[Libreoffice] The future of help [was: Re: Deleting Java from Base]

[Olivier Hallot]

Cesare

Your concerns is the concern of the "rest of the world".

The help is now online but also as a off-line package that shall be 
downloaded from the same place you downloaded LibreOffice.

Olivier
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, were wideband is a luxury for a few.



Em 25-12-2010 19:27, Cesare Leonardi escreveu:
> Hi, i'm not subscribed to the list. Please keep me CCed.
>
>> On 2010-12-03 at 14:40 +0100, Christian Lohmaier wrote:
>>
>>> Start with stuff that /any/ user would see.
>>> My list would start with:
>>> Fulltext search in Help (i.e. <F1>) - that uses lucene and requires java
>>
>> That one might be actually easy - when the wikihelp is online, I'd
>> default to not building the internal help at all, and instead focus on
>> converting it from the wiki version to the platform-native (Windows /
>> MacOSX / Gnome / KDE [but IIRC, KDE was able to read the Gnome's help
>> natively too]) for the releases. And cut all the help-related code ;-)
>>
>> Objections / support / thoughts?
>
> I'll try to explain why, in my opinion, is not a good idea to move the
> LibreOffice help on the internet. I'm sure that there will be numerous
> improvements from a developer perspective but i see also some losses
> from some users point of view.
>
> Now, LibreOffice is normally usable without the need of the help, but if
> i need to write formulas in Calc or macros, the help is simply
> indispensable.
>
> My concerns are related to the need of an internet connection to be able
> to consult the help. Today high speed adsl internet access is rather
> spread but consider that at least here in Italy there are yet many
> places where the only viable option to connect to the internet is
> through modem 56k or through GPRS/UMTS, where available. But in the last
> case, rates are not flat, so there are limits on the user traffic or
> connection duration. Satellite is too expensive.
>
> Also, OpenOffice/LibreOffice is used by many low budget entity, like
> primary and secondary schools, associations, for which internet access
> is not something that can be taken for granted or considered to be high
> speed. Many of them will have to print from the internet the help pages
> that they need or do without help.
>
> Then business. In workplaces not every employee has full access to the
> internet: sometimes is forbidden, sometimes is limited to specific
> sites. In these cases administrators will have to open their firewall to
> specific sites (hoping that there is an administrator) or someone will
> print documentations from the internet or the employee will have to do
> without help.
>
> These are (not so corner) cases that will see a loss of functionality,
> that will not be able to do something that they were able do before or
> that will be able to do it with more difficulties.
>
> Please, since this is something not yet effective, consider more deeply
> the choice to remove the local help.
> Is theren't a solution that can merge the advantage of an online
> editable help with a locally available help? The local help can't be
> built at release time from the wikihelp you are setting up?
>
> Regards.
>
> Cesare.
>
> _______________________________________________
> LibreOffice mailing list
> LibreOffice at lists.freedesktop.org
> http://lists.freedesktop.org/mailman/listinfo/libreoffice

-- 
Olivier Hallot
Founder, Steering Commitee Member - The Document Foundation
Translation Leader for Brazilian Portuguese