Coordination, mentoring, etc

Hello all,

The immediate solution I've adopted is to reference /both/ "GS w/Base" /and/ the online tutorial in the problematic passage in the Handbook. I will post that chapter for review shortly.

As for the long-term issue, there may or may not be one. The question is whether or not we want to keep the English and German documentation in sync, and also if we want to avoid duplication of content in the English documentation.

We're dealing here with 4 documents:

(1)"Getting Started with Base", Chapter 8 in Getting Started with Libreoffice v.3.5
(2)"Einfuehrung in Base," Kapitel 8 in Erste Schritte v.3.3
(3)"Creating a Relational Database using Base" (online tutorial)
(4)"Getting Started with Base" in GS w/LO v.4.2

Items (1),(2), and (3) are all versions of each other; item (4) is substantially different.

Apparently the way this happened is that an early version of GSw/B got translated into German as "Einfuehrung in Base". That German chapter has stayed the same. When GSw/LO was updated from v.4.1 to v.4.2, the bulk of GSw/B was pulled out and made into an online tutorial, and new material was written and inserted as Chapter 8 of the print guide.

The new material contains much more detailed information about how to use the Wizard to create tables than is in the material moved online. Although the online material (item 3) is called a tutorial, the current version of Chapter 8 (GSw/B 4.2) actually seems to me to be more tutorial-like; the steps it offers are more detailed and it includes practice exercises.

If we want to keep the English and the German matching each other, the way to do it would be:
-- take the current English online tutorial "Creating a relational database"
-- restructure it to resemble the Einfuehrung (this wouldn't require much if any original writing, just moving some things around)
-- insert the restructured document into "Getting Started with LibreOffice" as Chapter 8.

We'd then have to decide what to do with the /current/ version of GSw/B (the one that would be getting replaced). One possibility would be to integrate it into the new version. The topics are similar, but integrating it would require a lot of editing.

I don't feel qualified to make a decision on how to proceed. Since Jean was involved in writing GSw/B 4.2 and presumably knows how and why the decision was made to branch the tutorial off from the print guide, perhaps we should wait until she's back and get her input.

(Hope that wasn't too confusing. It sure confuses me.)

Alan

Hello Sophie, all,

Many thanks for offering your help. We have first met in Lyon OOo conference in 2006 and you have been more then a helping hand to me ever since. I think our project and in particular the documentation team will benefit a lot from your help.
As translating the guides into Dutch is my major contribution to our LibreOffice, I cannot but welcome all help that will help us all.

Many thanks again, Sophie and look forward to continue working with you.

Best regards

Hi :slight_smile:

+1

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hooray for Sophie! Thank you for stepping forward. --Jean

Hi :slight_smile:
Jean has always done a fantastic job at this despite never wanting the job
in the first place. I think she's naturally gifted at it but she also
(obviously!) puts in tons of hard-work at every level.

Top marks for a total star!
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Hi all,

Hooray for Sophie! Thank you for stepping forward. --Jean

Thanks a lot all for your warm welcome on my offer :slight_smile:
Kind regards
Sophie