Le 2011-06-26 01:38, Jean Hollis Weber a écrit :
Well, as you say, there are different needs. The documentation's first need should be that of print quality. If we are to submit our work to LuLu's for print, the buyers should definitely get what we consider a good representation of LibreOffice in type and screenshots. From an aesthetic point of view, not sure if all in gray is too appealing for users making use of reading our documentation online. It would be nice if we got the same print from one of our greens as with a gray. But if not, then gray should be it. BTW ... are the Lulu prints in colour or B/W?On Sun, 2011-06-26 at 02:15 +0200, Bernhard Dippold wrote:Hi Jean, Sigrid, all, Jean Hollis Weber schrieb:Jean wrote:[...] My first thought is that a variation on Clearlooks (colour and perhaps font) should work very well. But I want to do some printing tests on a b/w printer before saying more. I'll get back to this list with more comments later today (it's 07:00 here). --JeanMy tests suggest that for printing in grayscale, the best choice from Sigrid's collection uses Clearlooks modified to use the Green 1 colour for highlighting and title bar backgrounds; it has very good contrast with the white text in title bars and highlighted menu selections. I used Liberation Sans at font size 11.You probably used the bold version of Liberation Sans for title bars? In direct comparison to the standard here on my Ubuntu 11.04 (Ubuntu bold) it looks a bit less clean and calm. But as Liberation Sans is part of our binaries (IIRC) - if it has not been stripped off by the distributions already containing it - I'd go for it too. I created a screenshot of a LibO window using these settings: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/File:Clearlooks_-_Green1_-_Liberation_Sans_11pt_bold_.png It's quite similar to Sigrid's one, but I don't know the size of her "larger font", so I tried Jean's description. Compared to the standard Clearlooks theme the headings and selected items (look at my LibO shortcut on the desktop) are not as calm as with the lighter blue - the darker green with it's increased contrast looks a bit aggressive in my eyes. While this might be an optimum for greylevel printing, I don't think that this high contrast helps us to spread the idea of a friendly, free and open office suite when people look at the color version. Marketing is much more about feelings than facts. And if I want to convince possible users to try LibreOffice showing them a screenshot that looks less friendly than the desktop they know, it might become unnecessary hard. Even for printed documentation with colored screenshots I would suggest to use a different theme. Jean, you wrote, that this theme has "very good" contrast in the windows headings and highlighted text, while the other areas have "good" contrast. Do you think it would be reasonable to find a color with still "good" contrast for headings in greylevel, but harmonizes better with the positive attitude of our branding? I don't know if Green 2 would serve such a compromise best - perhaps we should think about keeping headings blue (staying more consistent with the view Windows users are used to), if this improves the contrast in greylevel while staying more friendly in color. LibOBlue 2 could be worth a try.The other parts of Clearlooks (grays and whites in dialog boxes) print clearly with good contrast. I would be very happy to see the Green 1 variation selected to be the standard LibreOffice theme.Sorry for not being convinced - perhaps we will not even be able to find a solution that fits all our needs. If you think Green 1 is the best solution not only for greylevel printing but for colored versions too, it's just my personal opinion that differs. (And I'm not the target group - neither for documentation nor for our website...)I agree with you that any colour chosen should harmonize with the positive attitude of our branding. I also agree that Green 1 is a bit aggressive. Green 2 will do; it prints well enough. Blue 2 seems a bit too bright when viewed in colour, but it prints fine. Blue 3 looks better to me, but the contrast with white text isn't so good; using Blue 3 with black text is much better in print. However, I haven't found a way to change the text in dialog box title bars from white to black. I still am not convinced that there is any real marketing or other advantage to having coloured title bars and highlighting *in the user guide illustrations* -- I don't see why they need to be the same, as the purpose and use of the two are different, and the screenshots themselves will be different (so no reuse advantage to us). To me having the user guide screenshots in gray DOES have advantages FOR THE USERS: they are less likely to be distracted by the difference beween whatever colours they see on their screen and the gray in the screenshots; and the gray looks less "foreign" to Mac users. But it's not my decision, and I'm not a marketing expert, and the vocal people all seem to want the user guides and the marketing material (website etc) to match... so I'm just looking for a good compromise solution. --Jean
For web and marketing teams, the green in the theme is pretty well called for, if we are to keep with the brand colour. It identifies the suite and lends itself well to brand recognition.
Would getting an opinion from someone involved at Lulu's be of any additional help as far as the print quality? They may be able to give us a little more input from the point of view of end product. I think we could convince them to offer some opinion on the matter if we had some samples for them to look at.
Then, we can all decide (vote). The "vocal people" and others can all participate on the design decision being well informed on the options, this, as per usual with design proposal and adoption decisions. We are looking at:
* a theme that is easily installable by members * a theme optimized for LibreOffice documentation screenshot print * a theme suitable for web and marketing purposesThe theme does not necessarily need to be of the same configuration for the two and may lead to 2 theme configurations.
Is there anything missing?BTW ... sorry I didn't participate on the testing of the samples as I don't think that I would have a well enough informed opinion on the print quality. I don't think my printer would give a good enough print to compare.
Cheers Marc -- Marc Paré http://www.parEntreprise.com -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to design+help@global.libreoffice.org Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.libreoffice.org/global/design/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
