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Subject:Re: What do you put in figure captions From:MAGGIE SECARA <SECARAM -at- MAINSAVER -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 8 Jun 1999 13:49:07 -0700
Personally, I'm all for descriptive captions. When the title is in the
figure, and the fig ref is right next to it as well, it seems awfully
repetitive to just repeat the title unless there's nothing else to say about
it. And it seems rude to expect the user to find the window they're looking
for if 16 of them have the exact same name.
Usually this is where someone says something about consistency, and I either
remind them of the proverb or point out that being consistently useful is
better than consistently dumb.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: John Posada [SMTP:jposada01 -at- YAHOO -dot- COM]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 08, 1999 1:41 PM
> To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
> Subject: What do you put in figure captions
>
> Hello, people...
>
> I have a Frame book of about 450+ pages and among
> those 450+ pages, I have 270+ images...mostly screen
> shots.
>
> Due to poor software design, the titles of the windows
> in the application are not descriptive of the
> contents. The same type of windows with different
> contents will have the same name in the title bar.
> BTW...this is why I have so many screen shots. It is
> hard to mention a window in the text without a picture
> when the contents is different and the person reading
> the instructions might think of one window when the
> software is displaying another.
>
> Because of that, I want to compose the figure caption
> based on a descriptive format based on the contents
> but I'm outvoted by one or two people around here that
> want me to use the title of the window as the figure
> title, regardless of how redundant they may be.
>
> The problem is that when I generate the Figure TOC
> (LOF to those in the Frame world), the list doesn't do
> much to help a person find a graphic of a window since
> he may find 12-15 figures listed with the same
> caption.
>
>
