On Thu, Dec 27, 2007 at 12:58:29PM -0400, bulia byak wrote:
In general, while the tango icons now start to approach the current ones, I still don't yet see in what way they are better.
Looking at the latest icons, I also was unclear on the motivation for them. I'm used to the old set, but the new one is fresher and more colorful. However I dug a bit more into what Tango's goals are, to help understand what the benefits to them are...
One benefit is that they're designed to "fit naturally" into GNOME, KDE, Windows, and OSX stock themes without needing separate themes for each. While I personally only care about Linux, I can see the point for having things look consistent; a side benefit is that people often copy themes from one OS to another, and so the Tango icons should fit naturally with a wide range of theme options.
A second benefit is that they're organized to use the same icon for similar functionality across different applications, which may result in a cleaner workflow and better usability for Inkscape users that also use GIMP, OpenOffice, Scribus, etc. I can also see a benefit to us in that people used to Tango-ified GIMP or OpenOffice that then start up Inkscape for the first time, won't feel like the UI is alien - many icons will seem familiar, and produce familiar effects. The result will be that users can leverage what they'd learned in those other applications, and grow comfortable with Inkscape more rapidly.
A benefit that I see for us being bold about adopting Tango by default sooner rather than later, is that our icon ideas will be taken more seriously at this stage. Later on, after other applications have joined, there will already be consensus for some of the icons that need, but have better ideas for. If you look at this page, it's currently mostly empty, and I suspect our adoption of Tango may motivate decisions that take our ideas for many of these things:
http://tango.freedesktop.org/ArtLibreSet
If I remember right, we discussed Tango at the Libre Graphics Meeting a couple years ago, and felt it would be a good way to show consistency across all of the Open Source graphics applications, which could help eliminate the "piecemeal" appearance we've had to date. This could help make the Linux desktop look a lot more professional and visually appealing to new converts, which is something I'm very much in favor of.
Thanks, better, but now the shape icons are too bright imho :) especially the circle.
I kind of like them. Reminds me a bit of our original bold primary colors for rect/ellipse/star. But I agree they see a bit too bold compared with the rest of the icons.
Also, why do we need to have white lines with black outline in spiral and pencil, and not vice versa? This looks noisy and does not match the default style of the tools.
Agreed. This was also the first thing my fiance noticed when I showed her the before and afters. The double lines for these icons look weird. We also thought the calligraphy stroke should be solid; the outlined stroke doesn't match what you'd expect to get from a calligraphy pen.
I also very much dislike the 3D box. Compared to our current one, it's so blantantly un-3D. The drawing tools are also rather flattish.
Definitely agreed. However, I do like that it shows a perspective box - our original 3D box sort of looks isometric, which doesn't match to what the perspective tool does.
If the perspective box tool is going to live between the rect and ellipse tool, I would also like to see it be given a color rather than just be gray. Green would seem a logical choice for it.
Finally, I just want to say a big thank you to Michael for undertaking this work. Getting Inkscape to change icons is really tough work, but after reading up about the goals of the Tango project I think it's a very worthwhile endeavor that could bring the Open Source world a lot of benefit.
I look forward to seeing Inkscape included here: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Showroom
Bryce