[Bf-docboard] less graphics

[Bart Veldhuizen]

Hi Alex,

On Tue, 2002-12-31 at 20:06, Alex Heizer wrote:

I think this is a great proposal! It has only partially been described
in the Style Guide (see the link I sent earlier), so any additions that
you can make to it and to the general documentation process would be
greatly appreciated. I have included some comments below.

> Matt Ebb and I volunteer to work on this, if that's what everyone wants. 
> I just know from working with both print and Web that you need to take 
> different things into account for each as far as graphics are concerned. 
> What I propose, would be something along the lines of this:
> 
> 1. A set of graphics standards would be set up. This would include 
> conventions for size and content, i.e.: 300x200 pixel JPG at 50% 
> compression for the Web-based and other online documentation; 300x200 
> pixel JPG at 90% compression for a high-res PDF; and  2"x1.5" 300dpi 
> CMYK EPS for the print version. The image would contain only the 3D pane 
> for examples, or the button pane for settings.
> 2. Any screenshots would be done as large as possible, and any 
> renderings would be done to take into account finished output size, for 
> example, 1200x1200 for an image that would go on the printed page at a 
> finished size of 4"x4".
> 3. Someone (an individual or team of individuals) would collect the 
> images, process them according to the standards, and output them in two 
> or three versions with identical content, one for Web, one for print, 
> and one for a high-res PDF. These images would then be returned to the 
> source tree for inclusion in their respective products.

Better yet, why not ask authors to include .blend files instead of
graphics? We could automate the rendering of the graphics during the
make process of the documentation and generate the graphics up to any
resolution that we like! It may take a bit of figuring out how to
indicate cutouts and such, but I think it is doable.

> 4. Someone (an individual or team of individuals) would come up with a 
> cool, professional design that would showcase blender as a great program 
> that talented people do and should use and be a part of. Since print 
> design is different than Web design, that someone could create a couple 
> of slightly different, but complementary designs that make blender look 
> cool and professional whichever version you're looking at.
> 5. The someone's in points 3 and 4 would coordinate the design and 
> content to make sure it all looks consistent. This could also free up 
> authors to not worry about style and focus on content, since the 
> designers could ensure everything's formatted correctly and maintain one 
> copy.
>
> From what I understand, we can do a nice design once for the docbook, 
> which can then be output in different formats, like for a Website or a 
> plaintext version or for print. In which case, we should be able to set 
> up output templates so that when the online version is output it uses 
> the lo-res bitmaps, and when the printed version is output it will use 
> the high-res EPSes.

That is correct. We need to create stylesheets for each transformation
of DocBook/XML --> PDF, HTML or whatever. I'm not sure how difficult
this would be for the PDF version though, but we may be able to find
someone who likes to dig into this.

Bart


-- 
Bart Veldhuizen <bart@vrotvrot.com>