Re: Who cares about ethics?

[Keri Morgret <morgret -at- stanfordalumni -dot- org>]

I'm too new to the profession to speak for most people, but I do have an 
ethics question on which I'd like feedback from the list.

I'm rewriting a manual that includes a lot of screenshots.  The software I 
am documenting often has two vertical panes in the interface, with a lot of 
dead space between the panes.  When I try to put the screenshot in my 
documentation, even cropped as closely to the edges as I can, I need to 
shrink it to fit it to the page - and the text is sometimes 
unreadable.  I've taken to putting my screenshot into MS Paint, selecting 
one pane, and "scooting" it over closer to the other pane.  Now I don't 
need to shrink the picture as much to fit into the documentation, and the 
text is more readable.  (this application does not have resizable windows, 
otherwise I would just shrink the window a bit and be done.)

I personally feel this is ethical - I'm not hiding any content, and I'm 
making the documentation more usable to the end reader.

But what about when I also scoot the OK and Cancel buttons over a little 
bit, so it looks more balanced, like I had taken the screenshot like that? 
What about when I line up a couple of elements in the forms so that it 
looks better visually, and makes it such that I can take a large amount of 
"dead" space out of the middle?  Again, I'm not deleting any content, but 
now I'm not 100% reflecting exactly what the interface looks like.

I am NOT doing anything of the sort for any marketing material.. and this 
is an end of life product that a third party has made, where correcting the 
problems of the interface is not an easy option.

I've been thinking about posting this for a bit now, and Dawn's post 
prompted me to go ahead and post.
I'm interested in seeing if others often find themselves in a similar 
situation, and what other views on the subject are.

Keri Morgret

At 08:05 PM 4/10/2003, you wrote: