On Mon, 25 May 2009 18:30:53 +0100, Mihaela <myhaella5@...529...> wrote:
Reading the comments from bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/inkscape/+bug/379641 it seems that some people might feel the Tango icons are forced upon them. Maybe more time should pass and more comments gathered but it seems that a public poll about the default iconset on platforms might be the way to go. What do you think?
Assume that all of this has a big fat "IMO" attached to it.
The Tango icons are generally okay - they're too colourful in most cases but by and large the main tool box icons (pen, brush, 3d boxes etc) are clear enough.
The icons for "when scaling" are very poor. In particular, "scale stroke" and "scale radii" are almost identical to my eyes on a 1440x900 LCD monitor.
The "snap from and to centres of objects" and "snap from and to an object's centre of rotation" icons may as well be abstract designs for all they convey about their functions.
The "Edit global Inkscape preferences" and "Edit properties of this document" have not changed and remain the two icons I most often click incorrectly. I think removing the spanner from one of them is something that would help.
The "Tweak" icon is just bizarre: far too fully rendered for an icon (it's a bit creepy, actually) and not apparently connected to the idea of tweaking. Poking, perhaps, but not tweaking.
"Edit objects' colours, gradients, stroke width etc." icon seems substantially less clear than the old one.
The Zoom icons - page, drawing, selection - seem slightly less clear than the old ones.
Either the numbers or the arrow on the "Reverse path" menu item are superfluous - both is too much.
"Rename layer" simply doesn't need an icon in the first place. If there has to be one then it should be less cluttered.
There's far too much use of that ghastly orange colour in the alignment dialogue icons - I don't know anyone who likes orange THAT much! - although it is clear enough what is going on.
Overall the Tango icons work much much better than I thought they would. As a user I would say that they don't actually do anything *better* than the old icon set, although there are places where they are definitely worse. As a programmer, I would say that they show a lack of understanding about what an icon is for (it's not meant to be a work of art for a start) leading to an overuse of realistic shading where stylisation would perhaps be clearer.
TWW