*! 8-) > > But enough said. > > We are a global and multicultural group of people, so regardless whether > you will be celebrating Christmas, Hanukkah, or Eid ul-Adha, whether you are > having winter or summer time, whatever contintent you live on, I would > like to > wish all of you a very happy, relaxing, fruitful, and most of all > peaceful holiday > and a good start in a new year 2008. Thank you Frank, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year, and I associate myself to your wishes to others too. Kind regards Sophie --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
