Hello,
On 2007-November-13 , at 09:23 , Michael Grosberg wrote:
I'm trying to create icons for Inkscape's Tango icon set.
Glad to know you started working on this.
I noticed that while the icons in the current default set are designed as 16x16 pixel icons, they are rendered as 13X13 icons.
As far as I know, this all depends on the GTK theme you are using. In my theme the icon sizes are: gtk-icon-sizes = "gtk-menu=16,16:gtk-dialog=48,48:gtk-dnd=32,32:gtk- button=20,20:gtk-large-toolbar=24,24:gtk-small-toolbar=16,16:inkscape- decoration=12,12" So the menus are the same as gtk-small-toolbar and are 16x16 px, so they look great in the two. These sizes are pretty standard sizes for GTK themes (they are taken from a Clearlooks theme). The only Inkscape specific definition is the inkscape-decoration size: the size of the four affect buttons, the lock and visibility toggles next to the layer drop down and such.
I tried first to recreate the import and export icons.
Argh, did you get the Tango specific file with some already designed Tango icons: http://inkscape.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/inkscape/inkscape/trunk/ share/icons/tango_icons.svg?view=log Because in this set, the Import and Export icons are already designed in Tango style and they look quite good already IMHO.
They look fine on the toolbar, but in the menu they don't look well at all. Strangely, the other icons look somewhat better. It almost looks as if the two icons I created are being rescaled using a "nearest neighbor" algorithm instead of interpolation. I checked and double checked - they are exactly on the grid and in the same size as the rest of the icons.
So, I'd like to know, first, as long as this size is used, what should I do to make the icons look OK?
Unfortunately, that's the limitation of vector icons: they look good at one size but don't look so good when rescaled, particularly when they are downscaled. There should be hinting rules (as there are for some fonts) for them to look OK a smaller sizes. And this is not possible at the moment.
Secondly, why was the 13X13 pixels size used in the first place? As far as I know Inkscape is the only app using this size.
Again, that would be your GTK theme.
I also noticed odd icon sizes both in the SVG file (such as 27X27 icons)
That's strange, which ones? Current ones or Tango ones? Many of the Tango icons need to be scaled properly and tweaked to their final size. In all cases, the best pratice is to include a transparent square of the correct final size at the bottom of each group and make everything fit in. In addition, Tango sizes do not define 24x24 icons but use 22x22 icons with one pixel on each side.
and on Ubuntu, some icons that should be small such as the four "affect" buttons at the end of the select and transform toolbar are excessively large.
That's probably because Inkscape-decoration is not defined. In which case it defaults to 75% of the menu icon size. My best guess is that, since your menu icon size is already very small (13x13), 75% of it is too small and GTK falls back on a default size such as 24x24 or so, which makes them huge. All in all, I'd say you problem is mainly that the menu size is 13 and not 16. Inkscae-decoration size is meant to be a bit smaller than the rest of the toolbars. Because of this, I find it strange to default to 75% of gtk-menu instead of 75% of gtk-small-toolbar (which is used in the toolbar). I raised this problem already but there was no follow up. Post a bug report about it showing that, in your case, using the menu size defeats the purpose.
One more question I'd like to open for debate is, are too many icons used in the menus? Usually, only "important" features get icons, to make them more easily recognizable in a long menu. Giving everything an icon misses the point because easy recognition is no longer possible. We can still have all the icons in the icons.svg file, but I think the number of actually used icons in the menu should be lower.
I agree. I would propose to suppress: File: Save As Document Metadata Input device Close Quit
Edit: Undo history Paste in place Make a bitmap copy (because the icon is hard to interprete anyway) Select All in All Layers View: Zoom > Zoom 1:1, 1:2, 2:1 Zoom > Previous and next Messages Scripts Previous and Next window Duplicate window
Layer: Rename Layer Move selection to layer above/below
Object: Object properties But ADD icons for clip and mask which convey their meaning better (and add keyboard shortcuts also maybe)
Path: That's a tough one: most icons there really serve a purpose. Maybe Object to path Trace bitmap (or at least redo the icon which really does not help currently) Linked offset
Text: Remove from path Unflow Remove manual kerns
I propose all those either because there are other icons surrounding them which convery enough meaning to deduce what the menu command without icon will do (ex: put text on path and remove text from path), or because they are seldom used commands, or because conveying the meaning of the command in an icon would be difficult (based on the fact that the icons currently in use does not work very well) and hence, adding the icon does not remove confusion, rather the contrary. Of course all these are personal opininons.
Just my 2 cents.
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/