Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 05:05:03PM +0200, Christoph Haas wrote: the matter has been discussed at least twice already. Roberto C. Sanchez brought the matter back up in January 2008. On d-d? I can't find that thread in the list archives... I would like to raise the issue of licensing. Is a screenshot a derivative work from which it is taken? Could it therefore fall under the same license as the parent (or in the case of the GPL, have to fall under the same license)? I've heard it mentioned that screenshots could be considered quoting under fair use. I'm not sure what fair use grants you and whether it preserves DFSG freedoms. Of course, the content need not be DFSG-compatible if it is hosted on a website, but it would seem to me that it is very desirable for it to be. This issue is also being discussed in #487218 against games-thumbnails (which puts the screenshots in the archive). -- Jon Dowland -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 02:40:20PM +0100, Jon Dowland wrote: On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 05:05:03PM +0200, Christoph Haas wrote: the matter has been discussed at least twice already. Roberto C. Sanchez brought the matter back up in January 2008. On d-d? I can't find that thread in the list archives... [EMAIL PROTECTED] and [EMAIL PROTECTED] were the two previous discussions. -- James GPG Key: 1024D/61326D40 2003-09-02 James Vega [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 9:40 PM, Jon Dowland [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I would like to raise the issue of licensing. This is being looked into by SPI's legal counsel. I'll be sure to forward the findings to the games-thumbnails bug and debian-legal. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Michael Banck wrote: Also, we should probably include window decorations to not make the screenshot look funny I don't buy that a screenshot without window decorations somehow looks funny. However, if an implementation wants to, it can decorate a screenshot at display time with whatever decorations seem appropriate. Of course, that only works if all screenshots are taken without decorations. -- see shy jo signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 05:24:44PM +0200, Michael Banck wrote: Before people submit dozens of screenshots all looking slightly different, I suggest first deciding on some standards, like making sure screenshots use the default GTK or Qt theme Debian uses. Back when I was involved in the Ubuntu documentation team, someone produced a little guideline for taking screenshot: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/TakingScreenshots?highlight=%28screenshot%29 It does not mention themes and somesuch, but it does address the issue of DPIs and color depth rather nicely; I recall careful tradeoffs were made to have a single screenshot that would look decent on screen as well as on print. Ciao, Enrico -- GPG key: 1024D/797EBFAB 2000-12-05 Enrico Zini [EMAIL PROTECTED] signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Quoth Joey Hess [EMAIL PROTECTED], on 2008-07-23 12:45:03 -0400: I don't buy that a screenshot without window decorations somehow looks funny. One data point: a screenshot with no window decorations loses a small amount of information, primarily the caption used for the window. Interesting ways of working around this might involve storing the caption as metadata, or storing the screenshot with decorations and then storing the rectangle corresponding to the client area as metadata. --- Drake Wilson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:53:14AM -0500, Drake Wilson wrote: One data point: a screenshot with no window decorations loses a small amount of information, primarily the caption used for the window. Interesting ways of working around this might involve storing the caption as metadata, or storing the screenshot with decorations and then storing the rectangle corresponding to the client area as metadata. You are assuming one application = one window, aren't you? Anyhow, the whole discussion about windows declaration seems quite useless to me: decorations are just a tiny bit in the information a screenshot can convey to the potential user, especially considering that most screenshot submitters will be using, say, 4 different window managers, most of which will just have the default theme. If decorations really bother people, just add a caption (maybe automatically generated using the yet to come reportscreenshot command line utility) stating: screenshot took under GNOME x.y, using metacity x.y, theme bla. That's it, at least that way we won't hinder screenshot submissions due to too constraining, annoying requirements to *just take a screenshot*. Cheers. -- Stefano Zacchiroli -*- PhD in Computer Science \ PostDoc @ Univ. Paris 7 [EMAIL PROTECTED],pps.jussieu.fr,debian.org} -- http://upsilon.cc/zack/ I'm still an SGML person,this newfangled /\ All one has to do is hit the XML stuff is so ... simplistic -- Manoj \/ right keys at the right time signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Quoth Stefano Zacchiroli [EMAIL PROTECTED], on 2008-07-24 00:33:01 +0200: On Wed, Jul 23, 2008 at 11:53:14AM -0500, Drake Wilson wrote: One data point: a screenshot