On 02/28/2011 09:28 PM, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
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.
I see your point, and you're right. I was basing my comment on a browse
of the User Guides, and every screenshot I looked at was WinXP Silver
theme (I did not look through all images/books). I stand corrected :-)
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.
So what can we do to ensure some measure of consistency in look/feel in
the screenshots? Is there a common theme used? Looking at it from the
Linux side, Gnome does not look anything like KDE, and if one person is
using some funky Compiz theme (and there are some pretty wild ones out
there) and the other is using the default Ubuntu/Gnome.. yet another is
using high contrast in openSUSE... you end up with a real mishmash of
screenshots, resolutions, quality and so on.
This is something I've noticed in a few of the UG chapters - quality of
the screencaps for example. Some are very crisp and clean, others are
badly pixelated because the person edited the photo and reduced the
size/DPS.
There might be some value in setting out some explicit guidelines for
taking screenshots.
Something like:
If you use Linux then... (Gnome/DKE/LXDE etc, desktop colors, themes
used etc)
If you use WindowsXP/7, then... (desktop colors, themes used etc)
If you use OSX, then... (desktop colors, themes used etc)
so that at least from each OS there is some measure of quality in what
screenshots are provided.
One way to alleviate the "what OS was this screen cap taken in" issue is
to trim the window where it makes sense (which is already done in some
of the screen caps in use), and remove the OS specific window
decorations. For example:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/Writer_Guide/Choosing_options_for_OOo
On the quality thing, it could be useful to outline some basics for post
processing images so that we don't get over-dithered/pixelated
screencaps. For example, the images on this recently updated page:
http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/Draw_Guide/Organization_Charts
They are not wrong, or bad, but the images do suffer in quality.
[snip]
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.
It's a fuzzy issue - as Sigrid pointed out, you ask Microsoft directly,
and they quote their guidelines for documenting their own OS and their
own software products. If you read that guide3line carefully, it's
spoecifically about Microsoft products... not 3rd party application.
I've yet to see anything clearly stated about 3rd party applications (ie
apps not owned by MS), and what restrictions they want to place on
screen captures.
C.
--
Clayton Cornell [email protected]
OpenOffice.org Documentation Project co-lead
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