Re: [Inkscape-devel] Tango Icons
is there any way to change the standard GTK + icons on the windows build to the tango style also?
Hi Ryan! You mean stuff like open, new, save etc? Those are coming in gtk 2.12. Will be released in September.
- Andreas
Andreas: That's wonderful wonderful news, I'm so glad to hear it. It's going to massively improve a lot of gtk apps for windows users. But for the rest of the inkscape icons - like the drawing tools etc, the windows users will want the tango icons for these as well, simply because they're very much more in keeping with the Windows style. So I agree with ryan; i think we should change these over as soon as we can.
---------------------------------------- From: Andreas Nilsson <nisses.mail@...563...> Sent: Saturday, August 25, 2007 10:54 AM To: ryan lerch <ryanlerch@...400...> Subject: SPAM-LOW: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Tango Icons
ryan lerch wrote:
is there any way to change the standard GTK + icons on the windows build to the tango style also?
Hi Ryan! You mean stuff like open, new, save etc? Those are coming in gtk 2.12. Will be released in September. - Andreas
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Hello everyone,
I am just reviving an old discussion on this mailing list about changing the current icon theme to the benefit of a Tangoified one. For those not having it in your mailbox anymore here is the archive: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.graphics.inkscape.devel/21956/focus=22004 and the icons in question: http://gnomelook.org/content/show.php/Tangofied+inkscape+icons+set?content=4...
While I agree that some of those may need more work (they often appear more blurry than current ones and hence can be a bit visually confusing) I think that overall they look better than the current set.
I also agree with bulia [see previous discussion] that change for the sake of change is not the way to go. But in the end, I don't think it really is a matter of how the icons look but more a question of how Inkscape looks compared to other applications. All of Gnome switched to Tango recently, Gimp 2.4 uses Tango-style icons (and they sure look marvelous), Scribus also and many more projects follow (OpenOffice, etc.) and having the same visual conventions helps. In addition these Tango style icons look good on Windows XP and OS X which is important for a cross platform app. I have been using them instead of the default for a little while on my OS X box and, even if they are not photorealistic as most OS X icons are, they really fit in quite well.
So I was wondering: is anyone willing to work a bit more on these icons before releasing 0.46, so that they look as gorgeous as Gimp's ones by then? If they do look gorgeous, what would be your position about integrating them? If we can't find a consensus, how would you feel about a per platform decision? Indeed, if the un-sharpness is fixed for some of these, I would really like to use them on OS X at least, since they integrate better with the rest and they would be welcome with the new GTK theme we are using on this platform. Furthermore, the problem may also occur on Windows since the XP look and the Vista look are quite different.
So, what do you think? who volunteers (Andreas, wedderburn)?
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
jiho wrote:
So I was wondering: is anyone willing to work a bit more on these icons before releasing 0.46, so that they look as gorgeous as Gimp's ones by then?
I will be happy to do this if nobody else is keen. Or at least give it shot since I can't prove my ability to do the job to everyone satisfaction.
Although, Inkscape shares many of the same tools as GIMP and Scribus. Is it possible to pull their icons? I haven't been able to find a public repository of icons for these applications.
From what I have seen from the preview's to gimp 2.4, some of the icons may
have already been shared...
Cheers,
ryanlerch
-----Original Message----- From: inkscape-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:inkscape-devel- bounces@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of microUgly Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2007 12:19 PM To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Tango Icons
jiho wrote:
So I was wondering: is anyone willing to work a bit more on these icons before releasing 0.46, so that they look as gorgeous as Gimp's ones by then?
I will be happy to do this if nobody else is keen. Or at least give it shot since I can't prove my ability to do the job to everyone satisfaction.
Although, Inkscape shares many of the same tools as GIMP and Scribus. Is it possible to pull their icons? I haven't been able to find a public repository of icons for these applications. -- View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tango-Icons- tf4320411.html#a13377636 Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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microUgly wrote possible to pull their icons? I haven't been able to find a public repository of icons for these applications.
AFAIK, both the current inkscape tango icons and the gimp tango icons are based off the tango art-libre set from tango project:
http://tango.freedesktop.org/ArtLibreSet
cheers,
ryanlerch
ryan lerch wrote:
AFAIK, both the current inkscape tango icons and the gimp tango icons are based off the tango art-libre set from tango project:
http://tango.freedesktop.org/ArtLibreSet
cheers,
ryanlerch
That's embarrasing. I was at that site, but didn't find that page.
From what I can tell from that page, most of the icons that we may need are
covered in that "Spec" but a lot seem to be not drawn yet,
If we start working on them, we should work closely with the tango guys, so the 1 job isn't being done twice by two different open communities...
(that's my 2 cents anyway...)
Cheers,
ryanlerch
-----Original Message----- From: inkscape-devel-bounces@lists.sourceforge.net [mailto:inkscape-devel- bounces@lists.sourceforge.net] On Behalf Of microUgly Sent: Wednesday, 24 October 2007 1:28 PM To: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Tango Icons
ryan lerch wrote:
AFAIK, both the current inkscape tango icons and the gimp tango icons
are
based off the tango art-libre set from tango project:
http://tango.freedesktop.org/ArtLibreSet
cheers,
ryanlerch
That's embarrasing. I was at that site, but didn't find that page.
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tango-Icons- tf4320411.html#a13378439 Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
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On 2007-October-24 , at 05:38 , Ryan Lerch wrote:
From what I can tell from that page, most of the icons that we may need are
covered in that "Spec" but a lot seem to be not drawn yet,
If we start working on them, we should work closely with the tango guys, so the 1 job isn't being done twice by two different open communities...
(that's my 2 cents anyway...)
Also, about that, the best way to progress quickly on this would probably be to have a Tango Friday[1] on Inkscape. Since many Tango artists probably use Inkscape I guess they would be likely to provide it with the icon look they love. Does anyone work closely with Tango and knows someone who does? What is the procedure to set up a Tango Friday on Inkscape?
[1] http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Fridays
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
On 2007-October-24 , at 10:02 , jiho wrote:
On 2007-October-24 , at 05:38 , Ryan Lerch wrote:
From what I can tell from that page, most of the icons that we may need are
covered in that "Spec" but a lot seem to be not drawn yet,
If we start working on them, we should work closely with the tango guys, so the 1 job isn't being done twice by two different open communities...
(that's my 2 cents anyway...)
Also, about that, the best way to progress quickly on this would probably be to have a Tango Friday[1] on Inkscape. Since many Tango artists probably use Inkscape I guess they would be likely to provide it with the icon look they love. Does anyone work closely with Tango and knows someone who does? What is the procedure to set up a Tango Friday on Inkscape?
Add, as Elisa pointed out to me, there is a wiki page started about this: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TangoifiedIcons It would be a good place to collect ideas and opinions. I'll try to make a check list of which icon are at the "right size" or not in the Tango set. Plus: is there a way to post things in the wiki, like the SVG file of the icons for example, without storing it elsewhere and putting a link? Or maybe the SVG icons files would deserve to be in the SVN repos. I can commit it if no one objects.
