On 2007-October-30 , at 01:03 , Joshua A. Andler wrote:
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
bulia byak wrote:
On 10/24/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...400...> wrote:
Add, as Elisa pointed out to me, there is a wiki page started about this: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TangoifiedIcons
I'm sorry to spoil the party but I really, really don't like the "proposed icon" column for tools. They:
- are too pale and too different in blackness/visual clout -
some are barely visible on a LCD (star), some are much more visible, but overall they are much paler and drabber than our current set
I actually agree with this. Having looked at the Tango icons next to the original, I like the original better in many cases, especially for the bolder colors. ...and I'm partial to my paintbucket icon...
Agreed. I personally like the current icons more than the proposed icons if only for the reason that they catch your eyes. I also find that they communicate what the tools do more effectively as well. bulia's examples cover my issues.
The biggest default of the Tango icons (apparently) is that they are less contrasted than the current set... which some could view as a quality of being less disturbing but that's a whole other story ;) Anyway, contrast could be improved in the Tango ones. They need to be tweaked anyway to fit Inkscape's pixel size requirements so tweaking them a bit more should not be a problem in itself. As long as they maintain their Tango feel, the benefit of having Tango icons is still there and their flaws are corrected for Inkscape's use.
- lack meaningful parallelism: it is not coincidental that pen,
pencil, and calligraphic pen in our current set are all drawn at the same slant; in tango the pen is way too different in all aspects, breaking the consistency of drawing tools
I was also wondering about this. I think it looks better to have the same slant and I like the old pen style better. The new pen style is kind of difficult to determine what it is, unless you know already. In addition, the magnifying glasses aren't all consistent, which is a little odd.
The new calligraphy icon is a step backwards to me. As for the magnifying icons, not only are they not consistent (imho), they also don't have enough contrast and aren't crisp enough by comparison to the current ones.
Tango's convention seems to be to represent only the tool and not what the result looks like, while Inkscape's current set shows both the line and the tool. Since these are tool's icons, Tango's concept seems justified. However it fails in the case of bezier paths where a path has to be represented to convey the tool's meaning correctly. So in the end it may be better to go with Inkscape's current convention and add a path to all these icons.
[...]
- lack a lot of meaningful details that help Inkscape user
understand the purpose and operation of the tool: cursor in Text, handles and gradient line in Gradient, both polygon and star in Star tool to suggest it can create both, mnemonic colors of shape tools that correspond to their default colors in newly installed Inkscape.
Makes sense.
Nod.
Actually, I have always found the gradient handles in the gradient tool's icon to be confusing, especially with the connector tool's icon, given that it is just above. It changed color recently and this improved things a bit but I still prefer Tango's ones in this case. I personally find them easier to distinguish and cleaner.
I think that these problems outweigh the advantages if any, and I just don't see a convincing reason for the change.
I agree with most of what you said readily. However, I think it's important to try to make a unified UI between common apps.
This seems to be the most common argument. But I haven't seen anyone address some major underlying issues here.
I think the unification of UI is not so much a matter of comparing Inskcape with Gimp and Scribus but rather Inkscape with the rest of GTK (and even QT) apps out there. Most of them are or will soon be using Tango icons, at least because of the mere fact that Gnome uses them so all stock icons will be Tangoified. So it is about having a entirely unified desktop rather than just a suite (and this would definitely matter to me... if I was using Linux ;))
The second argument about using Tango-like icons is that they are designed to look well in many environments: - on both dark and light background - in Gnome but also in Windows (XP at least) and OS X The current set does not do very good on a dark background since most icons have a black outline which blends or disappears in the background. Bulia even proved this point himself in designing the new Tweak tool icon in a way that completely matches Tango recommendations. The current set does not look very nice either on Windows or on OS X.
My last point is probably just a matter of taste (and I may well have bad taste ;)) but I find the Tango theme more pleasant visually than the current set. Even if I agree that the current set does its job well, I find it very flashy and cartoonesque with its bunch of colors and black outlines. Working with icons that are less catchy, more subtle in their colors and gradients, makes it easier to focus on the canvas, where the real stuff happens, than on the rest of the interface. As long as they are crisp and than their overall shape and position remains the same, I don't think this should badly handicap productivity for people already acquainted with current theme.
[...]
So I was also wondering, if these things can be remedied, are you against making an icon set change? Are you just opposed to Tango's color scheme / style?
Besides, even if it's not made the default icon set, it's still nice to have as an alternative.
I don't know if bulia would be against it or not. But even if these things could be remedied, the last icon set change was not a notably fantastic or smooth experience. It took a lot of feedback and tweaking to get things to where they are. It was worth the pain in the end, but I don't know that there will be enough flexibility on the tango side to make it worth while for us.
All the thinking that has been put in the current theme should of course be retained in the next one, it is just a matter of making the icon look "Tango"... well for me at least.
Personally, I wouldn't be against including the tango theme icons in addition to the standard and legacy sets. But I'd like to see a much more complete set before I'd even really put in an "okay" vote for that. In fact, I'd personally also like to see UI created to change icon sets inside inkscape (rather than switching svgs) prior to including another icons set.
That would be nice indeed.
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/