Peter H-B: Okay, since you volunteered (and know more about
producing good graphics than I do), you're in charge of this
project. Thank you!
It would be good to get Dick, Robyn, and any other volunteers
involved, too: training us all to do the graphics properly would
be as much a contribution as doing them all properly yourself.
Which reminds me, we need to produce a "how-to" for our writers,
which would also be useful for people working at the main OOo
site too.
I suggest each person working on this just pick a book and go
through the chapters looking for figures that include drawing
objects that have not been made into a single image and fixing
them. Peter, I assume you are doing that for the Impress Guide.
BTW, I've found that many figures fool me into thinking they are
single images, because they have been "grouped", but those fall
apart when exported. A quick way to locate the problem figures is
to export a chapter into HTML and see which images break up,
though I'm sure there are other ways to find them fairly quickly.
Once you've fixed the problem figures, you can replace them into
the chapter, then upload the chapter to the Feedback folder for
the book, as Peter has been doing for the Impress Guide.
On a related topic: some images are just too big to be suitable
for the docs. They either don't fit the page, or they waste a lot
of space for no useful reason. This is even more noticeable on
the smaller pages used for the printed copies of the book: some
images that fit fine on full-size paper must be reduced to fit on
the smaller pages. That is why I resized a lot of them while
editing the chapters.
Peter, I haven't yet had a chance to look at the changes you've
made in the Impress Guide, so I don't know if there are still any
images that I consider too big; but I hope to get to those
chapters this weekend and I'll let you know if I find any that I
think are a problem.
And again on graphics: please, everyone, choose combinations of
colours (especially background colours) that print out well in
black-and-white. Otherwise I have to redo those images for the
printed books. I will compile a list of problem images as I come
across them.
Lastly, for other writers and reviewers: when working on drafts,
I think it's perfectly acceptable to use the quick-and-dirty
techniques (including OOo's drawing objects) to produce figures.
For me at least, doing figures properly takes too long when
drafting material: I'm focused on other things. Where I have
failed is in not going back and fixing the pictures properly when
the document is otherwise ready for publishing. I'm so glad that
Peter H-B is spending the time (and sharing his knowledge) to
improve that side of the docs.
--Jean