with no window decorations loses a small amount of information, primarily the caption used for the window. Interesting ways of working around this might involve storing the caption as metadata, or storing the screenshot with decorations and then storing the rectangle corresponding to the client area as metadata. You are assuming one application = one window, aren't you? Well, there's a difference between one application is one window and one screenshot is one window; if you have multiple windows in a single screenshot then you have to have the decorations so that you can tell them apart, so none of the above comes into play. But yes, I think the thread is wandering somewhat, so I'll shut up now. :-) --- Drake Wilson -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Drake Wilson wrote: Well, there's a difference between one application is one window and one screenshot is one window; if you have multiple windows in a single screenshot then you have to have the decorations so that you can tell them apart, so none of the above comes into play. One could just start the application and its windows in a bare X; no window manager running at all. Xnest is a great tool for this. -- John H. Robinson, IV [EMAIL PROTECTED] http WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above, sbih.org ( )(:[ as apparently my cats have learned how to type. spiders.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Hi, Christoph Haas wrote: - Propose a new optional debian/control field X-Screenshot: pointing to an URL serving an image file (PNG, JPG) I don't think this is needed and could significantly bloat Packages.gz - Create a new tree on hg.debian.org to host screenshots. - Alternatively provide a web service that hosts screenshots so that packages can point to it (e.g. http://screenshots.debian.net/PACKAGE). The service should also scale down the pictures to a reasonable size suitable for thumbnail display (max 150x150). (I can program that if needed. The only problem is probably authenticating the maintainer. Maybe a simple email interface checking PGP signatures will do. Needs further brainstorming.) - Change packages.debian.org to show the thumbnail from the package's control file. I will work on a patch if desired. - Add this feature to package managers (synaptic, kpackage, ...). I don't know enough about GUI programming yet that I could possibly help here. Instead of all that, why not creating this infrastructure under a debian.net (like screenshots.debian.net) domain and when it's ready asking for it to be linked from the PTS, for instance? Package managers could - after the solution is sufficiently stable - fetch from it when browsing packages. You could adopt a standard url syntax for referring to specific packages (like screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name) and create a way for maintainers to upload screenshots to it (via email, as you suggested, perhaps). This way we don't have to change anything in our infrastructure and still have a semi-official place to put this sort of information. Cheers -- Leo costela Antunes [insert a witty retort here] signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 05:05:03PM +0200, Christoph Haas wrote: So I'd like to get things moving. I assume we had to do this: Before people submit dozens of screenshots all looking slightly different, I suggest first deciding on some standards, like making sure screenshots use the default GTK or Qt theme Debian uses. Also, we should probably include window decorations to not make the screenshot look funny (but exclude the rest of the user's desktop). But then the question is, which WM to use and which theme? Personally, I'd say use metacity's default blue theme, except for Qt apps, which could use the default KDE theme. Michael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
A note: the games team has implemented goplay (debtags based game browser that uses games-thumbnails) and games-thumbnails (a big .deb of small screenshots). -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
* Michael Banck [EMAIL PROTECTED] [080722 17:27]: Before people submit dozens of screenshots all looking slightly different, I suggest first deciding on some standards, like making sure screenshots use the default GTK or Qt theme Debian uses. Also, we should probably include window decorations to not make the screenshot look funny (but exclude the rest of the user's desktop). But then the question is, which WM to use and which theme? Personally, I'd say use metacity's default blue theme, except for Qt apps, which could use the default KDE theme. As I already said on irc, I think having standardized screenshots makes people believe those are part of the window. I'd rather see no decorations at all or some randomized WM used for each image, so people see the decorations have nothing to do with the window. (Perhaps with some exception if some program uses some shade of green that clash with twm's window titles or things like that). Hochachtungsvoll, Bernhard R. Link -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Michael Banck wrote: On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 05:05:03PM +0200, Christoph Haas wrote: So I'd like to get things moving. I assume we had to do this: Before