Re: [Inkscape-devel] Tango icon theme take 3
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.
Joel
----------------------------------------
From: Dan H <dunno@...1090...> Sent: 28 December 2007 10:11 To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Tango icon theme take 3
Hello there,
I'm going to start with a statement that will give raise to misunderstandings, so please read on before getting too worked-up about it. Here goes:
I don't like the Tango icons at all.
Uff, I said it. But don't get me wrong: I think it is essential for such a great application as Inkscape to look "modern" and to blend in with the look we see on current desktop computers. To this end I think Michael has done a great job. When I say that I don't like the Tango icons it's probably more to the point to say that I don't like the way desktop aesthetics are headed in general. I abhor the whole "pastelization" tendency and I'm happier with more "stark-looking" icons. Remember Atari TOS? Those were the days.
Now for some constructive criticism. Neither have I closely followed the icon discussion so far, nor have I contributed anything to it, so please feel free to flame me for jumping in so late. But I've got one or two points to make. My reference is this image: http://www.inkscape.org/images/tango_theme.png , so I may be completely out of touch with current development.
1. The Circle, Box and Polygon tools look very different on account of their different colors, although they are quite similar in functionality (they all create a "flat", optionally filled shape). Also they don't convey the impression of something "drawn", but they look more like finished, plastic objects. In v. 0.45 the black outline suggested more of a "filled, drawn object" look. A red circle with a set-apart red outline just isn't something one would or could draw with the primitive circle tool.
I don't know what the 3D cube is for (my version doesn't have that), but I'd group it apart from the "flat object" category of tools.
2. The double outline in the spiral, pen and pencil line doesn't really make any sense. I know that it probably was added so the icon works on a black background, but I don't know to what extent this requirement should be pampered.
1+2. In combination, I miss the "black outline" and "colored fill" consistency across all drawing tools that the old icons had.
3. The angled pen positions on the old icons looked more dynamic and natural.
But then, of course, it doesn't really matter. Icon aesthetics are primarily to get newbies hooked. Once one gets used to a tool, one wouldn't switch to one with better-looking icons unless it offered a substantially better functionality (and in in the case of Inkscape, which one could?). I must admit that it was the intriguing aesthetics of sodipodi that got me onto the SVG train in the first place, and I still remember them as the best-looking set of all.
Now if only Inkscape offered workaround-free colored arrowheads and a less extravagant pattern generator tool I'd happily embrace the Tango icons.
--D.
On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 03:31:45 -0800 "joel@...1709..." <joel@...1709...> wrote:
I'd go one step further: We need tango, because it makes inkscape consistent with itself.
That's what I meant when I said that the new "shape" icons (circle, rectangle, polygon) are completely inconsistent with the "drawing" ones (pen, pencil, spiral). The outline of a filled shape is exactly the same thing as a bezier line drawn with the pen, so IMO it should look the same.
I agree that the overall appearance of the new icons is consistent insofar as they all look as if they came from the same candy box (this, again, is my general criticism of "modern" desktop look, not of the Inkscape Tango icons), but I still think that the main focus in icon design should be that the icon represents the function of the underlying button rather than the latest fad in desktop design.
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.
I agree.
I wonder how we'll resolve this difference of opinion.
We won't, but the permanent disagreement will provide a constant driving force to make things better. This is a matter of taste, and the final decision should be made by those that have put considerable time and effort into creating the new icons. After all, nobody stops me from making and advertising icons that please my taste (or just use them in my private copy of Inkscape). But since I'm both incapable and too lazy to do it, I'll just keep ranting.
--D
Hi IMHO, The current icon set lacks functionality(not aesthetics) in the black/dark themes area.
Make the test by yourself: -Download a dark-neutral theme: http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Neutronium+Unity?content=59189
-Look at the icons in inkscape. Could you see them easily? Look at the object stack, is black. If the background is black you can't see them.
Inscape simply suppose you are using a white theme. More and more people are using neutral-dark for graphic design: http://ubuntustudio.org/screenshots
Jose
On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 13:34:51 +0100 "Jose Hevia" <jose.francisco.hevia@...400...> wrote:
IMHO, The current icon set lacks functionality(not aesthetics) in the black/dark themes area.
Maybe there just can't be an icon set that is equally functional and/or pretty on a white or a black background.
--D.
On Dec 28, 2007 7:34 AM, Jose Hevia <jose.francisco.hevia@...400...> wrote:
Inscape simply suppose you are using a white theme. More and more people are using neutral-dark for graphic design: http://ubuntustudio.org/screenshots
Thanks, this indeed shows that current icons need improvement for black backgrounds. But in most cases all that is needed is just white halo around black strokes, e.g. for spiral tool and the lines in drawing tools. I don't think we need an entire new set of icons for fixing only this problem.
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.
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
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
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).
Here I'm referring to "using a single SVG document to store dozens of icons technology".
This code is very useful for the GTK-gnome-kde world. Currently it needs to load hundreds of little files, this is a big efficiency killer(hard disk scattered little files).
In the other hand, more vector icons in desktop is the future, as screens get more resolution and aliasing is less of a problem. If this technology could be included in gnome-kde, then Inkscape can reduce it complexity.
Jose
2007/12/28, Jose Hevia <jose.francisco.hevia@...400...>:
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).
Here I'm referring to "using a single SVG document to store dozens of icons technology".
This code is very useful for the GTK-gnome-kde world. Currently it needs to load hundreds of little files, this is a big efficiency killer(hard disk scattered little files).
In the other hand, more vector icons in desktop is the future, as screens get more resolution and aliasing is less of a problem. If this technology could be included in gnome-kde, then Inkscape can reduce it complexity.
Put this in a library, and let other projects use it(scribus,evince,kpdf...)
Look at how complex it is the current system, every app has its own: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=Missing+Icons+KPdf
Compare that with replacing each icon from a template SVG.
participants (5)
-
bulia byak -
Dan H -
jiho -
joel＠...1709... -
Jose Hevia