Hi,
From my point as a user, I very much like some screenshots,
though, they should be selected wisely and be not outdated.
It gives you an overview .. a picture of what a program looks like
and where to find it.
You can more easily find out, if you are in the right position, or
just on the wrong end of dialogs and options.
Last year, I was training our new software developers in a new
location. I made lots of presentations about
how to use our tools including Eclipse/CDT and e.g. Rhapsody,
DOORS and other tools.
Preparing a 2h powerpoint slide took me about 1..2 days and most
of the time was taking and preparing screenshots
and bringing it into a form to show procedures.
I myself also dislike pure textual guides, sometimes I just get
lost in such guides.
Just think about, if you tell someone to go to
"Window"->"Preferences"-->"C/C++"->"Editor"->"Syntax
Coloring" ...
You hit here several things at once .. MenuBar, MenuItem,
TreeItem, TreeItem subNodes, Prefrence Settings page
which also has sub trees until you finally hit the settings for a
specific Color/Font setting.
There are also several Toolbars, like the main toolbar, a toolbar
in a view (e.g. debugger, outline, search,
object/type hierarchy, include browsers etc. .. I think, if you
just describe that textual, users might get lost.
Am 22.03.2013 01:55, schrieb Marc Khouzam:
I think it may be good to look at each case individually. If the textual description is short and easy to understand, then I think it is fine to get rid of the screenshot.
"A picture is worth a thousand words"; if a screenshot is meant to illustrate something that can be described clearly in one sentence, then we probably don't need the screen shot. It'll be a judgment call on your part.
BTW, thank you for improving the docs. It was seriously needed and will be very valuable to users.
Best regards,
Marc
----- Original Message -----
From: Jesse Weinstein <jesse.weinstein@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx" <cdt-dev@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 21-03-2013 19:48
Subject: [cdt-dev] Screenshots in the Reference documentation
Currently we have (mostly very out-dated)
screenshots at the top of most of the menu, preference and
other reference documentation pages (e.g. in the
org.eclipse.cdt.doc.user plugin). I’m not actually
convinced that the screenshots are actually a Good Idea.
They require the help pages to be very wide, which prevents
their use in context (i.e. when you click on the (?) in the
preferences, they require regular updating, and they are not
consistent across platforms. And basically, they’re
redundant with the actual menus or preference panes.
Looking at the other manuals, it’s a
mixed bag. JDT doesn’t have screenshots; the Platform has
them, but they aren’t at the top; PDE has them for
preferences, but not for menus (although that might just be
because it doesn’t have much menu documentation); EGit has
lots (in a somewhat confusing arrangement); the _javascript_
Development Guide has them (with a vast amount of
whitespace). So I suppose they are overall more used than
not, but I’m still not convinced they actually add anything.
I’d love to hear folks thoughts and
opinions on the topic…
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