Running LibreOffice on Windows 10? Need help with file management? Check out this video for beginners, created by volunteers in our documentation community… (Thanks to Harald Berger)
Category: Documentation
Announcing the LibreOffice Help editor
News from the documentation community: The Help project of LibreOffice underwent a major revamp in the last couple of years, with the introduction of the browser-based Help replacing the old Writer-Web solution. Still, editing the Help XML files (XHP) continued to be very hard for any volunteer or skilled developer, due to the specifics of the XML dialect and time required to be proficient in writing Help pages, which continued to be a major block for any individual.
To address the issue, we developed an online editor to assist and make textual editing quicker for any Help writer, by featuring the possibility of rendering the help page at once, at the click of a button. Also, we implemented a series of checking, including XML validity and the verification of ID unicity, crucial for translation.
The Help editor is available at https://newdesign.libreoffice.org/xhpeditor/index.php and contains features that greatly improve and simplify the XHP editing process. For instance, the menu allows users to write content in plain text and the wrap each text segment into the proper XHP tag. For example, after writing a paragraph in plain text, select the text and choose menu Paragraph – <paragraph> to wrap the text into a paragraph tag with the benefit of adding a unique identifier for the paragraph, which is vital for the translation process of LibreOffice Help.
Another nice feature is the editor autocompletion, which allows user to type only the start of a tag name and the editor suggests the rest of the name, sparing the energy spent in typing the whole tag name. When adding any tag to the text, the autoclose feature adds the closing tag automatically. Users can also press F11 to display the editing area in the whole browser area, enlarging the editing space, or even press Ctrl+F to open a search and replace window in the editor.
You can open and save a local XHP file and select Tool – Render page to have it displayed in the browser area. Or you can copy the XHP plain text and paste in the editor area to continue edition. The XHP editor uses CodeMirror, a popular JavaScript editor with many, many interesting features.
Detailed instructions and a short User manual are available in the wiki page https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DocumentationHelpEditor and can also be accessed from the editor Help menu. To read the XHP dialect reference , use menu Help > XHP Reference.
We hope the editor will encourage volunteers to address the challenge of writing and updating the Help pages. We are eager to receive suggestion and contributions to the editor project. Come and join us!
LibreOffice Online Guide translated into Czech
the LibreOffice Online Guide was created as part of the Google Season of Docs programme, and released in December 2019. Today we’re announcing that the Czech LibreOffice community has finished translating the guide, and it can be downloaded here. (See this page for English documentation.)
It was a team effort, and participants were Petr Kuběj, Zuzana Pitříková, Zdeněk Crhonek, Roman Toman, Tereza Portešová, Petr Valach and Stanislav Horáček. Thanks to all volunteers! The Czech team continues with the translation of the Getting Started Guide, and is always open for new volunteers, translators and correctors. Give them a hand!
LibreOffice Calc Guide 6.2 is now available
Berlin, January 27th, 2020 – The LibreOffice Documentation Team is happy to announce the Calc Guide 6.2, a long-awaited update of the old Calc Guide 4.4, to cover all of the innovations included in newer versions of the suite. The team wanted to catch-up with the forthcoming release of LibreOffice 6.4, while offering to the user community a book with its contents suitable for the most-used features of the LibreOffice 6 family.
Several team members contributed to the effort, notably Steve Fanning, Jean Weber, Kees Kriek, Cathy Crumbley, Zach Parlimann, Dave Barton and Drew Jensen.
“Joining the LibreOffice Documentation Team was an opportunity for me to continue to be technically active after my recent retirement and, with my mathematical background, the Calc Guide was a great book for me to start with“, said Steve Fanning, volunteer technical writer. “I enjoyed contributing to the update of this guide, finding the task both interesting and challenging. In fact, one of the topics caught my imagination to such an extent that I proposed, and am now implementing, a new wiki-based online reference guide for the extensive set of spreadsheet functions provided by Calc“, he added.
The LibreOffice suite – and the Calc spreadsheet module in particular – is a complex application with many uses in the modern world. Calc is widely used in all kinds of businesses, and contains advanced calculation and mathematical features that demand quality and broad documentation. The team strived to provide the best content, from simple arithmetic calculations to complex features such as statistics, enhanced pivot tables, data crunching techniques and many more.
