First review of CG7100-Preface and CG7101-Introduction

I have given CG7100-Preface and CG7101-Introduction a first review.
There were not many changes and so not many corrections.
I wonder if it is worth to make Guides for every sub-version, because there are minor functional changes.
Also noticed this in the Writer Guide.

Regards, Kees

Forgot to mention that for the Writer Guide it is decided to skip the 7.0 version.

kees538@libreoffice.org schreef op 14.03.2021 08:38:

Hello Kees,

I was just thinking about that either, perhaps we can focus the review on
the major releases, such as LibreOffice 7, LibreOffice 8 and so on.

As for the chapters, I looked at your reviews and everything was
incorporated.
In chapter 01 Introduction, you mentioned a text that was not very clear
and by reading again, I agree that it needed some improvement, so I changed
it to the following:
  "In Calc, when the content of a cell is copied to the clipboard, you can
paste the information in another cell by pressing the *Enter* key, here you
can disable this feature."

What do you think?

Best regards,
Felipe Viggiano

Felipe Viggiano schreef op 15.03.2021 02:19:

Hello Kees,

Hi Felipe

I was just thinking about that either, perhaps we can focus the review on
the major releases, such as LibreOffice 7, LibreOffice 8 and so on.

Exactly what I mean.

As for the chapters, I looked at your reviews and everything was
incorporated.
In chapter 01 Introduction, you mentioned a text that was not very clear
and by reading again, I agree that it needed some improvement, so I changed
it to the following:
  "In Calc, when the content of a cell is copied to the clipboard, you can
paste the information in another cell by pressing the *Enter* key, here you
can disable this feature."

Yes, this is clear to me now.

Thanks,
Kees

That was what I have always thought.  Just do the major releases like LO7, LO8 and so on.  Then just do an addendum for any significant changes in between.  Otherwise it seems like we are just chasing our tail, like my dog does, and she seldom catches her tail.

Also I have purchased a lot of LO Guides from Lulu and it gets expensive trying to keep up with having the current one.  I own four of  the LO 7.0 guides and I regret that there will not be a Writer 7.0 Guide.

By concentrating on the major releases, a lot of time in rewrite and reviewing could be reduced.  An overall one volume addendum (Getting Started, Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress, and Base) for the point changes.  Math does not seem to change much at all.

jlhart68 schreef op 15.03.2021 04:41:

That was what I have always thought. Just do the major releases like
LO7, LO8 and so on. Then just do an addendum for any significant
changes in between. Otherwise it seems like we are just chasing our
tail, like my dog does, and she seldom catches her tail.

Also I have purchased a lot of LO Guides from Lulu and it gets
expensive trying to keep up with having the current one. I own four
of the LO 7.0 guides and I regret that there will not be a Writer 7.0
Guide.

By concentrating on the major releases, a lot of time in rewrite and
reviewing could be reduced. An overall one volume addendum (Getting
Started, Writer, Calc, Draw, Impress, and Base) for the point
changes. Math does not seem to change much at all.

Hello Kees,

I was just thinking about that either, perhaps we can focus the review on
the major releases, such as LibreOffice 7, LibreOffice 8 and so on.

As for the chapters, I looked at your reviews and everything was
incorporated.
In chapter 01 Introduction, you mentioned a text that was not very clear
and by reading again, I agree that it needed some improvement, so I changed
it to the following:
   "In Calc, when the content of a cell is copied to the clipboard, you can
paste the information in another cell by pressing the *Enter* key, here you
can disable this feature."

What do you think?

Best regards,
Felipe Viggiano

As LibreOffice 7.1 is already released, the Writer guide is now to be updated to 7.1.
I don't mind updating a guide to the current verision, as long as there is one version for a major release.

Regards,
Kees

Hi Team

I strongly oppose to this approach.

Catching up a full version demands a lot of effort and delays the availability of the Guides much after the release of the software.

We had a lot of work to bring our documentation from release 4.x to 5.x and now 7.x . We had to skip some releases because we could not match the release pace.

Small updates and frequent publication (6 months) is, as you see, much easier to track and provide a good doc for end users. Many chapter just don't need changes and can be fully reused. Other chapters need in-depth reviews.

Imagine purchasing the latest proprietary software and get a 2y-old manual in a promise that "will soon be available". Of course LibreOffice is not a proprietary software and documentation is produced by volunteers that have their own tempo.

Software with no documentation is a lesser software. Doc and software are components of a product offering.

Producing a new book with small updates is easier, quicker and may not require a full cycle review.

My 2 cents

Regards
Olivier

Hello Olivier,

Considering your arguments, we need, at least, to think about reducing the
cycle review for minor releases reviews.
Kees has a point about the few number of changes in the software to
implement in the guides, and, in my opinion, giving the same treatment for
major and minor releases is consuming most of the team's time.
Maybe reducing the requisites for updating the guides in minor releases, we
can use the time to work on some other projects.

Is there any idea from the team to implement a reduced workflow for minor
releases?

Best regards,
Felipe Viggiano

Hello everyone!

Here's my take on this subject.

I believe that when updating the guides to minor releases (7.1 to 7.4) we
should focus exclusively on the aspects listed in the Release Notes. Hence,
we should take the previously published version (say 7.0 now) and update
only chapters and sections that are directly related to something listed in
the release notes. If something was not mentioned in the release notes,
then it should remain unchanged.

If we follow this guideline, we can reuse previous chapters entirely. This
way, if only a single person reads a chapter and concludes that it has not
been affected by any changes in the release notes, then no further reviews
are necessary and no modifications are made to the chapter.

For chapters affected by the release notes, then I believe one person
updating it and a subsequent single review will suffice.

I think this is a great topic for this week's meeting.

Regards,
Rafael Lima