Date: Wed, 16 May 2001 13:17:26 +1000 From: "Doug Young" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> To: "Randy Pratt" <rpratt@ezwv.com> Cc: <freebsd-docs@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: (was) I'm leaving, now something like "anti official docs rant" :) Message-ID: <05a401c0ddb6$bc53aa80$0300a8c0@oracle> References: <01051513051703.00373@k6-2.weeble.com> <04ac01c0dd8b$f9cb8070$0300a8c0@oracle> <01051520314606.00373@k6-2.weeble.com>
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Thanks for the response Randy. I figured there might be a spot of "cheating" going on someplace :) At least that means I can do similar stuff with Netscape / Solaris rather than stuff around with the relatively poxy XFree thing. I have done a the occasional screen capture using an SSH / telnet / or VNC window in Windows .... it works OK with SSH & telnet for the but the result from VNC is nothing to write home about. A fair amount of your procedure is unfamiliar to me but I'll try to figure it out from your explanation. It would be nice to apply your "picture tells a thousand words" approach to all the docs (& particularly the man pages) .... be interesting to see how the "old guard" react to this stuff though. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Randy Pratt" <rpratt@ezwv.com> To: "Doug Young" <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au> Cc: <freebsd-docs@FreeBSD.ORG> Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 10:31 AM Subject: Re: (was) I'm leaving, now something like "anti official docs rant" :) > On Tuesday 15 May 2001 18:11, you wrote: > > Magic !!!! ..... guaranteed way to reduce the number of "stupid > > newbie questions" to a fraction of what it is. > > That was the original > > > A couple questions .... I presume the screenshots were captured within > > X Windows using something like Gimp ..... if thats the case then how > > are the really early stage screenshots eg "Kernel Configuration Menu" > > done ?? > > That's a common question I get. The "screenshots" aren't actually produced in > the conventional sense. I used two computers when creating the documents: one > for the actual installation and another to document the process. So no, > they're not produced in X. > > Each screen is hand-crafted using Netscape's wysiwyg composer to produce html > tables that very closely resemble the installation screens. And yes, it does > take a lot of time. Once I had the basic format, its was relatively easy to > make modifications. > > > I'm aware of the "script" thingy, but there doesn't appear to be any > > way to use that before first reboot. I've traditionally used actual > > photos for documentation & this is OK for hard copy & LAN use but the > > size of photos make webpages a bit slow. g "Kernel Config Menu" > > Exactly. That was one of the reasons for using the html table approach. They > are text-based and load very fast. That's important to people who have to pay > per-minute charges for net access. > > I'm switching to the use of images to ease the conversion to sgml. I've tried > to take the digital camera images and reduce their size but the quality > degrades. I loaded the html table documents in my browser and used XV to > capture the frame and crop. To further reduce the image file size, I change > the format to 8 bit mode and save as a png image. Most of the images in the > new format are 3k to 8k in size (a few larger, a few smaller). > > Granted, its a bit of work but its been something I could contribute back to > the project. Any input you could offer would certainly be appreciated; > however, I'm going to "freeze" the document until the sgml is finished. Its > too hard to hit moving targets. > > Randy > > > ----- Original Message ----- > > From: "Randy Pratt" <rpratt@ezwv.com> > > To: "Nik Clayton" <nik@FreeBSD.ORG> > > Cc: <freebsd-docs@FreeBSD.ORG>; "Doug Young" > > <dougy@gargoyle.apana.org.au>; "Murray Stokely" <murray@osd.bsdi.com>; > > "Jim Mock" <jim@FreeBSD.ORG> > > Sent: Wednesday, May 16, 2001 3:05 AM > > Subject: Re: (was) I'm leaving, now something like "anti official docs > > rant" :) > > > > > There is now a 4.3 version of my "Install Preview" now posted at: > > > > > > http://people.freebsd.org/~rpratt/43/index.html > > > > > > There is a series of these dating back to the 2.x release and have > > > > been > > > > > linked from the http://www.freebsd.org/tutorials/ page for quite > > > > some time. > > > > > I've also created a version for the 4.3 that uses png captures of > > > > the html > > > > > tables for purposes of conversion to sgml. These are available at: > > > > > > http://people.freebsd.org/~rpratt/newprev/ > > > > > > and in tarball from: > > > > > > http://people.freebsd.org/~rpratt/newprev/4.3install.tar > > > > > > I've very grateful to Murray for getting the ball rolling for > > > > conversion to > > > > > sgml. It'll make it easier for others to contribute improvements and > > > > help > > > > > keep things up to date. Learning the doc project ropes is the next > > > > task on my > > > > > list. > > > > > > I gather from some of the threads I've read on the lists that people > > > > don't > > > > > know these exist. Once the documents are reviewed and committed, > > > > perhaps we > > > > > should consider some additional links to them. > > > > > > Randy > > > > > > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org > > > with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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