people submit dozens of screenshots all looking slightly different, I suggest first deciding on some standards, like making sure screenshots use the default GTK or Qt theme Debian uses. Also, we should probably include window decorations to not make the screenshot look funny (but exclude the rest of the user's desktop). But then the question is, which WM to use and which theme? Personally, I'd say use metacity's default blue theme, except for Qt apps, which could use the default KDE theme. Not all apps are either GTK or Qt. Some are dockapps, meant to be used with window managers such as FluxBox or Window Maker. Enlightenment has the concept of epplets, which are similar to dockapps. Window managers[1] deserve their own screen shots, where you would want the whole desktop. X Display Managers[2] should be eligible, too. [1] I count roughly forty-three window managers. [2] Five of these. -- John H. Robinson, IV [EMAIL PROTECTED] http WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above, sbih.org ( )(:[ as apparently my cats have learned how to type. spiders.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Leo costela Antunes wrote: You could adopt a standard url syntax for referring to specific packages (like screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name) and create a way for maintainers to upload screenshots to it (via email, as you suggested, perhaps). This way we don't have to change anything in our infrastructure and still have a semi-official place to put this sort of information. I like the url suggestion. I propose one modification: http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/0 http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/1 http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/n where image 0 is the default image displayed in rendering agent. For simplicity, they should be all the same format. I would suggest PNG. I am less certain how to handle the full/medium-sized images vs the thumbnail. -- John H. Robinson, IV [EMAIL PROTECTED] http WARNING: I cannot be held responsible for the above, sbih.org ( )(:[ as apparently my cats have learned how to type. spiders.html -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
On Tue, 22 Jul 2008, Christoph Haas wrote: - Propose a new optional debian/control field X-Screenshot: pointing to an URL serving an image file (PNG, JPG) [debian-devel-announce as soon as we are ready?] You don't need/want such a field. It serves no practical purpose. There's no reason to tie this information with the package's life. Screenshots should be able to evolve independently and shouldn't have to wait until the package is uploaded to be displayed/usable. You also probably want to have multiple screenshots for each application to preview all the important screens. And last, I like to remind the few reflexions we had when we discussed a framework for all kinds of (user-contributed) meta-informations during Debconf 6: http://wiki.debian.org/CRMI It might give you some ideas if you want to work on something more generic that includes the screenshots DB. Cheers, -- Raphaël Hertzog Le best-seller français mis à jour pour Debian Etch : http://www.ouaza.com/livre/admin-debian/ -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Christoph, Thanks for prodding again on this matter. I've been extremely busy. On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 05:05:03PM +0200, Christoph Haas wrote: Dear list... the matter has been discussed at least twice already. Roberto C. Sanchez brought the matter back up in January 2008. The response was very positive but nobody wanted to implement that. Several Debian end users in my circle would surely be happy about having screenshots available for GUI applications to get a quick impression of how different GUI programs look/feel like without tediously installing, trying and deinstalling them. The Description: doesn't really give a good mental picture and different maintainers choose different wordings there which makes applications hard to compare by just reading the text. So I'd like to get things moving. I assume we had to do this: - Propose a new optional debian/control field X-Screenshot: pointing to an URL serving an image file (PNG, JPG) [debian-devel-announce as soon as we are ready?] I agree with other comments that this is not necessary. If the service is centralized (like the screenshots.d.n that you suggest below) then looking for non-existent screenshots should simply indicate that no such screenshot exists. - Create a new tree on hg.debian.org to host screenshots. I'm not sure about this. But I personally am not a fan of hg. I think some sort of webservice that accepts signed uploads would be better. - Alternatively provide a web service that hosts screenshots so that packages can point to it (e.g. http://screenshots.debian.net/PACKAGE). The service should also scale down the pictures to a reasonable size suitable for thumbnail display (max 150x150). (I can program that if needed. The only problem is probably authenticating the maintainer. Maybe a simple email interface checking PGP signatures will do. Needs further brainstorming.) Yes, I like this better. - Change packages.debian.org to show the thumbnail from the package's control file. I will work