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The Guia do Writer 7.1 is finally here.

Translation courtesy of Timothy Brennan Jr.

Brazilian computer users in general, the community of Brazilian free software users and supporters, and of LibreOffice in particular, have received quite the gift today: the Brazilian LibreOffice documentation team proudly announces the publication of the Guia do Writer 7.1, the most complete Writer word processor guide for the best free software office suite, the LibreOffice Community.

The Guia do Writer 7.1 is an extensive 570-page volume covering the most advanced text-editing techniques, from simple typing of a page to assembling multi-volume documents, including electronic forms, illustrations, tables, indexes and summaries, automation and export to numerous file formats.

The guide is the LibreOffice Brazilian documentation team’s contribution to the public. The team has used automatic translation followed by a thorough manual review correcting terms, drafting and stylistics of the Portuguese language, as well as proofreading. While rereading the content, the team is able to check the accuracy of the techniques described in the documentation and review the terminology used in the software, signaling to the LibreOffice translation team the inconsistencies found in the interface suggesting improvements in terms, changes in the vocabulary of the commands and correction of the software Help Pages. This feedback has served to make the LibreOffice interface even more robust, consistent and has helped consolidate its command terminology.

The Guia do Writer 7.1 is available in three formats: The traditional PDF with adjusted pagination for those who want to print the guide and bind it, the source file in Open Document Format (ODF) for free editing, and the installed online version on The Document Foundation’s servers for reading on tablets, your desktop browser and — of course — on mobile phones.

“The importance of the  Guia do Writer is enormous. I suggest reading it for all who need to produce professional documents, as well as using the guide for creating courses, video classes, and even material for public tenders” says Olivier Hallot, coordinator of LibreOffice’s global documentation. “We are working on the LibreOffice Community ‘s manual library to provide the most advanced user guides for all LibreOffice modules, and, other volumes are on the way.” added Olivier.

The Brazilian  LibreOffice Community documentation team is made up of volunteers from all over Brazil (and one person in Ireland) and has been dedicated to producing the reference material in Brazilian Portuguese. The team includes (name and state or country) Vera Cavalcante (São Paulo), Luciana Mota (Distrito Federal), Márcia Buffon Machado (Ireland), Jackson Cavalcanti Jr. (Pernambuco), Raul Pacheco da Silva (São Paulo), Timothy Brennan Jr (Rio Grande do Sul), Túlio Macedo (Distrito Federal), Diego Peres Marques (Rio de Janeiro), Rafael Lima (Santa Catarina) and Olivier Hallot (Rio de Janeiro).

The Brazilian Guia do Writer 7.1 can be downloaded at https://documentation.libreoffice.org/pt-br/portugues   along with other volumes for Impress, Calc, Math and the Beginner’s Guide.

The original Writer Guide 7.1 can be downloaded at https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/

Open Badges for awesome Czech documentation contributors!

LibreOffice’s documentation team is driven by volunteers around the world. Today, we want to say a special thanks to members of the Czech LibreOffice community, who’ve worked hard to translate and proof-read the software’s documentation.

So we’re sending out Open Badges – special, customised badges with embedded metadata, describing their achievements. The badges can be verified using an external service, and are a great way to show off contributions and use as proof of participation.

So, here are the badge recipients – we’re sending them out personally:

  • Translators: Petr Kuběj, Radomír Strnad and Zdenek Crhonek
  • Proof-readers: Petr Valach and Marcela Tomešová
  • Czech screenshots: Roman Toman
  • Git and OmegaT maintenance, machine translations, chapters cleaning and tools support: Miloš Šrámek

Huge thanks to all recipients – check your inbox for your badges!

Meanwhile, here’s a quick history of recent Czech guide translations:

The Draw Guide 7.1 has arrived!

Led by Peter Schofield, the LibreOffice Documentation Team is proud to announce the release of the LibreOffice Draw Guide 7.1, the ultimate guide for LibreOffice Draw.

LibreOffice Draw produces anything from a quick sketch to a complex plan, and gives the means to communicate with graphics and diagrams. With a maximum page size of 300cm by 300cm, Draw is an excellent package for producing technical drawings, brochures, posters and many other documents. Draw manipulates graphical objects, group them, crop them, use objects in 3D and much more.

“The Draw guide update is long due in the set of LibreOffice Guides and I am happy to have coordinated the effort to bring it to the community. LibreOffice Draw is a powerful vector drawing tool plenty of resources and the Guide is the most comprehensive text on the features. I hope the Draw community will thrive with this book.”

Peter Schofield
Peter Schofield

The Draw Guide is available in PDF format and is part of the LibreOffice Library, a set of advanced guides for the LibreOffice productivity suite. Download other important LibreOffice guides in our Documentation website.

Meet the documentation team page!

Happy documenting!

Open Badges for awesome Brazilian Portuguese contributors!

LibreOffice’s documentation team is driven by volunteers around the world. Today, we want to say a special thanks to members of the Brazilian Portuguese community, who’ve worked hard to translate and update user guides.

So we’re sending out Open Badges – special, customised badges with embedded metadata, describing their achievements. The badges can be verified using an external service, and are a great way to show off contributions and use as proof of participation.

