Making screenshots

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

People,

I've added a small section describing a few criteria for
a good screenshot. Check it out at:

http://www.dssd.ca/wine/Wine-0.9-TODO.html#screenshots

Now, if you feel like doing screenshots, please forward
them to:

Brian Vincent

how's collecting them.

[Francois Gouget]

On Tue, 12 Nov 2002, Dimitrie O. Paun wrote:
> People,
>
> I've added a small section describing a few criteria for
> a good screenshot. Check it out at:
>
> http://www.dssd.ca/wine/Wine-0.9-TODO.html#screenshots

Let me just add a few recommendations:

* you say big screenshots are bad which I mostly agree with. If a
standard size were to be decided upon I would rather vote for 1024x768
than for 800x600. However that's not my point here. My point is that one
should not take a screenshot of 1600x1200 and scale it to 800x600. This
makes the fonts unreadable as is shown by your last screenshot
(http://www.dssd.ca/wine/wine-ss-ok-small.png). Instead I would
recommend to start a VNC server or a second X session with the right
resolution and take a screenshot of that.

* the second recommendation would be to make sure it shows nice fonts.
So install the fonts from http://sourceforge.net/projects/corefonts/ and
make sure you have a FreeType library with hinting (or use CrossOver
Office ;-).

* if you take the full desktop, then avoid fancy backgrounds. The best
would be to use the distribution's default look and feel to make it more
recongnizable.

Finally I'm not too hot on systematically taking a screenshot of a full
desktop. If the screenshot is to go in the application database then I
think taking just the application window is enough. We also need
screenshots of full desktops but not that many. In some cases a partial
desktop could be enough, especially if the application window is small
(CD players, Trillian, etc).

[Shachar Shemesh]

Francois Gouget wrote:
> Finally I'm not too hot on systematically taking a screenshot of a full
> desktop. If the screenshot is to go in the application database then I
> think taking just the application window is enough. We also need
> screenshots of full desktops but not that many. In some cases a partial
> desktop could be enough, especially if the application window is small
> (CD players, Trillian, etc).

I  think people tend to take full screens because they think that 
otherwise noone will believe this is, indeed, Unix running the app.

Sh.

[Dimitrie O. Paun]

On November 13, 2002 01:19 am, Francois Gouget wrote:

Thanks for your input. I've updated the section accordingly, please
check it out. I am still missing a *good* example shot, that
illustrates all the points we are making. Help with this one is
appreciated.
> If a standard size were to be decided upon I would rather vote for 
> 1024x768 than for 800x600.

*I* much prefer 1024x768 myself, as I run in 1600x1200. But according to
most polls (Slashdot, etc.), most people still run 1024x768, and at that
resolution, it takes scrolling to see a 1024x768 screenshot... And that
blows chunks, really. So 800x600 seems to be a good compromise.
> If the screenshot is to go in the application database then I
> think taking just the application window is enough.

I'm not sure about this. In fact, I think we _have_ to have a bit of
desktop. If you want just screenshots of the app, click on the link
that takes you to it's homepage, you'll find plenty there. We are
trying to showcase *Wine*. Wine is the glue between the app, and
Linux, and you need both to show that the glue works...