Tutorials/how-to's targeted at specific audiences

doc

OOo

We would like to develop some tutorials and/or how-to's targeted at specific audiences, for example technical writers, university students, teachers, small business & volunteer organisations. On this page we want to collect ideas and develop topic lists, so people can pick any topics that interest them to work on.

Please also read the Guidelines for writing tutorials.

Please feel free to add ideas below: other target audiences, specific project-oriented docs to write, etc.

Topics to cover for technical writers

For each item, give >1 example of why & when one might use it, plus (if relevant) why/when not to use it, and what to use intead. Provide specific examples that people can follow, preferably examples that are typical of technical writers' tasks.

• Styles and templates
• TOC and index
• Headers/footers, incl. page numbering & other fields
• Chapter/section numbering
• Including chapter numbers in page, figure, and table numbers
• Any "gotchas" with TOCs & indexes when numbering by chapter
• Various techniques for single-sourcing (creating >1 document from one ODT)
  • Conditional text & hidden text, paragraphs, sections
  • Including sections
  • Variables
• PDF creation, incl. advanced
• Removing personal and other info
• Including (link or embed) spreadsheets, figures, database info
• Customising OOo, using extensions, changing where files are stored
• Using OOo in a workgroup (incl. some admin tasks)
• Navigator use & tips
• "Gotchas" for figures, incl. resizing, cropping, other tweaks, esp. when saving/exporting to HTML & other formats
• "Gotchas" re page layout choices (eg use of tables, frames), esp. when saving/exporting to HTML & other formats
• List creation and management
• Master documents
• Other uses of fields
• Switching page orientation within a file
• Use of Draw for creating figures

Topics to cover for university students

What do students typically need to do using OOo? No doubt this varies a bit with the course they are taking. Here are some I have thought of; please add your own to this list. I've divided these by OOo component, but a better division might be by task: what people are trying to do. Tasks might involve more than one component (for example, creating a diagram in Draw and then including it in a Writer document or an Impress presentation).

Overviews

One good overview would be what's needed for a thesis and in what order things should be done and why. This could then point to separate chapters detailing how to do each of the things needed.

Writer

Write/edit essays, research papers, etc. Need to know: page styles, paragraph styles, page layout techniques, headers & footers, page numbering.

May need to know how to insert pictures, create drawings, add tables, include extracts from speadsheets.

Master docs? Why or why not? How? Gotchas? Problem-solving.

Impress (Presentations)

Creating slides, including text, pictures, tables, charts, transitions

There are a lot of tricks and ideas that are not covered in the existing Impress Guide, but could go very well in a different doc. The guide explains a lot of choices; a how-to could show some specific examples of putting those choices into action in "real life" situations.

Slide shows: transitions, dual-screen,

Handouts: tips and workarounds.

Drawings (Draw)

Not just making them, but getting them into other docs (Writer, Impress, etc)

Topics to cover for small business & volunteer organisations

• Advertising (e.g. brochures)
• Mailing lists (database, mail merge to print or email)
• Newsletters (print and/or emailed)
• Time tracking (spreadsheet)
• etc etc