Taking screenshots

[Paul W. Frields]

On Sun, 2005-05-15 at 12:08 -0500, Tommy Reynolds wrote: 
> I've noted that some screen shots include the window decorations, others do not.
> 
> The "Documentation Guide" does not address it.
> 
> Personally, I vote for no borders.
> 
> What is the list's pleasure?

There was some discussion about screenshots some time ago in which a
number of issues came up.  Some of what came out of those discussions
ended up in the Documentation Guide.  See section 2.4 for details.

- For installation with Anaconda, the dialogs the user sees don't have
any window decoration.  Therefore, none should appear in the
screenshots.  A number of our screenshots violate this guideline, but
Stuart and I should be able to get those redone in no time flat.  Thanks
to the FC4 freeze, what we do using FC4test3 should be adequate for the
first release of the Installation Guide.  After FC4 goes final, we can
check all the shots to make sure they're valid.

- For dialogs launched in a GUI, the window decoration should be left
intact, using Fedora's default theme -- I think that's "Clearlooks" for
FC4, or at least it is for FC4t3.

Any documentation should reflect the screen or dialog as it *actually
appears*, on a system that has not been customized beyond default
installation.  In general, when you document any system, the behavior
described in a tutorial should match what a user sees "out of the box"
to the greatest possible extent.  These system configuration guidelines
will appear in a more polished form in the next-gen Documentation Guide.

This is why Xen may end up being very useful for FDP -- it allows people
who don't have access to a pay-for-play system like VMware to still do
effective technical documentation without messing with their own beloved
system configuration.  (I'm lucky in that the office buys me VMware, and
that's what I use to make screenshots, but we can't expect all
contributors to be similarly equipped.)

It's important to note that screenshots should *only* be used where it
is impossible to simply tell the user what to do in words.  They aren't
to be used just because they can be, or as "filler."  There are many
reasons for this -- one of them is that using images where they aren't
required is a big inconvenience for visually or otherwise impaired
users.  The Installation Guide is one of the few documents that flouts
this rule, strictly because its target audience is largely made up of
people who've never touched Fedora, or maybe even never installed an
operating system.

HTH!

-- 
Paul W. Frields, RHCE                          http://paul.frields.org/
  gpg fingerprint: 3DA6 A0AC 6D58 FEC4 0233  5906 ACDB C937 BD11 3717
 Fedora Documentation Project: http://fedora.redhat.com/projects/docs/
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