Re: [libreoffice-design] [VI] Consistent theme for screenshots

On Thu, 2011-06-23 at 20:30 +0200, Bernhard Dippold wrote:
> Hi again,
>
> I'll start with my thoughts on the topic.
>
> Fell free to provide yours.
>
> Once we finished this collection and basic discussion we should move the 
> results to a dedicated wiki page for further reference.
> But for the direct discussion I prefer the mailing list more:
>
> Bernhard Dippold wrote:
>  > [...]
>  >
>  > Consistency is a relevant part of Visual Identity and therefore I'd
>  > like to ask you all provide your thoughts on
>  >
>  > 1) how such a UI theme should look like
>
> - It should be clean, balanced and friendly as we refer to LibreOffice 
> on our branding wiki page: 
> http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Branding#Branding
>
> - It should look familiar to Windows users, so they don't consider the 
> office suite as "geeky" and specially designed for GNU/Linux users.
>
> - It should look up-to-date to most users, so Windows XP style should be 
> avoided (as it resembles too many people to an "old-fashioned" office 
> suite).
>
> - It should be accessible for visually impaired people (at least for the 
> most common cases like red-green color blindness).
>
> - It should have enough contrast to print well in greylevels.
>  >
>  > 2) what other conditions should be met
>
> - It should *not* use a standard Windows theme, because there are legal 
> issues [1].
>
> - It should be available for most users, because providing screenshots 
> is a task that might be solved by new contributors on their first steps 
> into our community (if we provide the necessary background to take the 
> screenshots in a consistent way).
>
>  >
>  > 3) which existing UI theme would serve best as standard for
>  > screenshots
>
> Sigrid already uploaded a variety of themes to this wiki page:
> http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/DE/Doku/Allgemein/Screenshots
>
> On the de-discuss list she voted for the theme "Clearlooks" because
> - it is the standard theme on Gnome
> - it has been ported to KDE as "Cleanlooks"
> - it is available for Windows XP too, so even Windows users can take 
> screenshots without the legal restrictions mentioned above.
> (sorry, German:[2])
>  >
>  > Do you think these 3 questions could lead to a consensus on a theme
>  > to be used? Should we add more points?
>
> Best regards
>
> Bernhard
>
> [1]: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/website/msg01950.html
> [2]: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/de/discuss/msg06547.html
>
> (Mail-archive.com seems not to be reachable at the moment)

My main concern, as a publisher of printed editions of the user guides,
is that the screenshots print well in graylevels. They need good
contrast, not too dark a background, and text in highlighted items (e.g.
on selection lists and in the title bar) should be readable. I find that
reverse-colour (white text on a dark-coloured background) or white text
on a pale background (as in some Ubuntu themes) often does not print
well, but black text on a light gray background does print well. Some
colours turn into light gray when printed, so if the highlight colour is
pale and the text is black, it works fine.

I would love to have a theme that used a pale version of LibreOffice
green as a background colour for title bars and highlighted text, with
text in black. It would carry out our colour scheme, look great on the
website and in PDFs, yet would print well in graylevels.

--Jean


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