Hi Jean, On Sat, Aug 4, 2012 at 5:48 PM, Jean Weber <jeanwe...@gmail.com> wrote: > BTW, this wiki page includes a diagram of the workflow used by > ODFAuthors for many years for docs production. The descriptive text is > a bit out of date (especially info on naming convention) and not > relevant to Alfresco (again, naming convention), but the general flow > is one I think should be adapted to work with the Alfresco tools. > https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development#First_steps_with_the_Documentation_team
OK, the workflow we originally set-up on Alfresco is a bit like Snakes & Ladders. The doc start in the "Drafts" folder. A considered-ready draft gets approved and goes forward to the "Review" folder. A reviewer proofreads it, and either it gets approved and gets moved forward to the "Publish" folder, or it gets rejected and goes back to "Drafts". The act of approval or rejection (it wasn't always actually used) was to click on one of two menu options in the right-hand menu that appears when your mouse pointer hovers over the document. The result was that Alfresco would move the document to one folder or the other. When the doc actually lands in the Publish folder, the bells sound and the doc gets published. This is a manual process in which a team member downloads the document from Alfresco, generates a PDF from it, has to log into the wiki, upload the documents, edit/update the links in the wiki page with the published documents list (http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications). Then the team member has to log into libreoffice.org and update the docs download page (http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/documentation/) with the new links from the wiki. Note: some of the tracking functionality is done within the document, using LibreOffice's changes tracking and comments features. I have missed out on the "Feedback" folder (insert additional snake/ladder). Questions: Is there a real need for more than Draft/Review/Publish folders? What is the real value of the Feedback folder? Could we usefully just eliminate it and simplify things? Question: The workflow described on the wiki involves 4 roles - Writer, Reviewer, Editor, Publisher. Could we usefully simplify that to Writer and Reviewer? Editor and Publisher could potentially be eliminated, because of my file-naming suggestion below. Suggestion: On Alfresco, you could usefully revise the file-naming conventions. Keep the conventions as regards the title of the manual. But remove the version info from the filename. Instead, decide what fields you want to have in the meta data of each file, and store the version info in there only. The advantages I'd see are discussed below. Suggestion/thoughts: I guess this is stating the obvious, but ultimately the team needs to choose between the current ODFAuthors tool and Alfresco. Having both described in http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications *probably* discourages a lot of potential contributors because of the complexity of the functioning. IMHO, even the workflow on either tool is *possibly* more complex than necessary. Either move to Alfresco (hosted either on http://alfresco.libreoffice.org or on http://odfauthors.org) or stay with the Plone tool? OK, irrelevant to the current thread. Forget I said that... ;-) Possible different solution =================== Have 2 folders for each manual: "Work-in-progress" and "Published". All work gets done on the file in "Work-in-progress" and there is only ever one file for each chapter of a manual in the "Work-in-progress" folder. Alfresco's versioning system updates the version number of the file each time someone uploads some work done (via "Upload new version" under "More..."). One can easily roll back to a previous version number if necessary, or download an old version number if desired. Each worker enters a comment in the Alfresco comment box when uploading, stating the work done (and/or in a comment field in the document meta data). The same file is used even when work starts on updating a chapter to take account of a new version of LibreOffice. In this case, the LibreOffice version number is updated by a team member in the file's meta data. You don't have to worry about incrementing any file version number in the meta data, because Alfresco is handling the version numbering. When the file is finally publication-ready, one uploads it ("Upload new version" in "More...") as a new version of a file of the same name already existing in the "Published" folder. That existing file is already linked-to on the wiki and on libreoffice.org (the link comes from the public browser on http://media.libreoffice.org), so there is nothing to update and no further action is necessary (except generating a new PDF file for the entire manual). The same naming simplification for PDF files would eliminate the same wiki/libreoffice.org drudgery as for the ODT files. On the wiki page, eliminate the publication dates (removing more arduous manual work). Don't most people just want to download the latest available version? One can always just post on the blog when one publishes a new version, if one wants to. Possible further simplification ====================== Just publish PDF files as the final deliverable to the public - one PDF file for each manual. Personally, I *never* consume documentation in .odt form, I *always* prefer an entire manual in one PDF file. For me, a .odt file is a working medium not a consumption medium. A PDF file can be opened on almost any computing device. A .odt file specifically requires LibreOffice to be installed. Conclusion ======== OK, I think I've covered everything that comes to mind right at this moment, but I'm trying to find ways to reduce the workload and to simplify contribution, as this will take weight off current team members and possibly encourage more people to volunteer. Responses and counter-suggestions? -- David Nelson -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to documentation+h...@global.libreoffice.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/documentation/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
