Documentation/GSoDOC/2021



=About LibreOffice and The Document Foundation= LibreOffice is a powerful and free office suite, a successor to OpenOffice(.org), used by millions of people around the world. Its clean interface and feature-rich tools help you unleash your creativity and enhance your productivity. LibreOffice includes several applications that make it the most versatile Free and Open Source office suite on the market: Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheets), Impress (presentations), Draw (vector graphics and flowcharts), Base (databases), and Math (formula editing).

=Project Proposals=

Project 1
Update and consolidate documentation resources available for LibreOffice

The problem
Documentation is one of the main entry for people that wish to contribute to open source projects. Most of the community volunteers wants to start contributing by writing documentation for LibreOffice end users. LibreOffice has a set of end user manuals that the community is keeping updated at its best effort.

However, writing good and precise manuals and technical documentation for a software like LibreOffice requires techniques often not know by the candidate volunteers. The time to get ready to contribute is often too long for many, and is a discouraging obstacle. The instructions to participate and to start contributing is scattered in several pages and is too long to read.

The objective of this project is to review and reorganize the pages dedicated to the documentation tasks seeking to quickly enable the volunteers to contribute to the documentation. Collateral multimedia contents is a plus for the project. Most of the pages are in mediawiki.

It will also be an opportunity to review the volunteer authoring process looking for simplification while maintaining the quality level of the current end-user documentation.

Finally, it will also address web visibility of the LibreOffice documentation by looking at the way the documentation is indexed by search engines, suggesting changes, new medias, and improvements for better search results.

Phase 1 will require the candidate do look int the current wiki pages and propose reorganization and update of the several parts of the contents.

Phase 2 will demand the candidate to review the contributor guide and suggest simplifications and enhancements.

Phase 3 will demand knowledge in techniques of contents indexing in order to improve search results of the current documentation.

Measuring Project Success

 * Segment the several documentation topics, namely Help Authoring, Guide authoring and Miscellaneous
 * Propose and implement an index of documentation tasks
 * Update and improve the Guides Contributor Resource document, seeking modernization and simplification to ease volunteer participation in documentation

Recommended skills

 * Previous experience in technical writing
 * Knowledge on an office suite and word processing, especially in LibreOffice
 * Knowledge on Mediawiki edition
 * Mandatory: Good English skills
 * General knowledge of open source concepts, collaboration, contributions.
 * Ability to easily communicate with mailing lists, conference calls, instant messaging.

Project 2
Create de Developer Guide for LibreOffice Project

The problem
LibreOffice lacks a specific Developer Guide for senior or junior developers and this is in fact one of the barriers for new developers in the project. A significant part of the Developer Guide that LibreOffice needs shares its contents with the OpenOffice.org Developer Guide from 2009.

The project consists of migrating the contents of the OpenOffice.org Developer Guide to LibreOffice Develeper Guide using the The Document Foundation's own infrastructure and reviewing the contents adapting to the current reality of LibreOffice.

Measuring Project Success

 * Review the contents of the old guide, vis a vis of the current LibreOffice development and update the contents accordingly. Changes are discovered in the commit history.
 * Weekly meetings for project management.
 * Interact actively with the developers

Recommended skills

 * Good writing skills and mastering of the English language
 * Some knowledge of development and tools used by LibreOffice Project
 * Some knowledge of office suites, especially of LibreOffice
 * Ability to clearly communicate with the community and follow advice from mentors and other skilled advisors.

Project 3
Provide a set of lessons, compatible with Moodle https://moodle.org/ on Advanced Techniques for LibreOffice Writer.

The problem
LibreOffice has extraordinary capabilities to edit and manage all kinds of text documents, from brochures to multi-volume books.

People tend to look at a word processor as a fancy typewriter, for historic reasons. However proficiency in using the word processor is rare and is a skill that greatly improve user productivity in the workplace.

The project also fulfill the need for the LibreOffice software to increase its user base and decrease the entry barrier for the suite.

Measuring Project Success

 * Create the curriculum for the e-learning
 * Create the lessons, estimated in 10 advanced techniques lessons
 * Weekly meetings for project management.
 * Upload and deploy the lessons in moodle.libreoffice.org

Recommended skills

 * Excellent writing skills and mastering of the English language
 * Proven experience in creating e-learning classes
 * Previous experience in using Moodle software.
 * Ability to create multimedia pieces to support the lessons
 * Knowledge in office suite, especially in LibreOffice Writer
 * Ability to clearly communicate with the community and follow advise from mentors and other skilled advisors.

Source of information

 * Writer Guide 6.x or 7.x
 * LibreOffice Help
 * others documents with proper reuse licensing.

Project 4
Provide an Accessibility Guide for LibreOffice documents

The problem
There are several aspects here:
 * Which possibilities does LibreOffice already offer? At the moment this is scattered in the help. A special manual does not exist at all.
 * Testing and documenting the cooperation of LibreOffice with assisting technics such as screenreaders. In parallel to writing a manual, there should a documentation be generated about deficits, which is suitable to describe a tender.
 * Which extensions exist, and what can they do and how they are used? I think for example of "DAISY" and Accessibility checker.
 * What do authors have to consider in order to create accessible documents?

Measuring Project Success

 * Collect the current accessibility resources existing in LibreOffice in a document, for guidance
 * Indicate the missing accessibility resources
 * Create documentation on how to create accessible documents

Recommended skills

 * Excellent writing skills and mastering of the English language
 * Proven experience in accessibility techniques
 * Knowledge in create accessible documents, in at least one office suite
 * Ability to clearly communicate with the community and follow advise from mentors and other skilled advisors.