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
jiho wrote:
Also, about that, the best way to progress quickly on this would probably be to have a Tango Friday[1] on Inkscape. Since many Tango artists probably use Inkscape I guess they would be likely to provide it with the icon look they love. Does anyone work closely with Tango and knows someone who does? What is the procedure to set up a Tango Friday on Inkscape?
That would be great.
Plus: is there a way to post things in the wiki, like the SVG file of the icons for example, without storing it elsewhere and putting a link? Or maybe the SVG icons files would deserve to be in the SVN repos. I can commit it if no one objects.
I was thinking this would be the way to go - however, maybe there's a reason for not doing so since it hasn't been put there yet?
JF
On Oct 24, 2007, at 1:56 AM, jiho wrote:
Add, as Elisa pointed out to me, there is a wiki page started about this: http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TangoifiedIcons It would be a good place to collect ideas and opinions. I'll try to make a check list of which icon are at the "right size" or not in the Tango set.
I just added a bit in a new section there. Basically we would want to get hooked up "properly" to load icons from standard places so that we can allow the user to do things in his theme and have Inkscape respect that.
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
- 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
- lack coordination with our mouse cursors: in our current set, node tool uses this thin triangular black pointer depicted on its icon, and paintbucket cursor is also similar to the icon - this is not the case with proposed 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.
I think that these problems outweigh the advantages if any, and I just don't see a convincing reason for the change.
On 10/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...400...> 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
- 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
- lack coordination with our mouse cursors: in our current set, node
tool uses this thin triangular black pointer depicted on its icon, and paintbucket cursor is also similar to the icon - this is not the case with proposed 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.
I think that these problems outweigh the advantages if any, and I just don't see a convincing reason for the change.
While a few of the Icons currently have issues that can probably be resolved, I feel that making this change will help Users of GIMP, Scribus, and Inkscape have a more consistent and almost Suite-ish feeling. Yes I know more integration than that is really need but it a nice (first,second??) step. Since Tango is open, well you know the rest. Anyway about the cursors they could be changed also to match. I forget why we had to back out the color cursor patch a few releases ago, wonder if there has been any recent to resolve it?
I think most of your issues are resolvable.
Joshua L. Blocher verbalshadow
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org
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bulia byak wrote:
I'm sorry to spoil the party but I really, really don't like the "proposed icon" column for tools. [...] I think that these problems outweigh the advantages if any
You probably already know, but just in case, in most cases these are the tango icons accepted and adopted by GIMP and Scribus. The obvious, immediate, and documented advantage is visual unification between software.
Are you suggesting Inkscape should not adopt the Tango icons, define new ones that conform to the Tango guidlines but better reflect what is already used, or don't make any changes?
I don't think your arguements are incorrect, but I don't feel they should be weighted as heavily as you have.
- are too pale and too different in blackness/visual clout I think this is artistic opinion. It's not a true negative. Some would feel they look cleaner because of the this.
it is not coincidental that pen, pencil, and calligraphic pen in our current set are all drawn at the same slant; True, but it's not an unusual difference. Photoshop also uses the slant for all its tools with the exception of the pen. This is true for Fireworks also. I wonder if this is to help distinguish the difference of how the tools are used - Pencil and Calligraphy are suited to a natural drawing style (i.e. Graphics tablet) whilst the Pen is not.
lack coordination with our mouse cursors: Granted. I don't think unification of these icons between software is a benefit over having the icon reflect the shape of the Select and Node tool. Although, I see no reason why the paintbucket cursor can't be updated to reflect the tango icon.
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[...]
I would argue those extra details are simply that. Inkscape is the only software I've seen that goes to that much detail for tools commonly seen in many other programs. It's possible these details may confuse new users. This was true for myself with the Gradient tool. It looks near identical to the rectangle tool but it has nodes - I couldn't guess what it did, and I've used lots of software with gradient tools.
mnemonic colors of shape tools that correspond to their default colors in newly installed Inkscape That's why they are different colours!? :)
seconded. :-) nothing more to say.
On Mon, 2007-10-29 at 15:53 -0700, microUgly wrote:
bulia byak wrote:
I'm sorry to spoil the party but I really, really don't like the "proposed icon" column for tools. [...] I think that these problems outweigh the advantages if any
You probably already know, but just in case, in most cases these are the tango icons accepted and adopted by GIMP and Scribus. The obvious, immediate, and documented advantage is visual unification between software.
Are you suggesting Inkscape should not adopt the Tango icons, define new ones that conform to the Tango guidlines but better reflect what is already used, or don't make any changes?
I don't think your arguements are incorrect, but I don't feel they should be weighted as heavily as you have.
- are too pale and too different in blackness/visual clout
I think this is artistic opinion. It's not a true negative. Some would feel they look cleaner because of the this.
it is not coincidental that pen, pencil, and calligraphic pen in our current set are all drawn at the same slant; True, but it's not an unusual difference. Photoshop also uses the slant for all its tools with the exception of the pen. This is true for Fireworks also. I wonder if this is to help distinguish the difference of how the tools are used - Pencil and Calligraphy are suited to a natural drawing style (i.e. Graphics tablet) whilst the Pen is not.
lack coordination with our mouse cursors: Granted. I don't think unification of these icons between software is a benefit over having the icon reflect the shape of the Select and Node tool. Although, I see no reason why the paintbucket cursor can't be updated to reflect the tango icon.
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[...]
I would argue those extra details are simply that. Inkscape is the only software I've seen that goes to that much detail for tools commonly seen in many other programs. It's possible these details may confuse new users. This was true for myself with the Gradient tool. It looks near identical to the rectangle tool but it has nodes - I couldn't guess what it did, and I've used lots of software with gradient tools.
mnemonic colors of shape tools that correspond to their default colors in newly installed Inkscape That's why they are different colours!? :)
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...
- 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.
- lack coordination with our mouse cursors: in our current set, node
tool uses this thin triangular black pointer depicted on its icon, and paintbucket cursor is also similar to the icon - this is not the case with proposed icons
This can, of course, be easily remedied, can't it?
- 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.
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.
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.
JF
- 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.
I just paid closer attention, I meant the Calligraphy pen is confusing in the proposed icons.
JF
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.
- 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.
- lack coordination with our mouse cursors: in our current set, node
tool uses this thin triangular black pointer depicted on its icon, and paintbucket cursor is also similar to the icon - this is not the case with proposed icons
This can, of course, be easily remedied, can't it?
Easy remedy provided someone wants to spend the time doing it... and maintaining things too. People tend to want to make changes and not maintain them, which then means the other devs get pulled away from more important issues. Honestly, I'd rather have bulia freed up to continue doing innovative and interesting things in the UI, rather than him having to fudge with icons and such.
- 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.
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.
