Re: GNOME tour?

[Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com>]

On 5/17/05, Simos Xenitellis <simos74 gmx net> wrote:
> Claus Schwarm wrote:
>
> > On Tue, 17 May 2005 08:04:21 -0400
> > Luis Villa <luis villa gmail com> wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > > For the liveCD, I'd like to use Theora, but probably flash or even
> > > still/simple screenshots makes sense for the web.
> >
> > A screenshot tour (8 - 10 shots, maybe) along with explanations what is
> > shown on the screenshot would be fine and sufficient for a start, IHMO.
> >
> > Maybe we can start editing a rought guideline (ie the explanations) on a
> > wiki page?
> Indeed, do a guideline for an initial tour and I'll try to make a demo
> in vnc2swf as well, just to compare how they
> look and feel, and quantify the amount of extra work.

Sounds good. Murray has started whipping up a description:
http://live.gnome.org/MarketingTeam_2fGnomeTour
 
I'm trying to knock in some comments ATM, but I'm also sort of split
ten ways today :)

> In general, SWF can be converted to AVI (or Theora) and back, using
> tools such as mplayer or VideoLan.

Yeah, I wasn't being too picky about original format; the only
constraints are that I'd like the liveCDs to be totally free as much
as possible, so flash is out, and obviously flash is the easiest/most
distributable method on the web. Oh, and obviously you lose quality
when transcoding, so the less of that the better ideally.

> Some points to mention
> a. In general getting people to redo the tutorial for their own language
> is a difficult task, as they will have
> to get the skills in doing it. See for example the screenshots for the
> release notes of GNOME 2.10. There was different degrees
> of quality and many did not manage to make them on time (ok, they had to
> get garnome/jhbuild for these..)

My hope is that before release (if we want to tie these to a release)
we could distribute liveCD betas with consistent branding, language
packs, etc., and the encoding and translation bits, and scripts to
simplify it if necessary. The recording (at least of swf, with no
voice track) should be a matter of run one script + do the steps in
the wiki + emailing the files off somewhere.

> b. The ideal situation is when one person can do the tutorials for
> several languages, simply by switching between locales,
> and not requiring much on understanding the local language.

True. Though ideally eventually we get voiceovers, and that means
native speakers. :)

> c. Along with the SWF/AVI tutorial it's possible to add sound, as with a
> person describing what's being done. The effect is marvelous,
> though it's much more work.

Have you experimented with doing this aspect of the work at all?

Thanks, Simos-
Luis