Colors in alphabetical order?

[Spiff-O-Matic]

Done.

[engledogg]

Too late! Added "Greyscale". Ed, am I safe to apply (with a script) the new color to all instruction booklets that don't currently have any colors applied?

Not yet.  Not all instruction booklets are greyscale...just because we don't currently know a booklet's colors, I wouldn't necessarily default everything to greyscale...as we'll likely have to go back in and change a ton of them. 

Could you run a script first that would only find the colorless booklets first?  And then, by eyeballing it, I can see if it would be worth it to run a script to actually change them to greyscale...

Also, how do we handle a red, grey, black, and white booklet?  "Greyscale and red"?  That sounds sorta...dumb.

MIKE
engledogg

[shmax]

Too late! Added "Greyscale". Ed, am I safe to apply (with a script) the new color to all instruction booklets that don't currently have any colors applied?

Not yet.  Not all instruction booklets are greyscale...just because we don't currently know a booklet's colors, I wouldn't necessarily default everything to greyscale...as we'll likely have to go back in and change a ton of them. 

Could you run a script first that would only find the colorless booklets first?  And then, by eyeballing it, I can see if it would be worth it to run a script to actually change them to greyscale...

Also, how do we handle a red, grey, black, and white booklet?  "Greyscale and red"?  That sounds sorta...dumb.

MIKE
engledogg

Here's all the instruction booklets with no colors selected:
http://www.shmax.com/parts?q_filters_colors_exact=1&q_filters_form=1865&q_sort_type=colorScheme&q_sort_dir=asc&q_pagination_limit=20&q_pagination_offset=0

No clue about white, red and black. Maybe we should think about this some more...

[Spiff-O-Matic]

A lot of instruction sheets are grayscale with some red or purple (Autobot/Decepticon respectively) to highlight the parts being moved.

[shmax]

A lot of instruction sheets are grayscale with some red or purple (Autobot/Decepticon respectively) to highlight the parts being moved.

So you're suggesting we tag those with "Greyscale" and "Red"? I guess, but I thought the whole point of adding "greyscale" was to sort of make a separation between plastic colors and printed colors...

[shmax]

How about if I make a new material? So we'd have "plain", "metallic", "translucent", and "printed". "Full color" and "Greyscale" would exist only under "printed". Not sure what to do about "Prismatic"--maybe just move that under printed, as well.

[Spiff-O-Matic]

I'll defer judgement for the Dogg to decide.

[KidTDragon]

Sorry, I know I'm late to the party here, but what was wrong with using the existing "gray" option for an instruction book with grayscale (in addition to any other colors it may have had)? Forgive me if I'm being obtuse, but I'm not sure what the point is of having two options for what is for all intents and purposes the same color. Is someone who's searching for an instruction book that has grayscale more likely to search by "grayscale" than "gray", or is this a "covering all our bases" thing for the minority that would?

Not sure what to do about "Prismatic"--maybe just move that under printed, as well.

I'd recommend leaving "Prismatic" where it is. I can name a few Princess of Power figures that have prismatic stickers or clothing.

[shmax]

I think what bothers me is that "plain", "metallic" and "translucent" are mainly meant to describe plastic colors, whereas "greyscale" and "full color" are printing terms. When we snuck "full color" into the "plain" material  it was as an afterthought, but we knew it didn't really make sense when talking about plastic (we mention as much in the widget help text). We got away with extending the idea for prismatic/holographic and other shiny printing effects because if you use your imagination you can think of these things as being "metallic", but really we were stretching it.

Now that 'ol Spliffy is introducing the idea of "greyscale" (and even greyscale + red), we really need to re-evaluate the whole idea.

It's been 20 years since my graphic design days, but if memory serves "greyscale" is really just another term for monochromatic printing with black ink. The greyscale + red sheets mentioned by Engledogg are technically just duotone, meaning black and red ink.

So I guess what I'm suggesting--for the moment, anyway--is that we just completely separate the plastic colors from printed colors. We would add a "Printed" material (alongside "plain", "metallic", and "translucent", which would be understood to refer to plastic colors), and it would be home to printing terminology. It would list the same colors as the other boxes, but also have "Full color" and "Prismatic/Hologram" and other fancy effects. To describe the greyscale/red item mentioned previously, you would just check "Black" and "Red" (but not "white", as no white ink is used).

I have to head off to see the family in a few, but I'll see if I can produce a comp before they come pick me up...

[engledogg]

Yeah, after all that, I'm all for going with what we had.  I think this greyscale business is unnecessary and too much work.  If I see a booklet that is red, black, grey and white, but I'm only supposed to pick "black and red"...I'm definitely not a fan of that.  We're supposed to be describing the colors we're seeing, not the inks used to make the thing.  Yes, I realize that black and white are automatically implied when choosing greyscale, but what will show up on a record?  Black and red?  Or black (greyscale) and red?  Even so, are we sure that every user knows what "greyscale" even means?  I mean, I would hope that they do, but...

Long story short, kill greyscale and everyone can just put up with a couple more clicks.

shmax, unless you come up with some really super-awesome, magic script that can do it automatically, in order to convert every instruction booklet that is currently using "part" colors to "printed" colors...that's gonna be THOUSANDS of clicks.

MIKE
engledogg

[Spiff-O-Matic]

I agree at this point. I was simply thinking about a Grayscale option under the Full Color option, but didn't think through all the other ramifications of it.

So for future reference, what SHOULD be chosen for a grayscale printed instruction sheet? Like I said before, I've been doing black, white, gray and whatever other highlight color may be on there.

[shmax]

Okay, so what am I doing, removing "greyscale"?

[engledogg]

I think so...unless there are any objections.

In the future, we can always revisit this stuff if need be, so no worries.

MIKE
engledogg

[KidTDragon]

So for future reference, what SHOULD be chosen for a grayscale printed instruction sheet? Like I said before, I've been doing black, white, gray and whatever other highlight color may be on there.

I'd say stick with that.

[engledogg]

So for future reference, what SHOULD be chosen for a grayscale printed instruction sheet? Like I said before, I've been doing black, white, gray and whatever other highlight color may be on there.

I'd say stick with that.

Yep.

MIKE
engledogg