on a patch if desired. I don't think that this needs to reference the control file. Simply checking the web service should be sufficient. - Add this feature to package managers (synaptic, kpackage, ...). I don't know enough about GUI programming yet that I could possibly help here. Actually that doesn't sound too hard. And it would be a neat little service. Let me know what you think and please step forward if you are already working on something like that. This time we will really do it. :) I know I have really wanted to get started on this, but keep lacking the time. I feel like we can probably get something substantial started this time. Perhaps a meeting on IRC would be a good idea. Maybe on a Saturday to get maximum participation? Regards, -Roberto -- Roberto C. Sánchez http://people.connexer.com/~roberto http://www.connexer.com signature.asc Description: Digital signature
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 11:05 PM, Christoph Haas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (I can program that if needed. The only problem is probably authenticating the maintainer. Maybe a simple email interface checking PGP signatures will do. Needs further brainstorming.) This is something that non-developers can easily help with (like debtags) and possibly get excited over, so it would be great if users could easily contribute. I'd suggest an accept-by-default model with the website doing size/etc checks and people watching uploads for spam/etc. -- bye, pabs http://wiki.debian.org/PaulWise -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
John H. Robinson, IV dijo [Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 08:50:26AM -0700]: I like the url suggestion. I propose one modification: http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/0 http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/1 http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/n where image 0 is the default image displayed in rendering agent. For simplicity, they should be all the same format. I would suggest PNG. I am less certain how to handle the full/medium-sized images vs the thumbnail. In any case, the version should be noted (and possibly expired, once it's oldstable or so) - http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/version/0 So, if this gets implemented, having a field in debian/control would be unnecessary - any apt front-end showing screenshots would know exactly where to look for them (and whether to show a warning of old screenshot if needed). -- Gunnar Wolf - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244 PGP key 1024D/8BB527AF 2001-10-23 Fingerprint: 0C79 D2D1 2C4E 9CE4 5973 F800 D80E F35A 8BB5 27AF -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Paul Wise wrote: On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 11:05 PM, Christoph Haas [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (I can program that if needed. The only problem is probably authenticating the maintainer. Maybe a simple email interface checking PGP signatures will do. Needs further brainstorming.) This is something that non-developers can easily help with (like debtags) and possibly get excited over, so it would be great if users could easily contribute. I'd suggest an accept-by-default model with the website doing size/etc checks and people watching uploads for spam/etc. What about using a phishtank-like system?; one user uploads, and a couple of other users agree that it is ok (or a DD or DM signs the output of md5sum file.png and sends it to the server to immediately accept it). IMHO it is a nice and scalable system. Cheers, Raphael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Gunnar Wolf wrote: John H. Robinson, IV dijo [Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 08:50:26AM -0700]: I like the url suggestion. I propose one modification: http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/0 http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/1 http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/n where image 0 is the default image displayed in rendering agent. For simplicity, they should be all the same format. I would suggest PNG. I am less certain how to handle the full/medium-sized images vs the thumbnail. In any case, the version should be noted (and possibly expired, once it's oldstable or so) - http://screenshots.d.n/bin-package-name/version/0 With a fallback url? ;) So, if this gets implemented, having a field in debian/control would be unnecessary - any apt front-end showing screenshots would know exactly where to look for them (and whether to show a warning of old screenshot if needed). -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Screenshots of GUI applications (again)
Christoph Haas wrote: Actually that doesn't sound too hard. And it would be a neat little service. Let me know what you think and please step forward if you are already working on something like that. These links might be of your interest: http://websvn.kde.org/*checkout*/trunk/l10n-kde3/scripts/screenshots.README http://trac.browsershots.org/ This time we will really do it. :) Kindly Christoph Cheers, Raphael -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of unsubscribe. Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
