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Refreshing LibreOffice’s “Frequently Asked Questions” pages

Ilmari Lauhakangas (aka Buovjaga) writes:

A year ago we started migrating our wiki translations to the standard translation management system used across the known wikiverse. The system allows for proper tracking of translation status, and offers a user experience familiar to LibreOffice translators.

By the end of summer 2019, we had enough experience with the new system to be able to define best practices and give instructions to translators. Right at this moment one of our Czech contributor heroes, Zdeněk Crhonek (aka Raal), expressed interest in offering FAQ translation tasks through a volunteer platform called Um sem um tam. Zdeněk took it upon himself to migrate each FAQ article to the new system while creating the tasks.

In addition to the migration effort, the FAQ pages were checked for accuracy and many changes were made to bring them up to date. All of this work resulted in unprecedented activity in The Document Foundation wiki as can be seen in this chart:

Big thanks to Zdeněk Crhonek, Czech translator Petr Kuběj and the original French creators of the FAQ articles!

Translators are invited to update the FAQ translations as well as to confirm that the source text corresponds to the current LibreOffice interface. If you have questions regarding the migration process in general, please contact Ilmari Lauhakangas.

Community Member Monday: Celia Palacios

Today we’re talking to Celia Palacios, who has recently become a member of The Document Foundation, the non-profit entity behind LibreOffice:

To start, tell us a bit about yourself!

I am a Mexican old-guard user of Linux since 2001. I studied Electronic Engineering, and I have been working in thatfield since 1989. I learnt all sorts of Linux stuff because I love to learn by myself. In addition, I love to read historical detective novels, lots of science fiction, and go to the movies with my husband.

I love philosophy, symbolism and many alternative ideas about everything. I also like to have long, friendly debates about everybody’s presumptions (or assumptions?). I try to be open-minded, specially in this times when everyone’s getting polarized Mexico about our President. I used to be an athletic gal, but now I am a total coach-potato! Thanks, Netflix!

Why did you decide to become a member of TDF?

Because LibreOffice is one the leaders in free/libre software, and it is a real example of a community with many faces and one heart. And also because people in the Spanish LibreOffice Telegram channel are so intelligent, bright, open and charming: many of them working truly to help others. That moved me deeply.

What are you working on in the LibreOffice project right now?

I am helping the Spanish documentation team. I have an idea of asking university students to help us finish the first-steps guides. If we succeed, we will have an updated introductory guide, which is really needed in Spanish.

Anything else you plan to do in the future?

It is too early to answer that without saying “in the regular places”. But it is in my plans to update every module’s guide in Spanish. And also some advanced guides/tutorials, with practical cases, for Calc and Base, specially to equal the outcomes that Microsoft Excel’s Power Business Intelligence is achieving.

Thanks to Celia for all her help and input! If you’re reading this and also want to join our friendly community, see here to get started (or visit the Spanish page). And if you’re already active in the LibreOffice project, consider becoming a member, so you can vote for TDF’s Board of Directors and help to make other important decisions:

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TDF is Google Seasons of Doc Mentoring Organization

The Document Foundation has been accepted as organization for the Google Seasons of Docs, a project whose goals are to give technical writers an opportunity to gain experience in contributing to open source projects, and to give open source projects an opportunity to engage the technical writing community.

For technical writers who are new to open source, the program provides an opportunity to gain experience in contributing to open source projects. For technical writers who’re already working in open source, the program provides a potentially new way of working together.

During the program, technical writers will spend a few months working closely with the LibreOffice community, bringing their technical writing expertise to the project’s documentation, and at the same time learn about the open source project and new technologies. At the same time, LibreOffice documentation team members will work with the technical writers to improve the project’s documentation and processes.

LibreOffice is an advanced office suite covering may areas of knowledge, from maths and sciences, engineering, financials, editing, drawing, printing and more. LibreOffice is also that kind of application that is used cross-industry, a very rich opportunity for technical writing.

Olivier Hallot, LibreOffice documentation coordinator, will lead the GSoD project, supported by Sophie Gautier and by members of the LibreOffice documentation team such as Drew Jensen, who has immediately created a banner to visually support this community effort.

All information about the Google Summer of Docs project are on the GSoD website. An outline of the project’s different steps is available on the GSoD timeline. The next deadline in the process for The Document Foundation is May 28th, as we we have to find interested technical writers to discuss our ideas, which are summarized on the following TDF wiki page. The list includes some of our project’s permanent challenges, but should not be limited to these items.

LibreOffice contributors who are interested in becoming a mentor for the GSoD project should get in touch with Olivier Hallot by sending him a message or by subscribing to the documentation mailing list.

New Guide: Conditional Formatting in LibreOffice Calc

Roman Kuznetsov (aka Kompilainenn) from our documentation community has created a Conditional Formatting Guide for LibreOffice Calc. He says:

In this guide I wrote about:

  • How to create, change and delete conditional formatting
  • Multiple conditions for one cell range, and priority of condition processing
  • Creating cell styles for conditional formatting
  • All categories and all types of conditional formatting
  • Copying of conditional formatting

I want to say a very big thank you to Sophie Gautier for reviewing this guide, and to Mike Kaganski for fixing of some bugs in conditional formatting I found when I wrote it. I hope this guide will be helpful for many users of LibreOffice.

Click here to read/download the guide, and a huge thanks to Roman, Sophie and Mike for their great work! Most of LibreOffice’s documentation is produced by volunteers, so if you’re reading this and want to give them a hand, see here to get started.

Updating documentation in a large open source project is a great way to build up experience for a potential technical writing career, so join us!

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