Unless you get it up on Google drives how are a bunch of people all going to collaborate on the same document? If you have 5 people all working on it you’re going to have 5 different versions that you somehow have to merge together.
I’m willing to help, but I’m curious how you plan to integrate feedback from multiple people, especially if it is conflicting.
The manual needs a lot of help. There are piles of bad English and grammar. There are so many things wrong with it I only want to work on the source document rather than try to write up a long list of corrections.
You are absolutely right about it. I cannot disagree with you. The problem is...
a) if I put the file public to literally everyone, there‘s a small but possible chance that someone could (by purpose or by accident) damage its content. I do believe that everyone on BLF is willing to help but giving write-access to the entire internet might be a bit dangerous.
b) I don’t know if Sofirn would agree to make the raw draft manual available to the entire internet. Even though I have come to know them as very relaxed with these things I want to respect their intellectual property and copyrights.
c) I would love to follow up on your plan, collaborating together on one shared file. The problem is, I don’t know yet how to do it with Google drive nor is there enough time left to overcome these obstacles.
I can send you the link to the editable file if you still want to look at it. In any case your help is greatly appreciated.
I hope that with all the feedback I can get there won’t be too much conflicting information. I presume that DBSAR would know best about the UI‘s details but I don’t know if he’s got enough time to check until the deadline has passed.
Sharepoint Online should have versioning, so worst case you’d be able to revert to a previous version if someone deleted the whole thing (provided versioning is on… which I believe is the default).
Google Drive would be as simple as creating a Google account, uploading the file to google drive, and sharing the link (much like Sharepoint).
Office 365/Sharepoint online and Google Docs can work similarly, but in my experience Google Docs is better for collaborative work.
My suggestion would be to share the link to the editable document over PM so that it isn’t out there in the wild for just anybody to see it. If you only share the edit link with a few trustworthy people, it should be safe.
Another safe guard would be to keep a backup copy of the original on your computer.
EDIT:
If needed, I’m sure one of these volunteer editors could put a copy on their Google Drive and share it out for collaborative editing. This would leave the original on your SharePoint untouched and allow collaborative work.
Meanwhile, I have allowed write access to the file on the Google drive link. This should make it possible to edit it with Google docs. I will inform sbslider and DBSAR about it.
If I may, I would strongly suggest requesting Sofirn adds a full BLF text link into the manual (www.budgetlightforum.com)
Not many people know what BLF is and once these go on sale we may be able to attract people to join the forum.
Not to mention the wealth of information relating to the product any new owner can find here.
Perhaps we could also set up a permalink (i.e. www.budgetlightforum.com/lt1) that could redirect to a permanent resource to use instead - or even this thread.
I think this could be an option for all BLF commercial collab endeavours so that the forum starts building more clout with manufacturers (and sales channels) while the forum ’s lead project team gets proper credit for their contributions.
I don’t think that you can edit docx files using Google docs, at least I couldn’t do it today when I test it. However you can edit them in Microsoft OneDrive but the disadvantage is that it does auto-save so one has to be careful when making changes to it (or first downloading/saving a backup copy).
You’re right it does work. I initially tried editing it directly from Google Drive and couldn’t do it. However it worked fine when I opened it directly in Google docs.
Libre Office, Open Office, and Google Docs can open Microsoft Office .doc and .docx files. They do not always display content exactly the same. Small layout changes often occur, and I’ve had trouble getting semi-complex formats like multi-level lists or tables to even print on the same number of pages.
Also, .docx is a newer format introduced with Office 2003, if I remember right (and a compatibility update allowed Office 2000 to open .docx files) due to limitations of the .doc format. Libre Office can open and save .docx files. Open Office can only open them. I don’t know about Google Docs.
So these programs could be used to collaborate on getting the information correct, but whoever is going to arrange printing (Sofirn?) should use the program as the person doing the final layout (Lux Perpetua?).
As important as instruction manual is, I always find the “How To” videos that some members produce to be enormously useful. Thank you to those of you who take the time to make them.
I would strongly suggest requesting Sofirn adds a full BLF text link into the manual (