Internationalizing screen shots for customizable software

[Melanie_Albrecht -at- moldflow -dot- com]

on 11/3/99 12:58 PM, Rob Steiner wrote:

> The re-wording is going well, but we're kind of
> stumped on what to do with the screen shots, which are
> all in English.

Hi Rob

Our solution to that, which probably wouldn't work for you this time round,
is to not include screen shots in any of our documentation.  Any features
(windows, buttons, fields...) are referred to by name, and any purely
iconic buttons (no text) are included as graphics.

Each screenshot causes a lot of work: it needs to be updated for each
language, and also between releases.  Every time a feature changes, any
screenshots showing that feature have to be updated, even if the part of
the screen that you're discussing is unchanged.  This is unnecessary work.

Even though including screenshots can be helpful, we made a decision that
the time spent on updating them would be better spent doing other work to
improve the doc.

What do other people think about this approach?

Melanie Albrecht
Senior Technical Writer
Moldflow Pty Ltd
www.moldflow.com




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