Category: Tools & technology

Talk at LibreOffice Conference 2012

The slides from my talk “LibreOffice User Documentation: Successes and Challenges” are available from my website in ODP and PDF formats. Presented at the LibreOffice Conference, Berlin, October 2012.

Talk at OpenHelp Conference

I presented a talk about LibreOffice documentation at this conference: I did not produce any slides for this talk. My rough notes are here: OpenHelp Talk (PDF).

Readability Report for OpenOffice.org on Windows

I haven’t tried this extension to OpenOffice.org, because I don’t use Windows, but it sounds interesting (if not misused or abused as often happens with “readability” scores). Would like to hear from someone who has used it. The Readability Report tool scores your document for readability, cohesion and information density. These scores provide the author …

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Engaging readers in documentation

At the AODC 2010 conference, Sarah Maddox, who works for Atlassian, an agile development environment, spoke on engaging readers in the documentation and the concept of documentation as an emotional experience. Sarah explained the advantages to both the customers and the company of involving readers (users) and discussed some of the techniques that Atlassian has …

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Effective Onscreen Editing, 2nd edition

Geoff Hart’s Effective Onscreen Editing is an essential resource for anyone who edits onscreen, regardless of the word processor in use. Geoff’s examples are from Microsoft Word, but most of his recommendations can be translated readily to OpenOffice.org or other programs. The book is available in both PDF and printed forms, each optimised for its …

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