When the UI's are all inherently different to begin with, what good does it do to make the icons match? All three mentioned apps (Inkscape, GIMP, & Scribus) have different ideas of what their UI should be and what makes for good usability.
If the tools are "kinda" the same between apps (as in the same in principle, NOT usability), but represented by the same icon as it would be in a suite, is this not more confusing to the end user? Sorry, but the pen tool in inkscape and the pen tool in gimp are not really the same when it comes to usability. I'm not saying that the base functionality of tools themselves are completely different, but I'd personally not want people to associate our pen tool with that of the gimp (no offense, I'm just stating that they're quite different... and inkscape's rocks ;)).
Additionally, Scribus uses QT which has a different "look and feel" altogether than GTK, so there's only so much unification possible no matter what. At that point it just comes across as a "cheap" attempt at a suite.
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.
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.
-Josh
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/
On Oct 29, 2007, at 5:55 PM, jiho wrote:
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 ;))
I think here we hit the point where we need to hook in standard loading to get the icons, not create a whole new set that is a duplicate. Then we can get good icons, even when people use accessibility modes.
To restate, first we need to get effort into our icon loading code. That will pay off more.
On 10/29/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...400...> wrote:
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.
Any tweaking is work. A lot of work. With 750+ unclosed bugs, I really think we have more important things to do right now than improving some proposed poor icon set when our current one is already better.
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.
Yes, with this I agree. I would consider a redesign of our Gradient icon. But using the Tango one will make it too similar with the Rectangle. Maybe just rotating the gradient line horizontal will remove its clash with the Connector icon.
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.
The more apps you compare, the less meaningful is the comparison. We have a number of tools that are similar with Gimp, less so with Scribus, and still less for other apps. In the end, it's just the standard Save and Open icons that are truly common to all apps; everything else is very different in purpose and scope.
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.
Actually, this icon first of all matches most other icons on the toolbar - they too have both black and white outlines. And by the way, I was just planning to tweak this icon some more (pun intended) - it's currently not very crisp and lacks expression.
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.
I agree, but Tango does not achieve this goal IMHO. It's too half-way, too inconsistent in itself, too clunky and plain boring. Instead, what I always dreamed of (maybe one day when I don't have anything better to do in Inkscape...) is an alternative set with purely B/W icons. Not even grayscale, but B/W, with everything expressed via pure shape and outline. If well done, it can look very stylish and unique. But Tango seems to me like a watered-down milk: why drink that if you can have pure milk or pure water instead?
bulia byak wrote:
Yes, with this I agree. I would consider a redesign of our Gradient icon. But using the Tango one will make it too similar with the Rectangle. Maybe just rotating the gradient line horizontal will remove its clash with the Connector icon.
Does this icon have a mnemonic color specified for it, since it doesn't really have a default color?
JF
This discussion doesn't seem to be going well for the Tango icons. This seems like a great shame to me because I strongly prefer them. I think they with the HIG, are the best thing to happen to the free desktop for a long time - I mean the quite seriously.
- I think they look slicker - more highly designed. - The colours look more vibrant - I can't stand the "pastel shades" of the present set, they look washed out and anemic to me. - The Tango Icons look a lot better for Windows users, and I'd argue better as well for Ubuntu-default-install users, because the icons look very much more in keeping with the parent desktop. - Also, am I right in thinking that the GTK guys are moving their library over to Tango for New, Save, Print etc. in the near future? I hope so, because the present ones look terrible in the Windows version - but funnily enough they look consistent with the rest of the Inkscape set. So as we upgrade GTK, parts of Inkscape will become more Tango-ey (IMHO better looking) while other parts will retain the same old look - rather the way Windows 95 did when all those 16-bit apps became obselete. - For me attention to detail REALLY matters. I believe it's worth spending time to get the little things right. But also, these icons are not such a tiny detail, because for many users they are thing that carry the feel of the app to a first time user. Even for long time users, a good working environment can make the user feel subtly happier about their work as they do it. - GIMP-Win's makover is a radical improvement for me. I couldn't stand to use it before; it was so ugly in Windows. Now I quite like to use it - wierd window structure asside. - Giving Inkscape a face lift will propel it further forward when 0.46 comes out, because people can immediately see new things from the very first glance. This creates more buzz, which means more users, which means more developers, which means better Inkscape.
So all in all I really think it's worth one our 106 developers taking some time on this.
Joel
----- Original Message ----- From: "Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art" <faceman@...1574...> To: "inkscape-devel List" inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 4:27 AM Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Tango Icons
bulia byak wrote:
Yes, with this I agree. I would consider a redesign of our Gradient icon. But using the Tango one will make it too similar with the Rectangle. Maybe just rotating the gradient line horizontal will remove its clash with the Connector icon.
Does this icon have a mnemonic color specified for it, since it doesn't really have a default color?
JF
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On 10/30/07, Joel Holdsworth <joel@...1709...> wrote:
- I think they look slicker - more highly designed.
- The colours look more vibrant - I can't stand the "pastel shades" of the
present set, they look washed out and anemic to me.
Well... let me just say I disagree :)
- The Tango Icons look a lot better for Windows users, and I'd argue better
as well for Ubuntu-default-install users, because the icons look very much more in keeping with the parent desktop.
More in keeping with Windows? In what way? Windows users are very much used to non-unified interfaces. Take Winamp - it breaks each and every rule of windows UI and yet is very popular. Take Photoshop/AI - they have their own widgets, and their icons are very much NOT in keeping with anything if only because they are pure grayscale. I'd even venture to say that on Windows, an application that uses too many system-provided icons tends to look amateurish and hastily done. The big names have their own unique sets.
I agree of course that we should use platform-specific Save and Open. That just makes sense. But now we're discussing the main toolbar. AFAIK there's no Windows-wide standard for the Pen tool icon. Why should Pen strive to be similar to Save? They are absolutely different things, they will never be on the same toolbar even.
- For me attention to detail REALLY matters. I believe it's worth spending
time to get the little things right. But also, these icons are not such a tiny detail, because for many users they are thing that carry the feel of the app to a first time user. Even for long time users, a good working environment can make the user feel subtly happier about their work as they do it.
I agree, and this is exactly why our current set is better :) A lot of work went into small meaningful details of the current icons. The proposed tango set looks very hastily compiled by comparison - which it is, because instead of carefully designing icons for specific tools you just compiled some existing ones that are "generally similar".
bulia byak wrote:
I agree, and this is exactly why our current set is better :) A lot of work went into small meaningful details of the current icons.
I think this is the core of the differing opinion here. You feel the icon will not fulfill it's purpose if it doesn't contain details. I feel the icon will function perfectly well without the details. It's only purpose is to create a visual association and the currently proposed icons from the GIMP set do that suitably.
I think the idea that using the already existing tango icons will cause mass confusion is quite silly. You can debate that the current Paint Bucket is superior than the GIMP Paint Bucket, but at the end of the day it's still a paint bucket - people will get it.
Having said that, I don't think opinions will change. So I'm happy to step away from tangification.
