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

> To summarise, two objective points:
> * Some of the colours suggested in this thread should print just fine in
> grayscale by Lulu's printers.
>
> * If users print directly from the PDFs, the colours use up a lot more
> expensive ink or toner than does gray whether printed in colour or b/w.

Pardon, but while it seems only one version could be sent to print, the
Internet isn't going to run out of space any time soon.  Why not host two
versions-- one colored one for presentation, and another one in grayscale
with "Print Optimized" in the link name or description?  Many websites have
separate options for printable versions, and I think many users are used to
selecting a different print option if it's available.

> * Some users will find that the colours make the screenshots look very
> unlike what they see, and that may detract from their usefulness in some
> cases. This is an untested hypothesis, other than some observation.

I think the problem may be less the colors used so much as the icon set
used.  Documentation for Microsoft Windows programs is more or less constant
across all three major versions of Windows in play, because most consumers
can distinguish UI elements in their manual even if they're running XP
versus Vista, or vice versa.  There are also plenty of older guides to
Ubuntu Linux floating around back when the default theme was brown, and when
I was trying to figure out how to do things I never found the differing
colors to be particularly offputting.

On the other hand, although the icons will be in the same places on default
installs of LibreOffice as the screenshots, if there's a special theme used
the icons might look wholly different than whatever the user's running,
especially if the suite obeys the user's GTK preferences.  That could be
much more problematic.

> The documentation team is very small. Why spend time replacing hundreds
> of otherwise perfectly good (gray) screenshots with ones with colours?
> Yes, some screenshots do need replacing because they were taken with
> Windows or used a different Linux theme and thus are inconsistent.

Some icons lose contrast or meaning when they're in grayscale.  Any icons
that are dark blue or so may not stand out enough from the background,
making it much harder for the user to identify what exactly goes where.  It
also makes areas of the UI highlighted in colors harder to distinguish, for
example grayed-out options indicating that they are unavailable.

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 6:23 AM, Jean Hollis Weber <jeanweber@gmail.com>wrote:

> On Sun, 2011-06-26 at 19:29 +1000, Jean Hollis Weber wrote:
> > To summarise, two objective points:
> > * Some of the colours suggested in this thread should print just fine in
> > grayscale by Lulu's printers.
> >
> > * If users print directly from the PDFs, the colours use up a lot more
> > expensive ink or toner than does gray whether printed in colour or b/w.
> >
> > And one subjective point:
> > * Some users will find that the colours make the screenshots look very
> > unlike what they see, and that may detract from their usefulness in some
> > cases. This is an untested hypothesis, other than some observation.
> >
> > AFAIK, no one's answered this question yet: what is the advantage to
> > users of having colour in the screenshots in the PDFs?
> >
> > --Jean
>
> And another thing...
>
> The documentation team is very small. Why spend time replacing hundreds
> of otherwise perfectly good (gray) screenshots with ones with colours?
> Yes, some screenshots do need replacing because they were taken with
> Windows or used a different Linux theme and thus are inconsistent.
>
> It takes time to redo screenshots: not just the time to recapture the
> images but to check that they have been correctly done, show what they
> are supposed to, are correctly labelled, and so on. Many volunteers do a
> poor job with labelling or don't set up the shot so it shows what the
> text says it shows. Another round of proofreading is required, by people
> who pay close attention, and many don't.
>
> --Jean
>
>
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