Excellent Idea.

I need to be able to get the actual documentation, however. Depending on the size it might be possible to squeeze some of 
it onto the current ISO.

I would appreciate it if you could organize the following: An archive of the complete set of available documentation and an 
archive of the most essential documentation, preferably 2.0 specific, and in BZ2 or 7Zip's LZMA format. 

I'd like to have this done for the 2.0 release if possible.

Of course 2.0 stuff would be best but as there is no 2.0 release documentation
will have to lag. There are efforts to make this happen nonetheless. However,
existing docs should be useful and so I will definitely put together a
compendium of existing stuff that should be useful regardless of the release.

I have made an iso of what I think is important stuff to have on a documentation
CD. I have attached a zipfile that lists everything.

Created attachment 25624 [details]
List of files that should go on a documentation cd

Thank you very much! that is just the sort of thing I've been looking for! 

I've always intended to include as much documentation as I can get my hands on 
in the CD ISO, although I suspect that it will require a second ISO for 2.0.

I'll start collecting teh files and assembling them over the next few weeks.

Feel free to contact me directly (use my OO.o address, that way it will get 
sorted into the correct folder at this end)with any addidtinal recommendations.

I thought so too. Tell me where to upload the iso. Then is becomess a simple
exercise to freshen the files.

settantta-->GRS I've emailed you details of my FTP server and a login for you. 
Hope you got it.

Got the off-line messages and have replied. I have selected another option that
should be good for both of us. It appears that moving the iso from my box to
anywhereelse could take upto 24 hours. (DSL)

After attempting to use documentation.openoffice.org for the repository and
having it fail with a broken pipe. I trying to use the method Alex provided
off-line. If
this does not work I will cut a CD and snail it.

The following is what Alex sent me after downloading the ISO I created:

On Sat, 30 Apr 2005 23:32, Alex wrote:
> Did you get it?

Yup :)

I've burned it to a CD-RW to have a look at what you have. Interestingly, 
quite a bit of it is already on the current ISO.

What I'm thinking of doing is to put some of the documentation (in PDF format) 
on the Install CD, as space permits. There will need to be a second CD for 
2.0, since that will be using MSI/RPM and whatever Solaris uses for native 
installers. That means that I won't be able to use Sun's Redundancy 
Eliminator (called "red") to reduce the size of the image. And since the 
Linux package is considerably larger than the old style, as I suspect the 
Solaris and Windows ones will be too, there will be less space available for 
the extras.

So I envisage this:

CD 1 - Installers for all platforms, plus various PDF and/or HTML introductory 
guides (those formats chosen for the benefit of those who might want to read 
some of the guides before they proceed with the actual installation - SXW/ODT 
would be useless then, since they'd have no way of opening them until they 
installed OO.o).

CD 2 - Everything in final form that is available from OOAuthors, OOExtras 
etc. Templates, Clip art, Howtos... They would be divided up a little though. 
All the PDF/HTML stuff would be in first level sub-directories, but the SX* 
and OD* stuff would be in third-level sub-directories under a folder named 
"Sources".

DVD - DVD drives and burners are becoming more common, so a DVD image is also 
an option. I will probably produce one containing everything we have, 
organized in a similar way. Rather than having folders labelled CD1 and CD2 
(as some seem to do), it would be "Installers" and "Extras", with Extras 
having three sub-directories "Documentation", "Artwork" and "Templates".

Anyhow, that's the way I'm thinking, comments always appreciated, and I'll 
probably post the same text to the CD-ROM list in the next day or so, also 
for comment.

As to similarity to anything existing, this is possible. Please note that I
opened this issue in December last year and much has changed since then. So ...

What I proposed was what existed for me at the time. Where OOoAuthors guides
exist on http://documentation.openoffice.org/ it means they are in published
form and likewise for the other guides and manuals.

I would like to see some of the Native language docs included too. Expecially
those from the German NL and French NL. Others as space permits.

Comments?

Closing

closing