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 06:13:37 -0000, microUgly <drworm@...1743...> wrote:
bulia byak wrote:
I agree, and this is exactly why our current set is better :) A lot of work went into small meaningful details of the current icons.
I think this is the core of the differing opinion here. You feel the icon will not fulfill it's purpose if it doesn't contain details.
Actually, the operative word in Bulia's text was "meaningful". The Tango icons for magnification contain details but they are so small and badly done as to be meaningless. The stray feathers on the caligraphy icon are certainly details but they are confusing and make the icon rather baffling at first glance. The lack of detail in the gradient icon makes it unclear what is represented.
It's only purpose is to create a visual association and the currently proposed icons from the GIMP set do that suitably.
Icons for functions which are frequently used may, as you say, simply have to make an association but that is certainly not their only purpose. Those which represent functions which are rarely used MUST also have a mnemonic aspect, and since we don't know which functions are rarely used by each user all icons must be treated as such. Additionally, a set of icons which represent associated functions (like the magnification icons) MUST clearly differentiate those functions.
The proposed icons seem, to me at least, to fail in these latter two requirements quite blatantly and are therfore most UNsuitable.
TW
Joel Holdsworth wrote:
This discussion doesn't seem to be going well for the Tango icons. This seems like a great shame to me because I strongly prefer them. I think they with the HIG, are the best thing to happen to the free desktop for a long time - I mean the quite seriously.
Things aren't NOT going well for the Tango icons... you're just not seeing the overwhelming support you hoped for. To a few of us, the proposed tango icons are insufficient (and fairly incomplete) in their current incarnation. No one said "NO! NEVER!!". :)
Also, all HIGs have drawbacks... there is no silver bullet. After all, the Gnome guys think that the screensavers should no longer have options/be configurable... because it might confuse users.
A huge part of this is that this whole thing is very opinion and preference driven. It doesn't seem like it's being taken into consideration that all of the icons in inkscape need to be consistent, not only the tool icons (and those are really all I'm seeing at this point).
- I think they look slicker - more highly designed.
And I think the current set is slicker and more highly designed... in fact it was specifically designed for inkscape from the ground up.
- The colours look more vibrant - I can't stand the "pastel shades" of the
present set, they look washed out and anemic to me.
Are we looking at the same icons? Given that all the shape tools of the tango set lack color, this view seems backwards to me. The Tango icons are pretty bland and boring imho.
- The Tango Icons look a lot better for Windows users, and I'd argue better
as well for Ubuntu-default-install users, because the icons look very much more in keeping with the parent desktop.
One of the first things I do on a fresh Ubuntu install is change the icons and theme. It's pretty plain and boring by default. Additionally, no userbase takes precedence... just because it's better for the Windows folk doesn't mean the rest of us should have to suffer through it. ;)
- Also, am I right in thinking that the GTK guys are moving their library
over to Tango for New, Save, Print etc. in the near future? I hope so, because the present ones look terrible in the Windows version - but funnily enough they look consistent with the rest of the Inkscape set. So as we upgrade GTK, parts of Inkscape will become more Tango-ey (IMHO better looking) while other parts will retain the same old look - rather the way Windows 95 did when all those 16-bit apps became obselete.
Using platform specific New, Open, Save, etc is the way this is handled. Again, so no setup takes precedence over the others.
- For me attention to detail REALLY matters. I believe it's worth spending
time to get the little things right. But also, these icons are not such a tiny detail, because for many users they are thing that carry the feel of the app to a first time user. Even for long time users, a good working environment can make the user feel subtly happier about their work as they do it.
I'm pretty sure attention to detail really matters to all of us that have participated in this conversation. A key thing I haven't seen though is people offering said time to not only get the changes made, but to spend a lot of additional time getting things right (for inkscape). I see people saying they want the change, but I haven't seen people offering their time (and additional tweak time) to get things to a place that everyone will be happy with. As I've stated, I'll personally be frustrated to see it affecting programmers time (unless they choose)... and in the past that's exactly what happened.
- GIMP-Win's makover is a radical improvement for me. I couldn't stand to
use it before; it was so ugly in Windows. Now I quite like to use it - wierd window structure asside.
Wait. Are you SERIOUSLY trying to tell me that you didn't (or couldn't stand to) use an app that got the job done... because of the icons?!?!
- Giving Inkscape a face lift will propel it further forward when 0.46 comes
out, because people can immediately see new things from the very first glance. This creates more buzz, which means more users, which means more developers, which means better Inkscape.
If people REALLY want to see inkscape get a face lift for 0.46 (which a number of us don't feel this is necessary), they'd better get crackin'. No offense, but, less talk about it and more action. Given that I don't like the Tango icons in the least... I for one won't be participating.
So all in all I really think it's worth one our 106 developers taking some time on this.
Some of those people are translators, many inactive for a few years, etc. Either way, as Inkscape development has always gone... people work on what they want to. If someone is really interested, they'll work on it.
-Josh
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
I see people saying they want the change, but I haven't seen people offering their time (and additional tweak time) to get things to a place that everyone will be happy with.
I was offering my time, but am hesitant to now. If the Inkscape doesn't like Jimmac's work then there's not much hope that anything I produce will ever be accepted :)
On Oct 30, 2007, at 10:55 PM, microUgly wrote:
I was offering my time, but am hesitant to now. If the Inkscape doesn't like Jimmac's work then there's not much hope that anything I produce will ever be accepted :)
Some do. Some don't.
However... there are ways to do thing such that both can be served. :-)
One step is to get the names corrected. That is, have same names for the same things, but different names for icons that represent different things but that just happen to look the same.
microUgly wrote:
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
I see people saying they want the change, but I haven't seen people offering their time (and additional tweak time) to get things to a place that everyone will be happy with.
I was offering my time, but am hesitant to now. If the Inkscape doesn't like Jimmac's work then there's not much hope that anything I produce will ever be accepted :)
I was interested in working on this as well, but I guess this could be a potential more long-term thing (with Jon's working theming etc.). Good that I can focus on firefox3 for now. :) - Andreas
I've just noticed that the last several news stories reveal a problem with layout of the news in FF2.
If you're screen is wide enough (you can make it so by moving it mostly off to the left, then extending it to the right more :), the left alignment of the screenshots "sucks in" the proceeding article, so it's like a tiered news effect. Maybe this is interesting for some people, but I don't think it's the intended layout.
I tried adapting the css news.item h3 css to include "clear: both" and the image tags to include 'class="left"', but it didn't fix the problem (and actually made the whole news section clear the menu, which is apparently floated as well).
Is there an easy way to fix this?
Furthermore, I noticed that the <img> tags contain a lot of html formatting, which kind of defeats the purpose of having a css layout, doesn't it? That may actually be the cause of the problem, but I didn't really check on it.
JF
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:54:50 -0500, Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art <faceman@...1574...> wrote:
Is there an easy way to fix this?
