Introduction / Getting Started

Hello -

Skip Masonsmith here. I’m new to the Docs team and am looking forward to working on LO Guides with you all. :slight_smile:

A bit about me… I’ve been working in content for 10+ years more on the B2C website / UI space and am working more in the technical writing space now and wanted to help out here.

As to trying to get started, I’m looking at the current state of LO Guides and it looks like there’s no work done yet for 7.3 Calc.

A few start-up questions that don’t seem to be addressed or up to date in the Doc Contributors Guide:

  • Does it make sense to create 7.3 Calc docs or skip to 7.4? Not sure how close the timing is to the next version of LO - it seems that work is already beginning on 7.4 for other products.

  • What template should I use for 7.3… the new draft for 7.4 or is an older 7.3 template more appropriate – if so, where can it be found?

  • Do I go ahead and create the directory structure for 7.3 and copy & edit an existing Guide Status doc (or is there a blank template around somewhere)?

Thanks for any help/insights on getting going.

-Skip Masonsmith

Hi Skip

Welcome to the documentation team.

Indeed there is no work on going in Calc Guide 7.3 and LO 7.4 is arriving. Better skip 7,3 and work on 7.4.

The 7.4 release is an update of the 7.2 release, adding the changes published in the 7.3 and 7.4 release notes, specially when they are visible to the user.

I have created the folders in Nextcloud to start working: The files in the Work In Progress/ folder are the published files from the previous 7.2 edition.

Please rename the chapter files CG72NN-YYYY.odt to CG74NN-YYYY.odt, bumping the release number.

There is no need to change the template so far. The template is already applied to the chapter.

You can visit the release notes (1) and pick the changes related to Calc and post here for discussion/approvals. Actually there are only a few interesting items.

Kind regards
Olivier
(1)
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.4
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/ReleaseNotes/7.3

Hello Skip

Welcome to the LO Team.

To answer your questions.

  1. In my opinion, go straight to 7.4 for Calc.
  2. Use the LO Chapter Template. This template also gives a few hints on how to put a chapter together. Also, the template has been updated to help save some of the formatting problems when a getting a user guide ready for publishing. That is found in Contributor Resources on NextCloud. You need a NextCloud account to access.
  3. The directory structure is the same for all user guides on NextCloud - LO7.4, Work In Progress, Archive, Published, and PDF Files.

Each version of a user guide has the same Calc file as a status document. There is already a status file available for Calc 7.4. This status file does list the filenames to be used for Calc chapters.

Hope that helps you.

Regards

Peter Schofield
psauthor@gmail.com
Technical Writer, LO Documentation Team

Thanks both. I’ve updated the names to 7.4 and have checked out the first 3 chapters in the guide status doc.