2007/12/28, jiho <jo.irisson@...400...>:
On 2007-December-28 , at 12:31 , joel@...1709... wrote:
Hmm....this is proving quite difficult! How are we going to get a conensus? It seems like the group is pretty evenly divided between those who (like me) love the new icons, and those who hate them.
Really I agree with the points Bryce made yesterday. He talked about consistency across the free desktop, and consistentcy with host desktops. But if you look at this screenshot I made yesterday: http://launchpadlibrarian.net/11076114/C%3A%5CDocuments%20and%20Settings%5CF... , I'd go one step further: We need tango, because it makes inkscape consistent with itself. Notice that now the standard GTK Icons - New, Open, Save, Cut, Copy, Paste are all tango style. I love the consistancy across the top row now.
Also, strangely, I actually like the tango theme. I don't understand why so few do. People keep talking about pastel shades in the new theme: http://www.inkscape.org/images/tango_theme.png, but if you look at the old theme - the Rectangle, Elipse, Polygon, Paint Bucket, and Gradient tools each of them looks more pastelly (to my eye) than the new set (I think now perhaps that Rectangle, Elipse, Polygon are a little too vibrant)
I wonder how we'll resolve this difference of opinion.
I think this is just impossible given the current state of affairs. I personally don't appreciate the current set for the exact same reasons others like it (the black outline for example).
I think that the only way to solve the problem is to let the decision in the user's hands, and not in a way that requires everyone to create some config directories and move svg files around. The single concept everyone seems to agree on is *consistency*: Inkscape should be consistent with itself and consistent with the rest of the desktop. Every Inkscape user should open Inkscape and see it blend with the rest of its desktop. The only way to achieve this is to get icons the same way every other GTK application does, so that, if a user uses a GTK theme (that will probably contain some stock icons for things like a selector tool, a pen tool etc) these icons are used in Inkscape. Jon Cruz already advocated this and I can only support him now.
I know that quite some work has been put in the current system (icons preloading and all) but really, what are the advantages of this SVG icons system?
I see only two: 1- it gives greater control to Inkscape's own team over the icon system, making Inkscape less dependent on third parties. I think this relates to a bigger picture, in which Inkscape has a kind of "schizophrenic" aspect ;). It is divided between being a self- contained cross-platform design bundle and being a well integrated linux-only (probably even gnome-only) tool. I don't think there is a way to solve this. For a product to be truly great and integrated on one platform you have to make choices that make it worse on the others (otherwise it would mean that the platforms are the same, and there is no point in their separate existence in the first place). I do think however that Inkscape already relies on GTK and that using the standard GTK icon loading code will not do too much harm and won't let go too much control over Inkscape, particularly given the fact that some icons are already fetched this way.
2- it makes designing icons for Inkscape fairly easy: just open icons.svg and tweak. However, given the large number of icons Inkscape uses and given how hard it is to design some good looking icons (even if they only need to look good to you), this hasn't been put to much use. For example, I started to design a purely black outlined, Adobe like, icon theme and stopped after it has taken me three hours to just get the basic tools' icons right (to me). In addition, now that the export dialog makes it possible to export each group to a png image, connecting this workflow to a standard raster icon design workflow is fairly easy.
The price to pay for this system however is non-negligible:
- Inkscape does not look consistent with itself (stock GTK icons vs.
SVG icons) and with the rest of the desktop, whatever the platform is.
- The icons restrict the sizes that can be used in the toolbars,
because even though they are scalable they don't look good at sizes different from the ones they are designed at. Besides purely esthetic problems this raises accessibility issues.
- It disconnects Inkscape a bit from the icon design community since
designing, bundling and installing icons for Inkscape is not the same process than for the rest of GTK apps. This transfers the burden of creating such icons to the development team. This discussion is proof of that: it should never have occurred on this list actually. I am pretty sure that, if Inkscape used standard GTK icon loading, some icons specific to Inkscape will appear very quickly in the icons bundles on GTK art sites, for the simple reason that most people designing icons for GTK apps probably use Inkscape in one way or another.
To sum up, I think that Inkscape should use icons provided by the GTK theme, that people who like Tango can have it, that people who prefer stronger icons with darker outlines like there was in previous GTK themes can have them too, and that skilled icon designers like Michael or the authors of the current icon set can put their work to use in other apps, by making stock icons.
Agree: -There is a lot of work in the current system. It can be used for other projects. -Make it easy to make GTK icons from inkscape(for artists, not developers). -Use standard gtk procedures, so it's easy to change automatically when you change themes if icons are available. -Let the users,not developers choose. They are different environments with different necessities. -One can't fit all.
Is currently possible to use scalable toolbars in inkscape(put SVG to work)?. I don't know how. I would love to use scalable toolbars like the chemical sketcher: http://antigrain.com/screenshots/index.html
Jose