To work around a CSS clear being affected by the left-hand nav, I typically use the positioniseverything clearfix trick for blocks like this:
http://www.positioniseverything.net/easyclearing.html
with the <div class="news"> blocks becoming <div class="clearfix news
jcoswell@...1414... wrote:
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:54:50 -0500, Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art <faceman@...1574...> wrote:
Is there an easy way to fix this?
To work around a CSS clear being affected by the left-hand nav, I typically use the positioniseverything clearfix trick for blocks like this:
http://www.positioniseverything.net/easyclearing.html
with the <div class="news"> blocks becoming <div class="clearfix news
DUDE! I just found that fix and implemented it before I got your email!
I think it works okay - should I just commit to svn, or should I send the changes to someone for review?
JF
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:17:26 -0500, Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art <faceman@...1574...> wrote:
I think it works okay - should I just commit to svn, or should I send the changes to someone for review?
If all you're doing is adding class="clearfix" to the news item <div>s, and the .clearfix definitions in base.css, then I think it should be OK. Commit it & let me know, and I'll pull down the latest version and make sure it works OK.
John
jcoswell@...1414... wrote:
On Wed, 31 Oct 2007 14:17:26 -0500, Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art <faceman@...1574...> wrote:
I think it works okay - should I just commit to svn, or should I send the changes to someone for review?
If all you're doing is adding class="clearfix" to the news item <div>s, and the .clearfix definitions in base.css, then I think it should be OK. Commit it & let me know, and I'll pull down the latest version and make sure it works OK.
John
Actually, it doesn't appear to fix the problem - just move it a little down the page.
The only way to get the clear to not clear the navbar float is to float an element that encloses it. But every element I've tried it on didn't work.
I'm going to have to give this up for now - I won't be around till next week. Please feel free to fix it, if you know how better than I.
JF
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
jcoswell@...1414... wrote:
If all you're doing is adding class="clearfix" to the news item
<div>s, and the .clearfix definitions in base.css, then I think it should be OK. Commit it & let me know, and I'll pull down the latest version and make sure it works OK.
The only way to get the clear to not clear the navbar float is to float an element that encloses it. But every element I've tried it on didn't work.
Oh, I see what's going on now...the menu <div>'s floating, and the content <div>'s not. The content <div> needs to be floating too for this to work. If I have a moment today, I'll poke at it and see what I can do with it.
John
John Bintz wrote:
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
jcoswell@...1414... wrote:
If all you're doing is adding class="clearfix" to the news item
<div>s, and the .clearfix definitions in base.css, then I think it should be OK. Commit it & let me know, and I'll pull down the latest version and make sure it works OK.
The only way to get the clear to not clear the navbar float is to float an element that encloses it. But every element I've tried it on didn't work.
Oh, I see what's going on now...the menu <div>'s floating, and the content <div>'s not. The content <div> needs to be floating too for this to work. If I have a moment today, I'll poke at it and see what I can do with it.
John
I tried to float the content div, but it just pushed it down past the menu :( I didn't have time to putz with it (I would have been happy to) to see what the conflict was.
If you want to fix that, I'll commit my changes when I get back.
JF
Hey, I finally had some time to figure out this website clearing issue and (hopefully) make it work.
Basically, I left-floated div.news, then had to add a clearing div around the "browse archive" link.
I committed changes and added a news item. Please look at it and see if it is any good, and publish it if it is (both the css fix and the article).
Thanks.
JF
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
John Bintz wrote:
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
jcoswell@...1414... wrote:
If all you're doing is adding class="clearfix" to the news item
<div>s, and the .clearfix definitions in base.css, then I think it should be OK. Commit it & let me know, and I'll pull down the latest version and make sure it works OK.
The only way to get the clear to not clear the navbar float is to float an element that encloses it. But every element I've tried it on didn't work.
Oh, I see what's going on now...the menu <div>'s floating, and the content <div>'s not. The content <div> needs to be floating too for this to work. If I have a moment today, I'll poke at it and see what I can do with it.
John
I tried to float the content div, but it just pushed it down past the menu :( I didn't have time to putz with it (I would have been happy to) to see what the conflict was.
If you want to fix that, I'll commit my changes when I get back.
JF
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Heh...I've been trying to figure out why the heck the archive articles weren't affected by my fix, then I realized the function it uses is completely separate from the main page news grabbing function! I fixed that, too, by adding div.news around the content. I'm sure there's a better way to do it, but figured if it didn't break anything I'd just reuse an existing css div.
Just curious...why don't we just use one function, and make it show the archive calendar if it's not the main news page? Not criticizing, just wondering.
JF
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
Hey, I finally had some time to figure out this website clearing issue and (hopefully) make it work.
Basically, I left-floated div.news, then had to add a clearing div around the "browse archive" link.
I committed changes and added a news item. Please look at it and see if it is any good, and publish it if it is (both the css fix and the article).
Thanks.
JF
One of the first things I do on a fresh Ubuntu install is change the icons and theme. It's pretty plain and boring by default. Additionally, no userbase takes precedence... just because it's better for the Windows folk doesn't mean the rest of us should have to suffer through it. ;)
I agree, but the point of the Tango style is to try and make applications look ok with all platforms Mac OSX, Windows, Gnome, KDE etc. So in that sense, Tango is supposed to be good news for everyone. In the old days GTK apps used to try to look at Gnomeish as possible - so as they looked better in Gnome, they looked worse in Windows. But the ambition for Tango is that apps will look good for everyone!
I see people saying they want the change, but I haven't seen people offering their time (and additional tweak time) to get things to a place that everyone will be happy with. As I've stated, I'll personally be frustrated to see it affecting programmers time (unless they choose)... and in the past that's exactly what happened.
Well I'm tied up right now on native dialogs for Windows, which surprisingly is VERY hard - but worth it. Next I need to fix a big problem with the Windows print dialog. I'm actually on a mission to bring Inkscape for Windows up to standard of Inkscape for Linux. So I actually am willing to get involved in the Tango effort if I can.
Wait. Are you SERIOUSLY trying to tell me that you didn't (or couldn't stand to) use an app that got the job done... because of the icons?!?!
I know it sounds a bit silly of me - but I am accutely sesitive to UI which is not quite "right". GIMP used to have a lot of things slightly wrong with it - not using the system cursors, themes, icons etc., and it's still not perfect, but it is better. Inkscape 0.45 has similar problems, but a lot of these issues have gone away due to upstream fixes in GTK, which is great news.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Joshua A. Andler" <joshua@...533...> To: "Joel Holdsworth" <joel@...1709...> Cc: inkscape-devel@lists.sourceforge.net Sent: Tuesday, October 30, 2007 6:28 PM Subject: Re: [Inkscape-devel] Tango Icons
Joel Holdsworth wrote:
This discussion doesn't seem to be going well for the Tango icons. This seems like a great shame to me because I strongly prefer them. I think they with the HIG, are the best thing to happen to the free desktop for a long time - I mean the quite seriously.
