your thoughts on screenshots?

[Karsten Wade]

On Tue, 2007-03-20 at 16:11 -0400, Jason Taylor wrote:
> I agree with the points/arguments made with the caveat that most people
> are visually oriented types, especially non-technical users. They aren't
> interested necessarily in reading through a paragraph of text where if
> they look at a picture with the information they need they are happy. 

What you are describing is more like a diagram.

Just a plain screenshot is as uninformative as staring at the actual
program.

Now, if that screenshot is covered in arrows and numbers and such that
*provide additional meaning*, then, that is a diagram. :)  I agree that
a good diagram can replace many lines of text, and do it much better.

Diagrams are also a hassle to translate, etc., but they are worth it.
If we can keep most of them in SVG format (such as from Inkscape), then
translating them is relatively easy (strings can be extracted,
translated, and reinserted during rasterizing.)

> I agree with you but that doesn't necessarily make it the right thing to
> do, I would personally lean more toward a use them *sparingly*, which is
> to say, use them only if for some reason you can't concisely describe
> with text what you are trying to accomplish, and that would be where
> editing/peer-review comes in?

Well, yes, in fact, I think that is a good/the common practice.  Use
sparingly.

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/documentation-guide/s1-screenshots.html

So, not a blanket rule.  A guideline.  When tempted to use a screenshot,
be sure that it is the best way to convey the information.

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade, RHCE, 108 Editor    ^     Fedora Documentation Project 
 Sr. Developer Relations Mgr.     |  fedoraproject.org/wiki/DocsProject
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