Re: New Doc Volunteer

["Keith N. McKenna" <ke...@comcast.net>]

On 9/14/2017 10:49 AM, Famiglietti, Andrew A wrote:
> Hi Open Office Doc Team,
> 
> 
> I'm a professor in the English Department at West Chester University of Pennsylvania, and I'm planning to use Open Source Software documentation as a "real world" writing task for my Technical Writing Students this semester. I noticed your project was looking for documentation help and thought I would reach out. Some things you should know:
> 
> 
> - I'm not going to swamp you with student contributions. Students will file their drafts with me, first, and then I will pass them on to you only if I think they have a reasonably good end product, and I have an ok from the project?
> 
> 
> I was wondering:
> 
> 
> - If you would be interested in seeing the documentation drafts students produce
> 
> - If there was any particular area of documentation you were particularly in need of
> 
> 
> Thanks so much for your time!
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ---
> Andy Famiglietti, PhD
> Assistant Professor of English, West Chester University
> http://copyvillain.org<http://copyvillain.org/>
> 
Professor Famiglietti;

First let me apologize for taking so long to reply to your message.
Things in my personal life have been such that I have not had as much
time as I would like to spend with Apache OpenOffice.

The current state of the documentation effort is that it is at a
standstill. A decision was made around the end of 2012, beginning of
2013 that new documentation would be started on the Apache OpenOffice
Media-Wiki under the Apache License, Version 2.0. This effort has
stalled due to the lack of experienced technical writers to guide and
mentor new volunteers.

The idea was to have documentation structured for on-line viewing using
liberal hyper-links to guide people from the generic to the specific
rather than separate detailed guides for each separate Application
within the suite. This structure does not lend itself well to the flow
that you describe but I would be willing to take the output from
students that you approve and format it for inclusion into the wiki.

I would also be interested in discussing further with you any other
insights or ideas that you might have to move the documentation effort
forward again.

Regards
Keith N. McKenna