I'd like to put forward a proposal for discussion around the project End User Documentation.
We know that we have incomplete documentation and need an active strategy to complete it. The help itself can be divided it into two distinct areas 1. Online / in Application Help 2. User Documentation on the Wiki (NOTE: I will be starting another discussion thread around this) * Online / In Application Help* This is the help that appears when someone using OFBiz clicks the help icon. It is contextual and normally related to a screen that the user is on. It can describe what a screen is used for, the data to be entered or the use of a key, button or icon. Screens and menus can be changed so it needs to be flexible and customisable. Our current online help has been implemented using Docbook and the OFBiz CMS. I don't think that this currently works well because - it is too hard to keep up to date as each change needs to be submitted as a patch - you need to understand and create the new data items for the CMS for each page of documentation - existing items need to be linked into the correct place in the document hierarchy - the docbook implementation isn't complete and there are a lot standard tags that cannot be used *Proposal* We know that we have had limited contributions to the online help system and currently this has been significantly reduced. If we could make the online help more accessible to our community to update this could stimulate more interest in it. Rather than trying to maintain the online help as if it were code – could it be treated differently to allow a wider range of people to provide updates. As an example, I would like to find out if all the data from the online help : - could be extracted - imported into a more document oriented/friendly editing environment or application - updated by community members (who could be given access to create / update / edit details) - changes would be reviewed and approved - once approved the changes could be committed / the help could be re-imported back into OFBiz or just delivered as a separate package that could be easily loaded back into OFBiz *Potential Benefits* - Community Members could work and update it easily - Reviews could be done before the documents are accepted - Different languages could be supported - We could have versions of help for different OFBiz versions These are my initial thoughts so I'm happy to get any feedback or alternative suggestions for how we could solve our existing problems. Thanks Sharan -- View this message in context: http://ofbiz.135035.n4.nabble.com/DISCUSSION-OFBiz-Online-Documentation-tp4668869.html Sent from the OFBiz - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