So, here are the badge recipients – we’ve sent them out personally:

  • Vera Cavalcante – For her volunteer collaborations to produce an excellent Portuguese revision of the LibreOffice 7.x User Guides, and her long-time commitment to LibreOffice from the LibreOffice Magazine times.
  • Luciana Mota – For her valuable contributions to the translation of LibreOffice Help, and the Portuguese revision of the LibreOffice 7.x User Guides.
  • Marcia Buffon Machado – For her contribution to the Portuguese revision of the LibreOffice 7.x User Guides.
  • Felipe Viggiano – For his excellent and successful global coordination of the LibreOffice 7.0 and 7.1 User guides; team management; valuable addition to the other LibreOffice 7.x guides; and active collaboration with the Brazilian Documentation Team.
  • Tulio Macedo – For his active participation in the design of the online User Guides and revision of the LibreOffice 7.x User Guide in Brazilian Portuguese.
  • Rafael Lima – For his active contributions to ScriptForge library development, testing and documentation; his coordination of the LibreOffice 7.0 Math Guide, including the translation to Brazilian Portuguese; and his active translation of the LibreOffice Help to Brazilian Portuguese.
  • Timothy Brennan Jr. – For his active participation in the Portuguese revision of the LibreOffice 7.x User Guides.
  • Raul Pacheco – For his revisions of the translation of the LibreOffice 7.x User Guides to Brazilian Portuguese, and refactoring of the guide’s screenshots and graphics.
  • Jackson Junior – For his active participation in the Portuguese revision of the LibreOffice 7.x User Guides.

Huge thanks to all recipients – check your inbox for your badges!

Announcing the LibreOffice Getting Started Guide 7.1

Jean Weber, Kees Kriek, Felipe Viggiano and Peter Schofield from the LibreOffice Documentation Team are happy to announce the immediate availability of the Getting Started Guide 7.1, the introductory guide for all readers that need to start using the LibreOffice suite and quickly get to the proficiency level.

Download Getting Started Guide 7.1

Covering all LibreOffice modules, from the Calc spreadsheet to the Base database and including chapters on the suite settings as well as macro coding, the Getting Started Guide 7.1 is a valuable companion for organizations that must deploy documentation on LibreOffice together with the software suite on their offices and also at user’s home.

The Guide is available in PDF format and is part of the LibreOffice Library, a set of advanced guides for the LibreOffice productivity suite.

Meet the documentation team page!

Happy documenting!

LibreOffice Documentation Team Activities in 2020

In 2020, the documentation community released many updated guidebooks, translated them into several languages, and participated in the Google Season of Docs

(This is part of The Document Foundation’s Annual Report for 2020 – the full version is here.)

New and translated guides

In January 2020, just before release of LibreOffice 6.4, the Documentation Team was proud to announce the Math Guide 6.4, an update of the previous version (4.0), updated to cover all of the innovations included in the latest release of the software. The guide was updated by Roman Kuznetsov and revised by Dave Barton from the documentation community. This was followed by the Calc Guide 6.2, a long-awaited update of the old Calc Guide 4.4.

In May, the guide to Base for LibreOffice 6.2 was released, covering, LibreOffice’s database component. It was updated by Pulkit Krishna, Dan Lewis, Jean Hollis Weber, Alain Romedenne, Jean-Pierre Ledure and Randolph Gamo. Another update in May was the Getting Started Guide 6.4 – the introductory guide for the latest LibreOffice 6.4, aimed to the general public interested to quickly get familiar with the software. It’s available as a PDF for offline reading, and ODT (OpenDocument Text) for editors and translators.

In summer, the Documentation Team announced the availability of the LibreOffice Draw Guide 6.4, the complete handbook for the drawing tool of LibreOffice. The guide was updated from the existing release (4.3) and include all the improvements developed since early 2014, when the last version of the guide was published.

Then there was the LibreOffice Calc Guide 6.4, the complete handbook for the spreadsheet tool. It was also updated from the existing release (6.2) and included all of the improvements developed in Calc since then.

In October, the Math Guide 7.0 was published – being the first guide based on LibreOffice 7.0. The effort was mostly carried by Rafael Lima and reviewed by Jean H. Weber. The new guide covers were designed by Rizal Muttaqin and Drew Jensen. The final publication was carried by Olivier Hallot. This was followed by the Calc Guide 7.0, a team effort of Steve Fanning, Gordon Bates, Kees Kriek, Annie Nguyen, Samantha Hamilton, Olivier Hallot and Jean Hollis Weber, coordinated by Felipe Viggiano.

Many guides were also translated in to various languages, thanks to our worldwide communities. For more information on their work, and the specific guides that they translated, see the “Native Language “Projects” section of this Annual Report.

Google Season of Docs

For the second year in a row, The Document Foundation was accepted as an organization in the Google Season of Docs, a programme whose goals are to give technical writers an opportunity to participate in contributing to open source projects, and to give open source projects an opportunity to engage the technical writing community.

In 2020, TDF’s documentation community offered a wide range of projects for technical writers, and extended the reach by providing projects for e-learning, mathematical documentation and code-oriented documentation.

TDF received several applications, containing important information including the technical writer’s resumés, proposals for project schedule and suggested deliverables. After a careful evaluation by the project mentors, TDF accepted the application of Ronnie Gandhi, a computer science undergraduate student enrolled at IIT Roorkee, India.

Steve Fanning, who had already worked as coordinator of the Calc Guide, served as mentor with Olivier Hallot as second mentor. Ilmari Lauhakangas and Olivier managed the administrative aspects of the project on behalf of The Document Foundation.

Ronnie worked on improving the descriptions for Calc’s functions, adding statements describing each function’s compliance with the Open Document Format for Office Applications (OpenDocument) Version 1.2 specification. Each function was also supplemented by extra use cases, illustrations and external references (where applicable).

Access the Extensive Calc Functions Description on The Document Foundation’s wiki. Thanks to Ronnie for all his work, and the mentors for assisting him on his journey.

Like what we do? Support the LibreOffice project and The Document Foundation – get involved and help our volunteers, or consider making a donation. Thank you!

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