On Mon, 2011-02-28 at 09:45 +0100, Clayton wrote: > On 02/25/2011 04:53 PM, Judy Darby wrote: > > I'd like to retract and work on a Calc chapter, but my time to review > > and edit is limited to spurts of an hour or so a day. What is the > > average time a volunteer keeps a chapter out of circulation while > > working on it? > > As long as they need to, or until someone else asks about it :-) As > long as it's not checked out for months and months, and we're not > pushing hard for a release, you should be OK. > > > > I work on a Mac. I notice that screen shots might look slightly > > different in some cases. For example, Close, Minimize and Maximize > > are buttons above the menu bar at the top of a page and are on the > > left, rather than on the right where they are on a PC. Will that be > > too confusing for a reader? > > You will find differences like this between all operating systems - in > Ubuntu, you find the close/minimise/maximise buttons on the left, in > openSUSE, they are on the right, in OSX, they are on the left, in > Windows, they are on the right... and so on. > > For screenshots, we generally try to do them all in one operating > system. So far most (all?) screenshots have been done using Windows XP > and the silver color theme (this follows the general documentation rule > to keep colors as neutral as possible). You will also notice that where > it makes sense the operating system titlebars are not shown - only the > relevant parts of OOo are shown, and these tend to be identical across > all operating systems. This takes away that possible OS confusion > factor (in my experience though, most Linux and OSX users are aware of > the differences in their OS vs Windows). > > If you find you need to replace screen caps, and you are using OSX or > Linux, I suggest you use VirtualBox (similar to Parallels on OSX, but > VirtualBox is free) and install WinXP. Then you can re-do any > screenshots and keep them consistent with the rest of the document. > > C.
I disagree with Clayton's comment that we "generally try to do [screenshots] all in one operating system". IMO this is much too limiting for volunteer contributors or involves far too much time spent on redoing screenshots for consistency. Suggesting that volunteers use Virtual Box or anything else for this purpose is, IMO, especially since "install WinXP" (or any other Windows version) requires one to have a copy of WinXP (or other) to install. Virtual Box may be free, but Windows most definitely is not. It is true that many of the older screenshots are taken from WinXP, but many of the more recent ones are being captured from Linux (usually Ubuntu), mainly because several of the active contributors (including me) use that o/s. Other older screenshots have been replaced with ones from Windows Vista or Windows 7, when changes in OOo require a new image. Personally, I see no reason why all the screenshots should be taken from one operating system, even if that were practical. The differences in appearance from one o/s to another are mostly quite minor. As Clayton mentions, a more important consideration is that the colour schemes used be reasonably compatible. (The OS X gray-and-white scheme fits this criterion very well.) Finally, I note a strong opinion in some parts of the OOo community that using screenshots from Windows leaves us open to the potential of hassles from Microsoft over copyright issues. (This is not a problem with Linux, and Apple has never shown any tendency to hassle people for doing the same.) Other portions of the community do not consider this to be an issue, and perhaps those who are concerned have all decamped to LibreOffice, where they will be replacing all the Windows pix with others. A secondary consideration: if we at ODFAuthors want to produce docs that can be used with minimal changes for both programs, then reducing the number of Windows pix would help. Jean -- Jean Hollis Weber Co-Lead, OpenOffice.org Documentation Project -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] with Subject: help
