Re: [steering-discuss] Re: screen-shots Documentation Team

Hi :)
All exactly right except 2 things
1.  It was not David doing the pushing.  He argues his points but accepts 
decisions even if those decisions are not what he wanted ime.  There was a very 
new person (another Gary?) that only joined the team about a week or 2 ago that 
suddenly started trying to push new people in a different direction, just after 
Jean went on holiday.  

2.  I'm not sure what theme has been used for screen-shots for the past few 
months.  Jaimon has stayed on top of that but he is not subscribed to this 
mailing list (i hope).  


The Documentation Team asked for guidance from the Design Team a few months ago 
but Design were busy with other issues.  If Design have now decided what themes 
should be used for the website and for documentation it's a bit late for the 
Documentation for the first issue.  Writer and Calc guides have already been 
published.  About half the rest are nearly ready to be published.  The 
Documentation Team might be able to follow the Design Team's recommendation for 
the 2nd release of documentation after the first release has been completed but 
were hoping to work on other problems.  If they switch themes right now then 
documentation will be inconsistent with bits of some guides in one theme but 
maybe suddenly jumping to something else halfway through a guide.  Or the rest 
of the guides could just be delayed for a few months as work gets re-done.  


If the new person (a Gary?) had joined the team about 8 months ago then his 
suggestions would have been very useful as infrastructure had not been 
established back then. Nowadays Alfresco gives us a much more elegant CMS than 
the new guy's random bits of websites.  


Also it was not David that dragged this to the SC.  That was my fault.  The 
Documentation Team had gone very quiet and the new guy was getting a lot of 
mis-information, unchallenged, to the new people in the team.  


Apols and regards from
Tom :)




________________________________
From: Bernhard Dippold <bernhard@familie-dippold.at>
To: steering-discuss@documentfoundation.org
Sent: Tue, 12 July, 2011 23:57:23
Subject: Re: [steering-discuss] Re: screen-shots Documentation Team

Hi David, all,

David Nelson schrieb:
> Hi Italo, *,
>
> On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 4:09 PM, Italo Vignoli<italo.vignoli@gmail.com>  
wrote:
> > In my opinion, documentation screenshots can be entirely Linux (unless there
> > is a specific feature on a different OS).

This is what the Documentation team (project) has done over the last years, 
IIRC.
> My feeling about this (and I *believe* that Jean Weber agrees) is that
> documentation contributors should have the option of contributing
> screenshots indifferently from Mac, Linux or Windows - although it
> would probably be preferable to maintain consistency within a given
> guide.

I would really like to read Jean's opinion on this point.

She has been leading the Documentation Project at OOo, she proposed the present 
compromise discussed and voted on at the Design list. All of her comments I 
remember are based on a Linux theme.

In none of her postings I read I saw any mentioning of Windows screenshots.

Now - exactly at her holidays - you're pushing this topic up to the SC, while 
the discussion and the voting at the Design list doesn't follow the direction 
you want it to go.

My impression of the people involved in this topic (including Sigrid and Jean) 
felt very well about the Linux theme Clearlooks, that resembles quite strongly 
to newer Windows versions. The previous theme agreed upon by the documentation 
team was a silver theme resembling Windows XP - probably not the best reference 
for 2011 and beyond...

I might be wrong, but is there really a discussion in the Documentation Team 
where others than yourself want to use different themes - and especially Windows 
themes -  for LibreOffice documentation?

What I read was that they want to have a consistent theme for the documentation, 
so it is possible to re-use some of the screenshots in other documents.

Mixture of screenshots with different themes in one document has never been a 
goal of the documentation team. Consistency is much more important for 
professional documentation than trying to inform the reader about the different 
platforms by using different themes.

We already discussed your points on the design list, and you got valid replies 
by several different people. Now you want this discussion to be overruled by the 
SC members - if you insist on it, we can repeat our points here too...
> Firstly, this makes it clear that LibreOffice is mult-platform and
> consistent across platforms.

Consistency is the key: A good documentation is based on consistent content, 
visual design, and overall look-and-feel.

Except of platform specific topics a consistent theme is one stone in the wall 
of professional documentation.
> Secondly, we want to keep the barrier for new contributors as low as
> possible, and not *oblige* them to install new software in order to
> work in documentation. This way, hopefully, we can get a lot more
> people involved.

We all know that new contributors need guidance much more than the easiest way 
to do any work. Especially if we want them to continue their contribution it is 
crucial to not let them alone  - not even with screenshots. They don't know 
about the area to copy, scaling factors, additional arrows and rings. And 
helping them by providing easy understandable guidelines can include a preferred 
theme and even a slight modification to this standard theme.

You might be right that there are people on Windows interested in contributing 
to LibreOffice documentation - they would be the one to install a new theme for 
screenshots, but they can contribute without screenshots (or take screenshots 
with a Linux live CD) too.

On Linux there is no need to install new software, as the Clearlooks theme is 
standard in GNOME and available in KDE too.
> These are the key reasons why I'm asking for the SC to take a
> position, because we've been meeting quite a bit of opposition from a
> relatively small number of people for quite some time now (who want
> screenshots taken under Linux only), and it would be nice to get the
> issue cleared up one way or another.

While this relatively small number of people consist of Sigrid and Jean as well 
as several people on the Design list and Alex Thurgood, I can't measure your 
"we" in active contributors. My impression is exactly the other way round: While 
the vast majority of active people showed their interest in a consistent 
documentation with a standardized theme for screenshots and other elements, you 
repeated your arguments against such a consistent theme several times being 
nearly alone with your opinion.
> I could point out that I'm a daily Linux user myself, but I don't
> think we should be dogmatic about it.

Right - this has absolutely nothing to do with the present topic.

Best regards

Bernhard

PS: I didn't mention consistency as basic rule for branding, brand recognition 
and a positive feeling about a product in this mail.
I didn't comment on the legal aspects on Windows and Mac, as Alex pointed 
possible problems out.
(And even if the SC would recommend Windows screenshots, each contributor would 
have to decide for him/herself if s/he would like to take the legal 
responsibility on his/her own).

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