The Never Ending Saga: Screenshots

[edunn@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

This message is being cross-posted to Framers and Techwr-L as the subject of
screenshots seems to come up on both lists with some regularity. While I'm not
in the software industry, we do have GUI touch screens installed on many (most)
of the new trains that we build. This means that for maintenance,
troubleshooting, and operation, screenshots are required.
Where there has been some great advice on how to get clean screenshots
(modifying your display before taking the screenshot) this doesn't apply when
there is no way to easily simulate the operation of the software on a desktop.
However, our procedure for getting screenshots is fairly straight forward.
Engineering must create initial design specifications that include the proposed
screens. These screens are initially designed using Visio. We then get a copy of
these Visio files and modify them as required to show the required situations
and data to support the instructions we are writing. The great thing is, that
all these screenshots are in a vector format and can be converted to WMF for
easy inclusion and perfect resizing in FrameMaker (or whichever
publishing/documentation package).
Doesn't software creation require the design of the various screens outside the
executable? Don't the various development packages create and save the various
screens, forms, and menus in some fashion?
A huge advantage is if some kind of source for the screens is available,
documentation can be finished before the program is functional. So unless your
group is adding functionality, buttons, etc. at the last minute and not just
trying its best to make the software usable and work according to
specifications, there is actually very little need for functional software to
write the manuals.

Eric L. Dunn



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