[Clipart] clipart Digest, Vol 46, Issue 7

[John Olsen]

>
>
> Message: 2
> Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2008 10:09:16 +0200
> From: Nicu Buculei <nicu_gfx at nicubunu.ro>
> Subject: Re: [Clipart] librarians
> To: Open Clip Art Library list <clipart at lists.freedesktop.org>
> Message-ID: <4781DE2C.6070708 at nicubunu.ro>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
>
> John Olsen wrote:
>> Seems lately that I am doing almost all the librarian work on the  
>> site.
>> If there are people on the list that would be able to assist in the
>> librarian job I can give them admin status to help out.  Basically  
>> you
>> just need to review some of the new files that come in and see that  
>> they
>> conform to the site guidelines
>> - http://openclipart.org/wiki/Guidelines - as well as just being  
>> valid
>
> A note about the guidelines: I have an issue with the cropping.
> You present in a figure (and this is a good thing) the *easiest* way  
> to
> automatically reduce the boundaries (even if the result is not
> aesthetically pleasing, without a couple of free pixels on borders and
> may be just wrong for images with drop shadows).
> The thing is that librarians should not be overzealous, and consider
> *not correctly cropped* images like
> http://openclipart.org/people/nicubunu/nicubunu_RPG_map_symbols_mountain.svg
>
> So maybe you can adjust the wording a bit on this particular item?
>
> -- 
> nicu :: http://nicubunu.ro :: http://nicubunu.blogspot.com
> Open Clip Art Library: http://www.openclipart.org
> my cool Fedora wallpapers: http://fedora.nicubunu.ro/wallpapers/
> my clipart collection: http://clipart.nicubunu.ro/
>



I agree Nicu.  The guidelines are primarily for authors as a guide for  
submitting art.  They are "guidelines" and not "rules".  Ryan, not I  
did the instructions for the cropping and it does note at the bottom  
that the cropping needs to be adjusted for the blur effect.  I added  
another note above too.  And there are exceptions where tight cropping  
is not the best choice.

That said, I think the librarians should show caution in changing any  
files.  I always try to write a review first to engage the author and  
get the author to fix their own files before fixing them myself.  I  
think it is better to teach people how to fix the problems rather then  
do the work for them every time.  Usually anything like this comes up  
in the dialog.  So usually our guidelines are right but when an author  
suggests a good reason for the file being as it is, then we usually  
defer to the author's preference.  In the case with your map graphics,  
papapishu felt you might be keeping those borders for a uniform size  
for the map pieces.  So I suggested she just ask you.  In this case  
your submissions were consistent and we know you know what you are  
doing.  So it seemed likely you wanted them that way.  But most of the  
time we are talking about people who don't even know images need  
cropping or that Inkscape uses page size as the crop area.

John Olsen/johnny_automatic