Things aren't NOT going well for the Tango icons... you're just not seeing the overwhelming support you hoped for. To a few of us, the proposed tango icons are insufficient (and fairly incomplete) in their current incarnation. No one said "NO! NEVER!!". :)
Also, all HIGs have drawbacks... there is no silver bullet. After all, the Gnome guys think that the screensavers should no longer have options/be configurable... because it might confuse users.
A huge part of this is that this whole thing is very opinion and preference driven. It doesn't seem like it's being taken into consideration that all of the icons in inkscape need to be consistent, not only the tool icons (and those are really all I'm seeing at this point).
- I think they look slicker - more highly designed.
And I think the current set is slicker and more highly designed... in fact it was specifically designed for inkscape from the ground up.
- The colours look more vibrant - I can't stand the "pastel shades" of
the present set, they look washed out and anemic to me.
Are we looking at the same icons? Given that all the shape tools of the tango set lack color, this view seems backwards to me. The Tango icons are pretty bland and boring imho.
- The Tango Icons look a lot better for Windows users, and I'd argue
better as well for Ubuntu-default-install users, because the icons look very much more in keeping with the parent desktop.
One of the first things I do on a fresh Ubuntu install is change the icons and theme. It's pretty plain and boring by default. Additionally, no userbase takes precedence... just because it's better for the Windows folk doesn't mean the rest of us should have to suffer through it. ;)
- Also, am I right in thinking that the GTK guys are moving their library
over to Tango for New, Save, Print etc. in the near future? I hope so, because the present ones look terrible in the Windows version - but funnily enough they look consistent with the rest of the Inkscape set. So as we upgrade GTK, parts of Inkscape will become more Tango-ey (IMHO better looking) while other parts will retain the same old look - rather the way Windows 95 did when all those 16-bit apps became obselete.
Using platform specific New, Open, Save, etc is the way this is handled. Again, so no setup takes precedence over the others.
- For me attention to detail REALLY matters. I believe it's worth
spending time to get the little things right. But also, these icons are not such a tiny detail, because for many users they are thing that carry the feel of the app to a first time user. Even for long time users, a good working environment can make the user feel subtly happier about their work as they do it.
I'm pretty sure attention to detail really matters to all of us that have participated in this conversation. A key thing I haven't seen though is people offering said time to not only get the changes made, but to spend a lot of additional time getting things right (for inkscape). I see people saying they want the change, but I haven't seen people offering their time (and additional tweak time) to get things to a place that everyone will be happy with. As I've stated, I'll personally be frustrated to see it affecting programmers time (unless they choose)... and in the past that's exactly what happened.
- GIMP-Win's makover is a radical improvement for me. I couldn't stand to
use it before; it was so ugly in Windows. Now I quite like to use it - wierd window structure asside.
Wait. Are you SERIOUSLY trying to tell me that you didn't (or couldn't stand to) use an app that got the job done... because of the icons?!?!
- Giving Inkscape a face lift will propel it further forward when 0.46
comes out, because people can immediately see new things from the very first glance. This creates more buzz, which means more users, which means more developers, which means better Inkscape.
If people REALLY want to see inkscape get a face lift for 0.46 (which a number of us don't feel this is necessary), they'd better get crackin'. No offense, but, less talk about it and more action. Given that I don't like the Tango icons in the least... I for one won't be participating.
So all in all I really think it's worth one our 106 developers taking some time on this.
Some of those people are translators, many inactive for a few years, etc. Either way, as Inkscape development has always gone... people work on what they want to. If someone is really interested, they'll work on it.
-Josh
Just quick notes because this is getting lengthy (and we'd better get the stuff done ;) ).
On 2007-October-30 , at 04:28 , bulia byak wrote:
On 10/29/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...400...> wrote:
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.
Any tweaking is work. A lot of work. With 750+ unclosed bugs, I really think we have more important things to do right now than improving some proposed poor icon set when our current one is already better.
I completely agree with that but I just think that closing bugs and improving icons (or documentation, or translations etc.) simply does not involve the same persons. People with no programming skills can help there and it won't drain manpower away from bug closing. On the contrary, I even think it can get people involved in the project and maybe, in time, turn them into bug squashers.
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.
The more apps you compare, the less meaningful is the comparison. We have a number of tools that are similar with Gimp, less so with Scribus, and still less for other apps. In the end, it's just the standard Save and Open icons that are truly common to all apps; everything else is very different in purpose and scope.
Once again, I am not necessarily advocating using the exact same icons (except for Open, Save and such indeed) but rather draw icons that visually fit Tango ones. Tango icons of the ArtLibre set have the merit of being there already and can be used as a base but the overall goal is really purely visual: to have Inkscape blend in nicely, particularly on Linux but also on other systems. It may seem futile but if there are enough people willing to put time in it, why not? And of course I don't personally think it is as futile as it may seem. Having a unified, consistent UI is, in part, what differentiates a "desktop" from a bunch of unrelated applications, each running in its own direction. It is what make me like OS X. It is what I would like to see on Linux. Of course the point of a Desktop is to have apps interacting nicely and behaving the same way, not just "look" the same. The look can appear to be secondary but once again, it just does not involve the same people. So if some can make the look consistent while other tackle the more profound behavioral part (verse plugins etc.), that's all benefit isn't it?
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.
I agree, but Tango does not achieve this goal IMHO. It's too half-way, too inconsistent in itself, too clunky and plain boring. Instead, what I always dreamed of (maybe one day when I don't have anything better to do in Inkscape...) is an alternative set with purely B/W icons. Not even grayscale, but B/W, with everything expressed via pure shape and outline. If well done, it can look very stylish and unique. But Tango seems to me like a watered-down milk: why drink that if you can have pure milk or pure water instead?
Nice analogy. Well, it is really a matter of taste. I actually know people who prefer watery, cream-free milk ;). I personally quite like Tango icons. I would also love a pure black and white or subtle gray theme. Tango goes the pastel way. It is a sensible choice to keep color for most apps and it is already an improvement over flashy colors with no predefined palette. Improvement is a step-by-step process.
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
On 10/30/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...400...> wrote:
Once again, I am not necessarily advocating using the exact same icons (except for Open, Save and such indeed) but rather draw icons that visually fit Tango ones.
OK, with this I agree. But right now the tango tool icons are not drawn anew, they are just picked from what's available. If someone wants to draw a new set of tool icons (to start with), preserving all of the carefully worked out details of the current icons and keeping as similar to them as possible, but adhering to the tango style (whatever it is), I will be happy to consider this replacement.
Nice analogy. Well, it is really a matter of taste. I actually know people who prefer watery, cream-free milk ;).
Yeah, but I for one wouldn't stake the future of my upstart foodstuff company on such a product :)
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
The new calligraphy icon is a step backwards to me.
