[Libreoffice] LibreOffice WikiHelp

[Jean-Baptiste Faure]

Hi Kendy,

Le 13/12/2010 11:37, Jan Holesovsky a écrit :
> Hi Jean-Baptiste,
>
> On 2010-12-11 at 10:01 +0100, Jean-Baptiste Faure wrote:
>> I can't find any wiki page which explain this project. Does such
>> web-page exists ? If not, I think such should be created as a reference.
> Good idea, I've created it now based on the mail to Sophie; and sorry
> that I haven't created it before:
>
> http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Development/Wikihelp
>
Thank you for this wiki page about WikiHelp. I will contribute with
questions and suggestions.

For now, I am not sure that everybody make a clear distinction between
help and documentation. For me:

- help (on-line or off-line) is a reference for the end-users. So it is
a part of the software, it is not something which may be added after the
release. From this point of view the help must be the same in all
languages. For example the help gives the syntax of Calc function; the
developers of these functions must describe their syntax in English and
translators must only translate the English reference. Until that is not
done the software is not complete and cannot be released.
Another example: in LibO UI we have several buttons which allow the user
to save the current file he is working on. If the English name of these
buttons are always the same (eg. "save as..."), it is very important
they are always the same in each localization (eg "Enregistrer sous..."
in French but never "Sauvegarder sous un autre nom" which is however
more elegant). If it is not the case you cannot say that you have the
same software in English and in other languages.
It important to have tools and validation process to ensure that. And I
am very skeptic about the capability of a wiki to be an easy-to-use tool
for such kind of multilingual reference.

- documentation is not a part of the software itself. In the
documentation I see guides, how-to, books, tutorials, etc. These
material might be different in a language to another according to the
skills of local doc-team, their interests, legislation, usages, etc. In
this case we do not have to maintain the equivalence between several
dozen of references. For documentation I think that the wiki is the
appropriate tool.

Best regards.
JBF

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