Re[2]: [lmi] Generating screenshots automatically

[Vadim Zeitlin]

On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 18:07:50 +0100 Vaclav Slavik <address@hidden> wrote:

VS> On Wed, 2009-02-11 at 16:45 +0100, Vadim Zeitlin wrote:
VS> >  Unfortunately I don't see how to do this automatically because the
VS> > placement of these annotations usually needs to be carefully chosen
VS> > manually to make them nicely looking or even just readable.
VS> 
VS> I'd expect the techniques used for labels placement in GIS
VS> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automatic_label_placement) to give good
VS> results here too -- it should be a simpler task, because we want the
VS> labels only around the screenshot, not all over the map. But I never
VS> tried, so it's at best an educated guest.

 Yes, ok, I should have qualified my sentence above: I don't see how to
_easily_ do this automatically. I'm sure that this could be done by
spending enough time/effort on it but I'm not sure how appropriate would
this be in this case.


VS> >  A variation: create a DIA file containing the screenshot and the text
VS> > boxes with the help text. 
VS> 
VS> ...and instead of generating it from scratch, only update the manually
VS> tweaked files and preserve placement changes.

 Yes, this should still be relatively easy to do and would be almost
perfect, wouldn't it?

VS> A generic SVG editor is less useful than DIA -- DIA understands
VS> diagrams and you can e.g. drag a label without having to worry about
VS> the arrow, it will be updated automatically. That's not the case with
VS> generic vector graphics editors.

 Right. But maybe there are some diagram SVG-based editors? As I said, I
really don't know any good tools here, DIA does work but is annoyingly
buggy.

VS> > I only know of Inkscape (and only because it uses wx) 
VS> 
VS> FYI, it uses gtkmm, not wx.

 Sorry, I confused it with Xara (just to prove my point of not knowing
about the tools in this domain I guess).

 Thanks,
VZ