Is this because it is not familiar or because it doesn't portray the idea of "calligraphy"? I think a quill is quite suitable for calligraphy.
magnifying icons, not only are they not consistent (imho), Those small icons were pulled from http://gnomelook.org/content/show.php/Tangofied+inkscape+icons+set?content=4.... That set does not contains many icons that have been adopted by the Tango project. There is no reason why we could not create new versions of these.
- lack coordination with our mouse cursors: in our current set, node
tool uses this thin triangular black pointer depicted on its icon, and paintbucket cursor is also similar to the icon - this is not the case with proposed icons
This can, of course, be easily remedied, can't it?
Easy remedy provided someone wants to spend the time doing it... and maintaining things too. People tend to want to make changes and not maintain them, which then means the other devs get pulled away from more important issues.
I expected the remedy would be to simply change the image. I wouldn't know, but I didn't think this would involve programming new features.
If the tools are "kinda" the same between apps (as in the same in
principle, NOT usability), but represented by the same icon as it would be in a suite, is this not more confusing to the end user?
I think users will create a link between the tools despite not sharing identical icons so useability issues are unavoidable. Unless of course you use completely different symbols and name them differently - then we'll have some really good useability problems :)
microUgly wrote:
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
The new calligraphy icon is a step backwards to me.
Is this because it is not familiar or because it doesn't portray the idea of "calligraphy"? I think a quill is quite suitable for calligraphy.
It has nothing to do with being familiar, it's more of the not portraying the idea of calligraphy. It actually looks a bit like the "white out" tape dispensers (which for the record are way better than the liquid). Also, when I had done calligraphy in my art classes, I had never seen a calligraphy pen (or anything with a nib) that looks anything like that.
Easy remedy provided someone wants to spend the time doing it... and maintaining things too. People tend to want to make changes and not maintain them, which then means the other devs get pulled away from more important issues.
I expected the remedy would be to simply change the image. I wouldn't know, but I didn't think this would involve programming new features.
Well, the remedy is effectively simply changing the image. However, that's not so simple for things to look right. Especially because it seems like with icons, people don't tend to react well to feedback that is requesting changes.
Also, you are correct, this doesn't involve programming new features... However, the concern is that our dedicated programmers will be end up having to mess with non-programming related tasks (which is a waste of resources when it's not really their choice). The icons are sort of like maintaining the website, community building, documentation, PR work, helping users, etc... these are all areas that the programmers shouldn't have to worry about. It's not to say they don't occasionally enjoy such things... but it's good if it could be more optional for them (which everyone benefits from).
-Josh
Joshua A. Andler wrote:
It has nothing to do with being familiar, it's more of the not portraying the idea of calligraphy.
What are the little things sticking out from the sides, I've been wondering...I like the nub in of the current icon, looks more realistic and recognizable.
It actually looks a bit like the "white out" tape dispensers (which for the record are way better than the liquid).
Depends on the use :)
JF
On 10/29/07, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...533...> wrote:
Easy remedy provided someone wants to spend the time doing it... and maintaining things too. People tend to want to make changes and not maintain them, which then means the other devs get pulled away from more important issues.
Just wanted to add that replacing all of our icons is a huge amount of work. It's been worked on for many years now. I don't think anything comparable can be done in short time. I think outright replacement is simply out of the question: right now you have too few icons anyway, and if you wait until you have all of them in tango, by that time Inkscape will add a lot more :) You're already missing the 3D box tool icon, by the way, which I recently reworked and made much better.
When the UI's are all inherently different to begin with, what good does it do to make the icons match? All three mentioned apps (Inkscape, GIMP, & Scribus) have different ideas of what their UI should be and what makes for good usability.
Agree 100%. Icon unification should be the last stage when the tools, behaviors, modes etc are all made as similar as possible. Otherwise it's just pretending, not real unification of anything. Not to mention that the majority of our users are on Windows and couldn't care less about "unification" with some apps on another platform.
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.
Also agree. In short, I may consider gradual tangofication, but not wholesale change. Both would waste (IMHO) a lot of our time, but in the first case at least there's a hope it will actually improve things overall :)
Re drabness: please consider that Inkscape is a young upstart application, so it's perfectly adequate for it to use bright, memorable icons. This builds recognizability. And now, when it just started to gain wide popularity, it would be the worst time IMHO to change its appearance so drastically and not necessarily for the good. Adobe Illustrator, in its position, may afford very not-in-your-face icons; we may not yet. Besides, AI's icons are much more consistent and eye-pleasing, even though (and maybe because) they are all grayscale, no color at all. This makes a statement. Tango seems to me like it wants to be too many things at once: it is pale but not uniformly pale, and it's colored but not really making good use of the color.
Take paintbucket for example: our icon is very obvious, descriptive, and blends well with the rest. Tango's paintbucket is simply hard to understand - doesn't look very much like a bucket, and what is that blue thing? Especially considering that people don't normally expect to see a paintbucket tool in a vector app.
In short, I'm open to critique of some aspects of our current icons, and for some that I don't care much about I would consider replacing them with tango, but the main toolbar is the face of the program, and I think I like it much better as it is now than what is proposed.
On Mon, 29 Oct 2007 23:17:46 -0000, Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art <faceman@...1574...> wrote:
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.
I agree with most of what he said but don't think it's important to make a unified visual UI between common apps.
The Tango icons fall into two classes, from the PoV of Inkscape: those that are worse than the current ones (zoom icons, caligraphy, gradient), and those that are almost identical to the current ones. As such, I don't see much reason to bother with them.
Besides, even if it's not made the default icon set, it's still nice to have as an alternative.
I guess so; it just seems a wasted effort. But then, it's not my effort!
TW
On 10/30/07, Thomas Worthington wrote:
Besides, even if it's not made the default icon set, it's still nice to have as an alternative.
I guess so; it just seems a wasted effort. But then, it's not my effort!
Well, having a Tango styled icon set is already a good thing for those who also use Scribus, GIMP 2.4, PDFedit and Synfig. I don't see this as a wasted effort as long as the person who wants to work on it has no other things to do and is ready to maintain it.
Besides having all icons from original icons set is not neccesary at all. Having icons for almost every action in menu is not so great, unless you want them all in orwellistic "Undo history" palette ;-)
Alexandre
Ryan Lerch wrote:
From what I can tell from that page, most of the icons that we may need are
covered in that "Spec" but a lot seem to be not drawn yet,
If we start working on them, we should work closely with the tango guys, so the 1 job isn't being done twice by two different open communities...
(that's my 2 cents anyway...)
Cheers,
ryanlerch
If you're suggesting to contribute to the ArtLibre set, I agree. If we could make a list of which icons from that set go where in Inkscape, that would be a nice first step. I've started a wiki page ( http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TangoifiedIcons ) where we can begin doing this. Maybe someone with power could add this to the main page under the "how to help without coding" section.
Anyone have contact already with the Tango people? If not, I'd be glad to contact them (unless someone else wants to) to find out the best way to proceed.
JF
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
If we could make a list of which icons from that set go where in Inkscape, that would be a nice first step. I've started a wiki page ( http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TangoifiedIcons ) where we can begin doing this.
