Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 19:10:05 +0200 From: Jeroen Ruigrok/Asmodai <asmodai@wxs.nl> To: "Deborah G. Lidl" <deborah.lidl@windriver.com> Cc: Valentino Vaschetto <logo@fadeto.blackened.com>, freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: key images in handbook Message-ID: <20010728191005.S65558@daemon.ninth-circle.org> In-Reply-To: <20010727182926.A3115@bsdi.com> References: <20010727141810.N11525-100000@fadeto.blackened.com> <20010727182926.A3115@bsdi.com>
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-On [20010728 01:30], Deborah G. Lidl (deborah.lidl@windriver.com) wrote: [replace key combinations with visual representations] >Allow me to unlurk for a few minutes and recommend against this. You are allowed. :) >Whether on a printed page or viewed on-line through a browser or PDF >viewer, one or two items in a KeyCap font are OK. As soon as you have >multiple keys represented in a KeyCap font, it looks like someone >dropped little boxes on the page. Your eye is drawn to the graphics, >not the text and the meaning conveyed by the text. Agreed. >The same thing is true of using trademark symbols or icons for tips or >other other items. Consider what section 1.2 (Welcome to FreeBSD) of >the Handbook would look like if it had FreeBSD(R) everywhere. That basically why you dedicate trademark and registered trademark at the start so that you're done with it and can concentrate on just using the normal word without any special symbols. Icons for tips are an annoyance indeed. Often they are captioned with a small cartoon, which totally distracts from the text. A warning or caution on the other hand _needs_ to pull in the reader's attention. A sidebar might be more useful instead of a `Tip' icon and less disturbing for the text. >At this point, most people using FreeBSD should be familiar with what >the various keys on the keyboard look like. So the visual cues aren't >necessary for learning those elements. I think the assumption for the scope is that the audience at least has prior computer experience and know how to seperate a mouse from a keyboard. >I wish I had usability study that I could point to to back up these >comments. I don't. And I didn't search very hard for any either :-) >That said, there is a fair amount of anecdotal evidence about how >KeyCap fonts in regular text detract from the readability. A bunch of my technical writing books all show examples of warning/caution, complete with icons and such, one uses tips with icons as well, but in comparison with the other books you notice how it distracts. They all use sidebars to provide additional information which just didn't fit in with the text, but does touch the topic at hand. >All this said, if you do add this support, definitely use a knob, and >have it disabled by default. I would like to remark I'd rather not have the key images used. But as Debbie eloquently said, if they need to be done, make a knob and default its use to off. -- Jeroen Ruigrok van der Werven/Asmodai asmodai@[wxs.nl|freebsd.org|xmach.org] Documentation nutter/C-rated Coder, finger asmodai@ninth-circle.dnsalias.net http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/developers-handbook/ Dreams are like Angels, they keep bad at bay, bad at bay, Love is the Light, scaring Darkness away... To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-doc" in the body of the message
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