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Proposed changes in content and organisation

The existing Getting Started with OpenOffice.org user guide was originally intended to be no longer than 200 pages, but it is now closer to 400 pages and includes some material that IMO isn't needed by new users.

I would like to make some major changes, by cutting out some chapters and making them into standalone guides, dropping some material that is covered in other books and IMO not needed in this one, slightly reorganising what's left, and adding some pointers to the other books and documents. Details below. The main goal is to improve the book's usefulness for new users; decreasing the page count is a secondary goal.

  1. Remove Chapter 8 (Getting Started with Base) and make it a standalone document. It is 52 pages long (longer than the Math Guide) and I think would be more useful to beginning Base users if it's standalone. Also, I think the vast majority of new OOo users will NOT be using Base.
  2. Remove Chapter 9 (Getting Started with Math) because it duplicates the first part of the Math Guide and is therefore not needed here.
  3. Remove most of Chapter 12 (Creating Web Pages) because the info is given in the guides for Writer, Impress, etc and is really little more than an export function; it could be mentioned briefly in the chapter on Printing, Exporting etc. Info on hyperlinks needs to be put somewhere else; I don't have a specific suggestion on this, but it didn't really fit in this chapter anyway, since it's relevant to more than web page creation.
  4. Combine Chapter 2 (Setting up OOo) and Chapter 14 (Customizing) and leave the result at the end of the book. This is similar to the way the topics are handled in the other books.
  5. Drop Appendix A (Keyboard Shortcuts) and put a brief mention in Chapter 1 with a pointer to the Help.

That's the major changes. I have a few other changes to suggest in various chapters. In total the reorganisation should cut the page count down below 300 pages and make the book more useful for the majority of new users.

Current Table of Contents

(to be added soon)

Proposed Table of Contents

(to be added soon)

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