I don't know much about working with Wiki's, but I was all set to upload the complete list. I was hoping to display the icons from my own host in the interim as manually uploading 246 images did not sound like fun :) But it seems you can't link to external images?
What's the quickest and easiest way to get 246 images onto the Wiki?
microUgly wrote:
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
If we could make a list of which icons from that set go where in Inkscape, that would be a nice first step. I've started a wiki page ( http://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/TangoifiedIcons ) where we can begin doing this.
I don't know much about working with Wiki's, but I was all set to upload the complete list. I was hoping to display the icons from my own host in the interim as manually uploading 246 images did not sound like fun :) But it seems you can't link to external images?
What's the quickest and easiest way to get 246 images onto the Wiki?
What's your idea of fun, then :O)
I was thinking a quick upload of the whole svg file would suffice for the time being, but I think it would definitely be helpful to upload individually, since then you could do a list with the old icon or the new if it's got a replacement. (Is that what you had in mind?)
I don't know if there's a way to upload a bunch without a special plugin. If there's not, I'll help (starting from the opposite end of the list :)
JF
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
but I think it would definitely be helpful to upload individually, since then you could do a list with the old icon or the new if it's got a replacement. (Is that what you had in mind?)
That's exactly what I had in mind :)
I don't know if there's a way to upload a bunch without a special
plugin. If there's not, I'll help (starting from the opposite end of the list :)
If we have to. And I suppose we do, as since it has to be added to both the filesystem and database. The sys administrator would have to write an insert query - which would be very quick and easy if you know how.
What I might do is get the Wiki/HTML code in place. That way as we add images we can see them appear on the page.
Should we choose a naming format for the original and tango icons? i.e. orig_[ink_name].png and tango_[tango_name].png
microUgly wrote:
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
but I think it would definitely be helpful to upload individually, since then you could do a list with the old icon or the new if it's got a replacement. (Is that what you had in mind?)
That's exactly what I had in mind :)
Sweet!
I don't know if there's a way to upload a bunch without a special
plugin. If there's not, I'll help (starting from the opposite end of the list :)
If we have to. And I suppose we do, as since it has to be added to both the filesystem and database. The sys administrator would have to write an insert query - which would be very quick and easy if you know how.
Yes, and if you had the access :)
What I might do is get the Wiki/HTML code in place. That way as we add images we can see them appear on the page.
That sounds great.
Should we choose a naming format for the original and tango icons? i.e. orig_[ink_name].png and tango_[tango_name].png
Do tango names use underscores or dashes for spaces? We should probably use what they use, but your format looks fine.
JF
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
Do tango names use underscores or dashes for spaces? We should probably use what they use, but your format looks fine.
Yeah, Tango has a specific naming format, but since the Wiki doesn't have folders I wanted to make sure we didn't run into conflicting file names. The names used for uploading the images wouldn't neccessarily be the names used for the icons... if that makes sense :)
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
microUgly wrote:
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
but I think it would definitely be helpful to upload individually, since then you could do a list with the old icon or the new if it's got a replacement. (Is that what you had in mind?)
That's exactly what I had in mind :)
Sweet!
HTML is now up. And I've uploaded the first 16 icons for the tools... only 230 to go :) I've included a link to ZIP file of all the icons (http://www.microugly.com/orig-inkscape-icons.zip) with the correct filenames for anyone who wants to help upload the icons.
If there is any problems with how I created the tables, just say. I can modify them pretty easily with either a WYSIWYG editor or regular expressions. The only tedious part I've had so far was grouping the icons.
microUgly wrote:
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
microUgly wrote:
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art wrote:
but I think it would definitely be helpful to upload individually, since then you could do a list with the old icon or the new if it's got a replacement. (Is that what you had in mind?)
That's exactly what I had in mind :)
Sweet!
HTML is now up. And I've uploaded the first 16 icons for the tools... only 230 to go :) I've included a link to ZIP file of all the icons (http://www.microugly.com/orig-inkscape-icons.zip) with the correct filenames for anyone who wants to help upload the icons.
If there is any problems with how I created the tables, just say. I can modify them pretty easily with either a WYSIWYG editor or regular expressions. The only tedious part I've had so far was grouping the icons.
Hi! Sorry for the late reply on this. I've started adding some icons on the page and will upload all my work I have on my disk during the weekend. - Andreas
Andreas Nilsson wrote:
Sorry for the late reply on this. I've started adding some icons on the page and will upload all my work I have on my disk during the weekend.
- Andreas
Hey Andreas,
I was thinking the "Current Tango ArtLibreSet" column could be used for icons already included in the ArtLibreSet (http://tango.freedesktop.org/ArtLibreSet - esp those already used by GIMP), whilst the "Proposed Icon" column would be for new icons not yet adopted as a part of ArtLibreSet.
What do you think?
On 2007-October-24 , at 05:21 , Ryan Lerch wrote:
microUgly wrote possible to pull their icons? I haven't been able to find a public repository of icons for these applications.
AFAIK, both the current inkscape tango icons and the gimp tango icons are based off the tango art-libre set from tango project:
Indeed, and that's probably why some don't look crisp and clear in Inkscape yet: they may not be hinted at the right size. From what I know of the Tango workflow, the icons are designed in vector at large size and then the smaller sizes are tweaked in a raster editor. If the large Tango vector icons are scaled down without being hinted or not scaled down enough to match Inkscape's sizes, that makes them look "blurry" or "jaggy" in a GTK theme (i.e. with icon sizes) which fits current icon theme well.
For information a set of sizes in a GTK theme which works well with current icons is: 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" inkscape-decoration are locks, the "Affect" icons etc. Furthermore, the toolbars use gtk-small-toolbar (16px) while most other apps use gtk-large-toolbar (commonly 24px). But anyway, keeping compatibility with current theme should be paramount, so Tango icons should be hinted in their vector version at the size of their current equivalent to look as crisp as now. I am sure this was already done for some, but apparently not for all of them. I am conscious that all this depends on the GTK theme but I imagine that's the price to pay for vector icons.
From what I can tell from that page, most of the icons that we may need are
covered in that "Spec" but a lot seem to be not drawn yet,
If we start working on them, we should work closely with the tango guys, so the 1 job isn't being done twice by two different open communities...
(that's my 2 cents anyway...)
Since many Inkscape icons will need to be drawn at smaller sizes than what the Tango guys usually work at, this may interfere though.
It would be really nice to see these improve. Thanks for showing interest!
JiHO --- http://jo.irisson.free.fr/
participants (16)
-
unknown＠example.com -
Alexandre Prokoudine -
Andreas Nilsson -
bulia byak -
David Christian Berg -
jiho -
Joel Holdsworth -
joel＠...1709... -
John Bintz -
Jon A. Cruz -
Joshua A. Andler -
Joshua Blocher -
Joshua Facemyer / Impressus Art -
microUgly -
Ryan Lerch -
Thomas Worthington