Re: themes for GNOME2 docs

[Chris Lyttle <chris wilddev net>]

On Tue, 2001-12-18 at 11:45, Eugene O'Connor wrote:

First of all, thanks Eugene for doing this.


Screenshot Process
The following process describes the procedure to follow to create a
screenshot for the documentation for GNOME 2.0. 
Style Issues

        * Question: Should EPS images be in greyscale? I understand that
          this gives a better quality image for printing.

I think so, there are colored inkjets, etc but who really wants to print
docs in color?

        * Do not use drop shadow or any other special graphical effects
          on the screenshot. Special graphical effects can be complex to
          create. If the screenshot is localized, the effort to create
          the special effect must be reproduced nine times. 

I must admit I have a real problem with this. I can appreciate that in
order to keep things simple we dont want to do complicated
transformations to screenshots, however doing a dropshadow with the gimp
involves much less work than creating callouts, its just a single menu
item click in scriptfu. Esp as you've described doing the callouts
below. I think in order to really make callouts easy for translator's we
have to supply either a scriptfu for gimp to do the job (this would
benefit all of us doing it) or at least put the xcf file in the source
so that translators could replace the layer that has the screenshot in
it. Either way the process would need to be described in detail so that
author's have no confusion over how to create them.

Process for Creating Screenshots with Callouts for Print and Online
        1. Set the properties of the Screen-Shooter applet as follows: 
            * Compressed Quality: 75
            * Image filename: filename.png
        2. Use the Screen-Shooter applet to take the screenshot.
           Screen-Shooter creates the screenshot in PNG format.

I wonder here why screen-shooter is being used? If there is a need to
open gimp to do further things then why bother with screen-shooter at
all, gimp can easily do both functions and it involves less opening and
closing things.


Note 2: I have not been able to figure out how to use the Gfig plugin
for line drawing to use the drawing tools in a precise,
closely-controlled manner. I have also found it difficult to ensure that
the lines drawn are at consistent angles to the image. To access the
Gfig plugin, right-click on an image, then choose Filters > Render >
Gfig. 

Hmm I too had problems drawing straight lines in gimp. I wonder if we
can get one of the gimp people to help us with figuring out easy steps
for what we need.

Chris