Submitted by gregory on 2015/03/02 09:43
I am trying very hard to improve the manual pages concerning project planning and the Gantt view. I also decided to be "good", and not to follow my normal instinct, which is to rip the text out of the InfoQube forum, edit it in Microsoft Word – which is a good and powerful editor – and then try and put it back into InfoQube. Every time I do that, I get accused of creating bad HTML for reasons which I don't understand and which the forum editor paste from Microsoft Word button ought to handle.

So I am trying to use the editor on the forum website (built long ago using an ancient version of Drupal now out of support) and I find it an incredibly frustrating experience. For example, I cannot find the equivalent of a ribbon and therefore I cannot adjust the margins of the text which I'm creating. Every time I want to paste an image or a URL, I have to remember specific tricks. There is no format painter, which makes most of my tasks much longer.

The basic design of the forum website, based as it is on a Drupal template designed by Dr. Radut, is very good. Unfortunately, I cannot find any recent version of that Drupal template and I suspect that moving the website forward to a more recent version of Drupal might therefore be quite a lot of work. But please, Pierre could you consider moving to a more recent editor or version of the editor, one which makes life easier for people who are themselves trying to be helpful? I have a feeling this is becoming more and more of an urgent issue, because the manual is not keeping pace with the product. This forces us all to make more and more use of the forum as a place to document facilities and to find documentation – which contributes to frustration with the product.

Comments

Hi Mark,
 
You are quite correct that this community forum web site uses an outdated version of Drupal. I have so much to do ironing out the bugs and completing features in preparation for v1.0 that the task of upgrading to a recent version of Drupal seems daunting. Add to this, the fear that conversion would not go smoothly and forum posts / book pages be lost and I prefer not upgrade for now.
 
That said, I can certainly see if a more recent version of FCKEditor is available and compatible. Also, if you want to use MS Word, you can. Simply save your document as a "filtered" web site. This removes all MS Word specific tags
 
HTH, and thanks for your efforts.
 
PIerre_Admin
 

gregory

2015/03/02 11:11

In reply to by Pierre_Admin

Thank you for the advice – which I will certainly follow.
 
Bon courage !!
 
Mark GREGORY, Redon, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6

gregory

2015/03/03 03:31

In reply to by Pierre_Admin

Just for completeness, I want here to record the full cycle required to update an existing manual entry using Microsoft Word as an editor.
  1.  Firstly, it is necessary to download the existing manual entry. In order to do this, locate the manual entry. I here take as an example the manual pages concerning smart fields, www.sqlnotes.net/drupal5/index.php.
  2. Right click somewhere within the text of the entry. Click on "save as". Save the file with the suggested file type, which is 'webpage, complete'. Note carefully where the file has been saved to, or find it again in the download area maintained by your browser.
  3. Open the file using Microsoft Word. You can safely ignore any warnings concerning missing .CSS files.
  4. When you open the file in Word, you will find that the bulk of the information in the page appears as a single column table - see point 1 . Outside the table, you will find page header information (point 2) and information from the left-hand margin of the manual page (point 3). It is wise to remove the surplus content (points number two and number three), and then to convert the table to text.
  5. Make any changes which you feel to be necessary or desirable. Emphasise major headings – the title of the whole entry – using the style heading 1. Go on to use heading 2 or heading 3 for less important divisions in the text. Use illustrations in the form of screen captures and the like wherever it is necessary to make your meaning clearer.
  6. When you are satisfied that you have completed your editing, save the file with file type 'webpage, filtered'.
  7. But then what? How do I move the new content into a manual page?
 
Pierre and community: but then what? How do I insert the contents of the nice clean file into an existing or new page in the manual?
 
 
Mark GREGORY, Redon, France - GMT +1/+2; EST +6