Re: [libreoffice-users] Re: Built-in Help vs. User Guides

Hi :)
Hopefully none of the devs write-up documentation for the features they write in!
1.  It's a different skill-set.  We, well i, would prefer to see devs able to fly through coding 
and keep on going rather than worrying that if they do the code then they have chores to do 
afterwards as punishment.  Ok, so some devs are superb at both.  
2.  Translating from pure geek into something comprehensible takes a lot of effort which could 
probably be best spent exploring the new feature and seeing if it really works for a 
not-quite-so-geeky person.  
3.  "mere users" are often superb at documentation, especially people that are new to the project.  
The aim of documentation is to write for new people, or people that are new to the aspect they are 
reading-up about.  Who understands them better than other new people that have just managed to 
battle their way through whatever the chapter is about.  It would be a huge help to have new people 
proof-read chapters before they get published to the wiki or at least before they get added to the 
official LO website.  Usually one person writes, then another proof-reads (bit of a 
simplification).  Unfortunately such people quickly become quite skilled because they learn a lot 
quite fast so we constantly need other newer people to join the docs team.  


Dan is a total star and does a lot of work in a lot of lists and his work on the first 2 chapters 
of the Base Guide  inspired other people to get on with translating the Base part of the Faq and 
that led to a lot of interesting discussions on the user list.  A couple of people from the user 
list then seemed interested in getting involved as devs to build-up Base a bit.  It's the first 
time i have heard of documentation being a driving force in an OpenSource project!
http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Faq#Base

Sorry about the generalisation about the in-built help.  It is good and useful because it's so easy 
to access but the chap already had that bit and i wanted to point out another better way of getting 
help.  Sometimes something is so close to be perfect but there are just not enough resources to put 
the icing on the cake and that leads to a lot of frustration and angst.  If it was really horrible 
then people wouldn't care so much and they would just avoid it.  

Regards from
Tom :)




--- On Fri, 4/5/12, Alexander Thurgood <alex.thurgood@gmail.com> wrote:

<snip />

Hi Nino,


> But OTOH, built-in Help is *very* helpful in certain situations IMHO. So, if 
> one is looking for the exact syntax of a regex or if one wants to learn about 
> how to use a calc function, it is first choice. 

I would agree with you there, but still I regret the days of the more
detailed built-in help content that used to be present in StarOffice and
OpenOffice.org 1.x. It was at least generally more useful than the
current laconic style.

<snip />

Agreed, but how many of the developers actually write up the new
features they put in, with an explanation of how to use them ? In my
experience they don't (on the whole) and they certainly don't write the
help files. And yes, I've seen the odd developer wiki page here and
there, but that is no substitute for a competent help entry.

It is, in fact, dependent on "mere users" 

<snip />

from what Dan Lewis has had to go through with
preparing the Base Guide, it would appear that many of the entries one
would expect a built-in help to have, were simply not there. In that
case, the Base Guide will virtually be a drop in replacement for the
built-in help.


> Generalizations like "the help is bad, rather look into User Guides" are less 
> helpful.

Agreed, unless true, if a user can't find what they are looking for
after a search in the built-in help, then where do they turn to ? The
documentation list and guides maintained by the users.

<snip />


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