Hello Tom T.,
Welcome to the team! I'm a volunteer (at the moment, the only one, it
seems) working on updating the Base Handbook. I'd like to supplement the
information that Tom D. has provided you with and let you know how you
might start out getting involved with the project.
As Tom indicated, the Base Guide and the Base Handbook are two different
documents, which is confusing. Base is the only LO product for which
this is the case; for all the other products, the user manual is just
called the Guide. However, there is not now, nor has there ever been, a
complete Base Guide; all there is is the drafts of three chapters.
The reason that there's both a Guide and a Handbook is that the German
documentation team got tired of waiting around for the English team to
finish the Base Guide, so they took the draft chapters, translated them,
finished the book, and published it as the Base-Handbuch. That document
was then translated back into English as the Base Handbook.
Contrary to what Tom D. indicated, the Handbook is /not/ shorter or less
thorough than the Guide. Each is intended to be a complete and
comprehensive user manual; the difference is that the Handbook is
finished (although not up-to-date in English.) The current German
version of the Handbook has 448 pages in 11 chapters; the plan for the
Guide includes 10 chapters, of which only 3 are complete.
The current English Handbook is for version 3.5 of the product. The most
recent German Handbuch is for version 4.2. What I'm doing right now is
updating the English Handbook from the more up-to-date German version.
Someone else has done the translating; I'm basically just
cutting-and-pasting (although I am finding that I have to do a fair
amount of translating and editing work as I run across things that don't
make sense.)
Here's one task we need done right away. The screen captures in the
German manual are, as one would respect, from the German version of the
app, and are in German. We need someone to work through the procedures
described in the Handbook using the English version of the product and
capture the needed screenshots in English. Moreover, this needs to be
done by someone who's running Base on Linux. For reasons I don't
understand, screen captures don't always work correctly when done using
Windows, and Windows is what I'm running.
If this is something you'd be willing to do, respond to this e-mail and
I'll send you more details on how to get started.
Best,
Alan C.
On 9/9/2014 6:21 AM, Tom Davies wrote:
Hi :)
I think the immediate one to work on is the Base Handbook rather than the
full guide. I agree that reading the single chapter in the Getting Started
Guide might help prepare you for Base.
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Publications
The first book there has a chapter to introduce each of the
modules/programs/apps within LibreOffice.
The Base Handbook is much shorter than the full guide so it might not go
into as much depth as you'd like but it is good to get a broad overview
before getting tooo bogged down in too many of the intricacies. Also it is
currently being updated quite significantly so it'd be great to do
proof-reading for the chapters as they get completed. It is the Handbook
that is in most need of proof-reading at the moment.
If you manage to catch up with the translation-update then going on to the
full guide would help gain a much deeper understanding. The full guide is
more of a longer-term project and is being written from scratch by Dan
Lewis.
Errr, this guide might help you work with the published guides;
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Documentation/Development
Hopefully someone might register you at ODFAuthors while you are reading
through that.
Many thanks and regards from
Tom :)
On 8 September 2014 15:41, Joel Madero <jmadero....@gmail.com> wrote:
Hey Tom,
Well there really is no "consideration" per say. If you want to help,
we'd love to have you assisting! That being said - I'm not terribly
familiar with "where to begin" in documentation. Perhaps someone else
could give the first steps and get you started.
Thanks for offering to volunteer.
Best,
Joel
On 09/07/2014 09:41 AM, Thomas Taylor wrote:
I would be interested in assisting with the documentation for base,
primarily
the proofreading. I don't currently use base (or any database) and feel
that
this would help me to also understand the concepts and utilization of
this
portion of LibreOffice.
I use both Linux and Windows although primarily Linux. I have been a
moderator
for the LO mail-list for about a year and wish to contribute more. I am
a
retired engineering technician (electro-mechanical) and have been
involved in
producing user documentation and technical manuals for the medical and
automotive fields.
Thanks for your consideration, Tom Taylor
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