Infrastructure and Data for... End-Users of OpenOffice.org

[Christoph Noack <ch...@dogmatux.com>]

Hi Robert,

thanks for your mail ... one may notice that my reply is a bit late, so
I'm glad that I "disclaimer-ed" the available time in advance *g*

So, if anybody is still interested in this topic, here we go ...

Am Dienstag, den 07.06.2011, 17:03 +0100 schrieb Robert Burrell Donkin:
> On Mon, Jun 6, 2011 at 9:28 PM, Christoph Noack <ch...@dogmatux.com> wrote:
[...]
> > Sorry for talking about such stuff in such a great detail, but my aim
> > was to make clear that the Joe Averages we have (and we have lots of
> > them), don't care about licensing details, or whether the code is well
> > structured, or what build machinery is used. Instead, they judge whether
> > a product fits to their needs (in this moment).
> 
> +1
[...]

> So just to name a few tools we
> > have/had at OOo which I still consider to be important in the mid- and
> > long-term:
> >      * User survey tooling and data, including different questionnaires
> >        with over 3 million detailed responses
> >      * Usage data backend and data, covering millions of user actions
> >        to create statistics for development decisions
> >      * ...
> 
> Sounds like ensuring that all documents that need to be included
> within the grant is going to be important

Okay, then please allow me to list them within the mail - it would be
great if anybody could pick those information to use them appropriately.
I'll try to add a personal judgment how important I think these
information are in the mid- to long-term.

ISSUE TRACKER CONTENT

Description: The complete content of the OOo issue tracker including all
votes, attachments and keywords.

Rationale: Many development decisions and also (partly) specifications
are documented within the issue tracker. Furthermore, there is a basic
"vote" system to enable community members to highlight issues to be
worked on (from their POV).

Source: http://www.openoffice.org/issues/query.cgi

Importance: Mid-High


WIKI CONTENT

Description: Selected wiki content including all linked data.

Rationale: The wiki contains development processes, ideas, and also
(partly) specifications that may be important for future use - to ensure
consistency.

Source: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org

Importance: Mid


USAGE TRACKING BACKEND AND CONTENT

Description: Also known as "OpenOffice.org Improvement Program", or
"OpenOffice.org User Feedback". More detailed, OpenOffice.org sends (if
the user permits) usage statistics to a server hosted by Oracle in
Hamburg. This closed-source backend both receives the data and
transforms it, so that (e.g.) the User Experience team is able to
analyze it. Important is both the backend (for analyzing changes in
OpenOffice.org) and the already available data (for development
reasons).

Rationale: Due to the complexity of OpenOffice.org, the usage data is
very important for design decisions that affect a majority of the user
base (e.g. UI changes).

Source (basic documentation, no backend source code):
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/User_Experience/OpenOffice.org_User_Feedback_Program

Importance: High

Note:
      * A plain export (numbers) is less sufficient, since it doesn't
        contain dependencies between the individual recorded user
        actions.
      * I'm not sure who might be contacted, but maybe the Oracle guys
        on this list can shed some light on that (that would be great!)


USER SURVEY STRUCTURE AND CONTENT

Description: The User Experience Team did several user surveys and
collected an incredible amount of user feedback (approx. 3 million
filled-out questionnaires). Thus, this item refers to both the user
survey structure (can be exported), and the data.

Importance: Mid-High

Source (no code):
      * User Survey: http://surveys.services.openoffice.org
      * Description:
        http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Renaissance:Phase_1#Who_are_our_users.3F

Note:
      * The acquired data contains (helpful) text comments that may
        contain personal information. So if there are any legal
        concerns, the non-text data would be sufficiently helpful.
      * I have been told that a plain export from withing LimeSurvey
        doesn't work with the given number of data sets - so there is a
        need to do an export of the underlying database.


SPECIFICATION DOCUMENTS

Description: Specification documents that describe the behavior of
OpenOffice.org or intended feature enhancements

Rationale: Required to ensure consistent changes within OpenOffice.org.
Usually, the specification documents contain essential information /
requirements.

Importance: Mid

Source:
      * http://specs.openoffice.org/
      * http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Category:Specification

Note: Some of these documents may only be available internally at
Oracle, e.g. related to the upcoming Project Renaissance improvements.


HELP AUTHORING TOOLS

Description: The utilities (macros and xslt filter) for help authoring.
They have moved out of the regular source-repository, but they are not
at the expected place. 

Rationale: Well, sometimes users rely on help ;-)

Importance: ???

Source:
      * http://hg.services.openoffice.org/DEV300/file/315be8282fa3/helpcontent2/helpers/README reads: New location for helpers that are not used by the build process is documentation/www/online_help/helpers but http://openoffice.org/projects/documentation/sources/webcontent/show/online_help has no helpers dir
      * http://documentation.openoffice.org/online_help/OOo2HelpAuthoring.pdf


ARTWORK SOURCES

Description: All artwork sources required to work on the OpenOffice.org
icons (e.g. Galaxy) and the branding. They are currently available
internally at Oracle in formats like Adobe Photoshop, Designer, ...

Rationale: Helpful to tweak existing / create new icons based on the
well established "OpenOffice.org Galaxy Style".

Source (Examples): http://ui.openoffice.org/VisualDesign

Importance: Low-Mid


OPENOFFICE.ORG CONFERENCE DATA

Description: OOoCon presentations and programs; most of the information
should be available in the conference system that has been used in the
last years (see Source).

Rationale: It's the history of OOO :-)

Source: http://conference.services.openoffice.org

Importance: Low


STAROFFICE PROFESSIONAL ADDONS

Description: StarOffice was shipped with several (propitiatory) add-ons
like document migration analyzer, configuration editor ...

Rationale: Would be helpful to continue to provide third party support

Source: ???

Importance: Low-Mid


TEST CASE MANAGEMENT AND TEST CASES

Description: There are several manual and automated tests within
OpenOffice.org. This item refers to both the backends (for test case
management and status collection) and the data (test cases, test
documents).

Rationale: Doing any kind of tests ...

Source:
      * http://quaste.services.openoffice.org/
      * http://quaste.services.openoffice.org/tcm/tcm_login.cgi?tcm_config=newooo

Importance: Mid

Note: I'm not the expert for testing, so I hope for the help from some
of the Oracle guys on this list.


> > Finally, if you'd like me to elaborate on specific user related topics,
> > I'm happy to help. May it be during the current, or the next phases of
> > the OOo project proposal.
> > The only downside is that my spare time is
> > currently very limited - I currently try to reserve the major "time
> > slots" for our newly born child (also the reason for not reading that
> > much about the ASF processes).
> 
> Congratulations :-)

Thank you ... unfortunately, all the processes with regard to our child
are well established (in general), but hardly documented (for us) ;-)

> If you could find some time to ensure that the grant covers everything
> that the community (both here at Apache and downstream) will need
> going forward, I think that will be time well spent. If you have any
> spare for elaboration then that please just jump in.

So, that's what I'm currently aware of - besides the usual stuff like
Templates repository, Extensions repository, Pootle Translation Server,
or Mailing Lists.

I hope it helped (at least a bit). If there is something unclear, please
give me a ping ...


Cheers,
Christoph


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