Although intended to be a presentation tool, PowerPoint can serve as a terrific graphics editor for

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Using PowerPoint for Software Documentation
Although intended to be a presentation tool,
PowerPoint can serve as a terrific graphics
editor for software documentation. Its very easy
to illustrate architectures by drawing block
diagrams and to annotate imported bitmap images
such as screen shots. A little work in PowerPoint
can go a very long way toward making complicated
concepts and procedures simple. Using PowerPoint
also makes it very easy to borrow artwork from
marketing presentations and training courses.
The drawing toolbar in PowerPoint (and Word) is
so easy to use that an hours worth of practice
will have you producing professional-quality
technical artwork. Have some fun creating
throwaway slides and try out all the tools.
Keep in mind that you can type text right into
simple objects like rectangles.
Just select me and type inside
Use the Formatting toolbar to control fonts,
bolding, alignment, etc.
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The drawing toolbar actually contains a huge and
powerful set of tools in the Customize dialog.
Scroll through it just to see all the things you
can do. You can drag particularly useful commands
onto the toolbar. For example, I like to keep the
Elbow Arrow Connector handy.
But theres a downside. PowerPoint images are
stored in a vector graphics format called Windows
Metafile, which is entirely proprietary to
Microsoft.
There are virtually no other graphics programs in
the world that can properly render Windows
Metafile format or convert it to a bitmap. The
only program that can do the job reasonably well
is PowerPoint 2003, and it could be a lot
better. Hopefully, Microsoft will eventually
adopt the new scalable vector graphics standard.
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Annotating Screen Shots

• Take your screen shots and save them as bitmap
  files, as usual.
• Embed one or more bitmap files into a PowerPoint
  slide. Simply select a file, copy it to the
  clipboard, and paste it into the slide
• Use the drawing toolbar to draw boxes, arrows,
  etc.
• File gt Save As and select a bitmap format such
  as .PNG
• This dialog box appears

• Choose Every Slide. PowerPoint creates a
  directory of the same name as the presentation
  file and writes the bitmaps into it.
• Crop the bitmaps. Unfortunately, PowerPoint
  includes all the white space around the image.
  You can do this by editing the bitmap or by
  adjusting the anchored frame in FrameMaker.

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• Alternatives
• Take a screen shot of each PowerPoint slide,
  paste it into a graphics editor, crop it, and use
  it as your image. This requires more work and the
  end result is essentially the same.
• Copy the slide and paste it directly into
  FrameMaker, which has the ability to render
  Windows Metafile format. This bloats your files
  and is not recommended.

• The tricky part is getting the image scaling
  right in Frame.
• Create an empty anchored frame in which to place
  the graphic and note the width.
• Import the image. Frame displays an Imported
  Graphic Scaling dialog.
• Look at the image sizes in the parentheses. If
  none of the width values looks right, set a
  custom dpi in between the next smaller and the
  next larger preset. 200 dpi often works well
  for large dialog boxes. The image may look
  horrible in Frame but will look fine in the PDF.
  (Flame Its now been seven versions and the
  Frame developers still havent figured out how to
  render a scaled bitmap image in the editor. Sigh.)

Change this.
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Sample Slides From a Horror Show
Here are a few samples from the DB2 Dynamic
Update Module Guide, illustrating what has to be
the worst GUI Ive ever seen. It violates every
principle of good user interface design. By
following the pictures instead of the text, our
field people were able to get through this
ridiculously complicated, repetitive, and
error-prone configuration procedure without a
hitch.

• There are two things I would do differently now
• Use a special arrow to indicate where to start.
• Add comments to point out pitfalls.

Note this field looks like its already selected
but its not. Click it.
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