O Manual

[rgleason]

I think we should be considering breaking

OPTIONS into separate sections
- The Display
- The Chart
- The Connections (already separate and has been moved.)
- The Ships
- The User Interface
- The Plugins (already separate, and have been moved because they are so extensive)

Additionally the whole idea of the manual is to have it mimic the Toolbar in terms of location!
The key purpose being to help users know where to find the commands.

It would give better accessibility to these areas through the left menu.
Any Editors interested in doing this?

[rgleason]

There have been a number of changes to the Wiki organization.

1. Options page has been broken up into separate pages.
2. OPTION Settings (detailed pages have moved out of the Toolbar Buttons menu and there is a link (placeholder) now in the Toolbar Section.
3. PLUGINS (Details) have moved out of Toolbar and a Plugin link (placeholder) has been place in Toolbar.
4. There is a new "Getting Around" section which has GPS setup, Display orientation, Right-click, Chart Status Bar, Chart Info, Keyboard shortcuts, etc.
5. Page Sequence changes & Perhaps some other changes.

There are enough changes so there may be some things that don't work. I checked everything I could.



PS the Getting Around page is blank, needs links to its sub-pages.







https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...oolbar_buttons

[rgleason]

I found & fixed some bad links. They're may be more to fix.

Questions:

For consistency should OpenCPN Manual > PLUGINS
be moved to be under OPTION Settings > The Plugins ?

Alternative:
Move the Install & Enable, Included Plugins and Messaging to The Plugins.
Leave the External Plugins under OpenCPN > PLUGINS

For Consistency should OpenCPN Manual > CHARTS
be moved to be under OPTION Settings > The Charts?

Obeservations:
OpenCPN Manual > CHARTS has links to everything related to charts (quite intensive).
OPTION Settings > The Charts has just 4 simple sections corresponding to the TABS.

Now I realize this organization is good the way it is, so I am going to leave the chart items as they are.

[rgleason]

We need more Editors. Users are responsible for maintenance of the Manuals. Your help would be much appreciated. This is one of the key elements of OpenSource Software. We all help each other in a collaborative environment.

DokuWiki is our main program for maintaining the Manal.

What Makes Dokuwiki so great for Documentation?


PM me if you want to become an Editor.

[rgleason]

Is there any need for "Downloads OLD" and files?
I plan to delete them tomorrow.
https://opencpn.org/wiki/dokuwiki/do...nual:downloads

[rgleason]

Dear Editors,

USE TEXT WHENEVER POSSIBLE rather than an image.

In the course of trying to Export the User Manual to HTML for the next release, it has become clear that we need to change some practices for practical reasons, and in order to make creating the html image of the manual easier.

1. A number of pages are preventing SiteExport from processing the entire document, I believe this may be due to the images being used in the page.
2. I have not yet investigated each problematic page, but have been excluding them from the process, and I am running out of space to do that.
3. We are going to need to correct the problematic pages so that they will pass through SiteExport. The way to test that is to try to Export the page using the "Export Page (SiteExport) button on the right, second button up should be the correct one. How to.. will follow.
4. Please be restrained in using images. Make sure they pass through a know "good" image editor that creates high quality images.
5. Size your images for the purpose. Make sure they are not large images.
6. Do not fill a whole document up with images! Use 50% words and 50% images (maximum) - less is better.
7. Text processes very fast and is lean. Use images when you need to only. No frosting on the cake!
8. We are going to have to "TRIM DOWN" the number of images being used over time. We can be more efficient too utilizing a single screenshot instead of having two different ones.

Menu Screenshot Project
At some point we should complete a comprehensive update of all the major Menu screenshots in OpenCPN and catalog them with appropriate names that are consistent. These should be high quality but sized exactly for the purpose.

Merge Menu screenshots into the Documents
This could occur gradually by section.

Example Screenshots
In addition, to Menu screenshots there are many Example screenshots. These tend to be larger, and we should watch the use of these like a hawk, reducing the sizes whenever possible!

Also we are going to need to rework and delete all extraneous screenshots and use more words! This is taking ages to process so many images. Text flies through.

Otherwise your Offline Manual will quickly become 100 mb.

Hopefully, we will be able to Export the manual in one shot, but this has not been easy.

[rgleason]

We have two new Wiki Editors:
KevinH will be improving the documentation with a particular eye towards the MAC user.
Svkatielee will be updating the Orange_pi page.

[rgleason]

We need some editors to create two Plugin Manuals (one page really) that are currently empty or non-existant.

Projections_pi
SAR_pi

[rgleason]

Originally Posted by rgleason

We need some editors to create two Plugin Manuals (one page really) that are currently empty or non-existant.
Projections_pi
SAR_pi

Projections_pi Page This is a really cool plugin. Someone could have fun learning about projections and defining each one with links.

SAR_pi Page I am pleased that Sar has a very complete manual provide by seanymph. Now we just need to revitalize the plugin.