Re: reference gnome 2.2 docs (follow up)

[Shaun McCance <shaunm wolfram com>]

On Thu, 2003-07-10 at 14:35, Adrian Custer wrote:
> A follow up:
> 
> from the
> 
> GNOME Documentation Style Guide V1.0
> 
> which seems to be claiming to be the cannonical source for correct
> documentation,
> 
> 
>         Screenshots in GNOME Documentation
>         
>         Default Settings
>         
>         As far as possible, use the default settings for the desktop
>         when you take a screenshot. Include the window frame when you
>         take a screenshot of a window. The default window theme is Crux.
>         The default UI theme is Default. 
> 
> 
> "Default" IS NOT A SETTING. I have various version of gnome2 on this
> machine, each of which has its own "Defaults".
> 
> What I need from the document is something like this:
> 
> For screenshots we have decided to unify documents by sharing a common
> look and feel. This requires setting
> 1) The Desktop Preferences -> Theme setting
>   to CRUX
> 2) The default font
>   to ...
> ...
> 
> Note that the Desktop Preferences -Theme also has a details button with
> Controls and Icons tabs. These are the settings I know about, and I'd
> like to know to what they should be set so I can check them all.

This really is something that should be addressed.  While working on
Yelp, I see a lot of screenshots.  There is very little consistancy
among them, and many of them are quite ugly.  The Style Guide should
provide more specific guidelines for screenshots.

* Window Manager : Metacity is the official window manager of Gnome, so
it should be recommended for screenshots.  Other window managers should
be allowed, as long as they can look the same.  IMO, Crux is not a good
theme for screenshots.  It has too much visual noise.  Good screenshot
themes would be Simple, Atlanta, Bluecurve, Bright, Industrial, Metabox,
and Mist.

* GTK+ : Adrian, there is indeed a theme called Default.  I think it's a
very reasonable choice for a screenshot theme.

* Icons : The Style Guide should specify an icon theme to be used.  This
should certainly be the Gnome icon theme.

* Fonts : The Style Guide should specify which application font should
be used.  We have the beautiful Bitstream fonts, so we should use them. 
I think 'Bitstream Vera Sans 9' is probably a good application font.  As
for font rendering, the 'Best Contrast' setting will probably produce
the nicest screenshots, so it should be encouraged.

* Menus and Toolbars : Screenshots should probably use Text Below Icons
or Text Beside Icons for toolbars.  The Style Guide should state whether
or not to have toolbar drag handles in screenshots (probably not).  The
Style Guide should specify whether icons should be shown in menus in
screenshots (probably yes).  The Style Guide should specify whether
menus should be detachable in screenshots (almost certainly not).

* Focus : Please, please, please make sure your window has focus when
you take a screenshot of it.  Try to avoid having any controls (such as
checkboxes) have keyboard focus, as the dashed box around them can be
distracting in a screenshot.  Good places to have keyboard focus when
taking a screenshot would be a text field or the default button of a
dialog.

* Desktop : In the event that authors need to take a screenshot of an
entire desktop, there should be some sort of guidelines regarding how
the desktop should be set up (background, panels, etc.)


That's all I can think of right now.  Of course, we'd have to run around
and retake screenshots.  If we have a very specific set of settings for
screenshots, authors could easily just keep a script on hand to switch
between their preferred settings and those used for screenshots.  GConf
makes that easy.

--
Shaun