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The software documentation I've been creating lately contains lots of screen
shots: bitmap captures of various windows in Windows. When I need to show
the whole window in the paper docs, I can easily scale down the graphic in
Word. However,* I have found no way to scale the images when I need the
same screen shots in the on-line Help. (Well, I can "scale down" the bitmap
in any of several bitmap editors, but the text in the screen shot becomes
illegible almost instantly.) Those full-size screen shots take up an awful
lot of screen real estate.
I'm currently using Word and RoboHelp to create the Windows Help files,
including the Screen Capture utility which comes with RoboHelp for capturing
the windows. That utility is a lot slicker than Alt-PrintScreen plus
Paintbrush, but it captures bitmaps at the same coarse resolution...as does
every other Windows-compatible screen capture tool I've been able to find.
Does anyone know of a way to scale down screen shots for Windows Help files,
and still keep them legible? Please don't bother to suggest that I (1) use
a vehicle other than Windows Help or (2) eliminate the screen shots from the
Help files. Neither is a practical option at the moment.
TIA
K Watkins
kwatkins -at- quickpen -dot- com
speaking for myself, not my employers