The Dutch community is actively translating the LibreOffice Guides to improve the reach of LibreOffice in the Netherlands. “The Calc Guide is an important piece of documentation that is always in great demand from our users. I devoted time and energy to review many chapters and get the guide ready quickly, so it was also possible to start the translation to Dutch sooner, and have the Dutch users benefit of the new Calc guide too“, said Kees Kriek, volunteer reviewer and translator for the Dutch community.
The LibreOffice 6.2 Calc Guide is available for immediate download from the link https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/. Source files are available from the link https://nextcloud.documentfoundation.org/s/bbawfrEfMz4zDyw
The Documentation Team announces the Math Guide 6.4
Berlin, January 22nd, 2020 – With the upcoming release of LibreOffice 6.4, the Documentation Team is proud to announce the Math Guide 6.4, an update of the previous Math 4.0 guide, updated to cover all innovations included in LibreOffice 6.4. The guide was updated by Roman Kuznetsov and revised by Dave Barton from the documentation community.
“I updated the Math Guide to give everyone up-to-date information about using that interesting and (often forgotten) tool in LibreOffice”, said Roman Kuznetsov, community member and volunteer technical writer. “I did it to improve my skills in writing of documentation. Also I want say thank you to the LibreOffice Documentation Team for its help with that task.”
The guide is available for immediate download from The Document Foundation cloud instance and is published in PDF format, as along in its source file in ODF format.
About the LibreOffice Documentation Team
The LibreOffice Documentation Team is devoted to producing the best documentation for the LibreOffice end user, and is actively pursuing the goal of keeping the LibreOffice literature updated, effective and accurate. Come and join us!.
The LibreOffice Documentation Team Announces the LibreOffice Online Guide
Berlin, December 12, 2019 – The LibreOffice Documentation Team announces the immediate availability of the LibreOffice Online Guide, a major work authored by Aaron Peters under the Google Season of Docs 2019 programme. LibreOffice Online is a web-based version of the office suite, that can be deployed on local infrastructure and connected to a file-sharing system for document collaboration.
The guide includes content for end-users – as well as for system administrators – for rapid deployment and start of operation. It covers the basic usage of the word processor, spreadsheet and presentation modules, as well as guides for file handling and – one of the major technological achievements of LibreOffice Online – the collaborative editing capability, that allows several users to work on the same document, spreadsheet or presentation at the same time. Users familiar with LibreOffice on the desktop will quickly grasp the operation of LibreOffice Online, except for some specific differences addressed in the guide.
For the system administrator, the guide covers installation and basic operation, and explains deployment in small and limited environments. Professional support and operation services are strongly recommended for large installations and mission critical deployments, available in the LibreOffice business ecosystem.
“The current version of the Guide is complete and has the necessary information for the targeted audience (technology-savvy enthusiasts and/or small businesses), to be able to get the application, install it alongside a hosting application (NextCloud), use the main modules (Documents, Spreadsheets, and Presentations), and use other desktop and mobile tools to access their LibreOffice Online content,” says author Aaron Peters. “My experience working on this guide was fantastic, and I would urge anyone interested in getting involved with open source to consider documentation as a first step. The Document Foundation’s documentation team in particular has a very well-established process and infrastructure for producing their products, and one of the only things I can think of that would help them is more volunteers.”
“The Google Season of Docs programme was an opportunity The Document Foundation (TDF) could not have miss to add a valuable content to its documentation portfolio. The LibreOffice Online Guide is a document whose time had just come and is here to help the LibreOffice Online software and its professional and volunteer community to increase its usage and benefit of its incredible value,” says Olivier Hallot, TDF mentor and Documentation Coordinator. “And working with Aaron was a pleasure and all commitments were delivered on time, which was very appreciated. Special thank you to Google for the wonderful initiative and to the Season of Docs 2019 team for the support.”
The outline of the new Guide is as follows and gives a good view on what is inside.
- Preface
- Chapter 1: Introducing LibreOffice Online
- Chapter 2: Installing LibreOffice Online
- Chapter 3: Setting Up LibreOffice Online Before Use
- Chapter 4: Navigating Your LibreOffice Online Files
- Chapter 5: Editing, Saving, and Exporting LibreOffice Online Files
- Chapter 6: The Documents Module
- Chapter 7: The Spreadsheets Module
- Chapter 8: The Presentations Module
- Chapter 9: Integrating with LibreOffice Online
The guide is available for download at the documentation website at https://documentation.libreoffice.org/en/english-documentation/