Hi Steven, *,
"Steven Pauwels" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi Bernhard,
Thanks for your welcome and helping me to get started.
You're welcome :-)
I took a look at the style draft and these are some of my findings:
Steven Shelton did answer you already already, so I can pick out some
points...
- Is the style document for OOo in general only or should it be used
for the components too? [...]
The only part where we mentioned the components was reagrding the icons
and their colors.
OpenOffice.org is a complete office suite, you will not be able
(without hacking and even then you don't spare lots of memory) to get
and install components singularily.
But you're right: Artwork about "Draw", "Impress" or "Base" should be
recognizable as OpenOffice.org.
- My experience in both the directive and practical work relationship
with 'artists and designers' has learned me that the guidelines for
any
style can not be specific enough. The true designer is the one that
is
creative within the set bounderies and it is my oppinion that these
should be as strict for the graphical elements as they are for the
text
elements. At this point, I find this not to be the case.
There have been huge discussions about the artist's freedom in the
past, long before we had startd with the Style Guide.
In my personal opinion there are two groups of artists here in the
project:
- some people dislike the actual visual identity (or deny it) and want
to establish a new more modern one.
- others try to design artwork that can be recognized at first glance
as belonging to OpenOffice.org.
I don't want to tell the people that they would not be allowed to
design green OpenOffice.org logos with a lion in the background - even
if this doesn't fit to actual visual identity.
But with OpenOffice.org 3.0 there could come something quite
different - why not?
(In my eyes there should be more an evolution than a revolution, but
that's my personal opinion).
The Style Guide wants to give a hand to the second group of artists,
when they desing artwork for the actual OpenOffice.org. They should
know how they manage to get close to the "official impression", using
special colors and fonts.
We are a group of volunteers - so we can't force anybody to design his
artwork in the way we want to, we just could prohibit him to do any
artwork for us (and that's not a solution). If people understand how we
want to keep visual identity of OOo, they don't need any pressure to
follow the loose guidelines we have - we strive for the same goal.
With the logo usage I'm not really satisfied in the Style Gude, because
the logo license is not mentioned as clear as it should be. We've been
working on a logo license text in the wiki
(http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/OOoArt--OOo_logo_license),
but this text was not approved by the CC up to now.
I like the Guidelines by the Mozilla Foundation
http://www.mozilla.org/foundation/identity-guidelines/index.html - and
perhaps we could establish something quite similar for our logo and the
icons, but even if our Style Guide is not as specific as these
guidelines, the meaning is quite the same ("don't modify the logo").
[... ideas for stricter specifications for artwork - already answered
by Steven Shelton...]
It may seem that I have a lot of comment on the efforts being made
by the community members, but this is what I do second best :) In
addition, I can help and provide solutions for any comment I make,
but I prefer to leave the dialogue open.
Perhaps we can combine yours and our ideas - the style guide may be
optimized in any part, but please take into account, what Steven said
about opern source, "anarchy" and voluteers. If we find a way to
convince people instead of forcing them we'll be happy to include this
in the style guide.
I would like to invite you all to present me with problems or
questions.
Hope I can help.
I'm sure you can! :-)
The general feeling that I got from the website is a 'sleeping' one.
I
can be wrong but it seems that in some aereas, the OOo project is not
pro-active. (Oh Boy, I am using words that are normal in english but
seem very yuppie in dutch) :)
Of course there parts of the website to be updated - some of the
marketing galleries quite urgently.
But for the genereal website problems I'd like to show you to the
specific project http://website.openoffice.org with it's mailing lists.
When reading some of the threads on issues, I founr it hard to get to
the core of that issue. Seems to mee that there is a lot of
discussion
going on there... Again, I might be wrong.
For art issues that has been right in the past - and I dislike it,
because the more people comment on the drafts, the better the final
version will become. Another point is that some good artwork has been
attached to an issue and was forgotten in the meantime ...
I hope to get the disussions here on the list.
With Issues about bugs or feature requests it is quite different: There
is no need to discuss these points among a algere community, so they
can be held on the issues.
Overall oppinion: I like OOo. I do not like the name, the website,
its
fuzzyness, ... I do not know the people behind it all so for now; I
like
them all :-p
Just one word to the "fussiness": That's part of our community - many
people with different opinions but working for the same goal. There is
no leader telling you have to do this and not to do that. Everybody
looks for something that has to be done in his eyes, and starts doing
it (perhaps he will look for help on the lists or manage to find
someone else to do the job if he isn't able to do it on his own). From
the outside we look as unorganized as ants on an ant-hill - but in the
opposite to then we are all volunteers, we may start another work or
even leave the community if we want to.
But because there are so positive and interesting people in the
community we stay here... :-)
[... fullquote removed - can be found in the archives, when they work
again...]
Best regards
Bernhard
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