Hello,
I'm a user of Inkscape, mainly on Windows and very (very) rarely on Xubuntu and Ubuntu. I checked in SVN for the SVG Tango icons and found the file, which I studied carefully.
N.B.: I'll give here my "user" point of view, which reflects my taste and my rationale. Please, forgive me if this message isn't always "nice"... it's not meant to be aggressive, it's just that tastes in icons/applications is a passionate thing - so I'm allowed to tell my mind with passion on the matter :-)
Well, re. the proposed Tango icon set for Inkscape... I do NOT want to be "forced" to test the Tango icons - let alone to be forced to use them. I hate the Tango icons. :-)
The main reasons are:
- they are unreadable, "undecodable". I do not need to use a magnifying glass to "decode" the current (non Tango) icon set, the icons are "sharp" and "clear". Compared to them, the Tango icons are... "wtf?... which icon is that...?" I do not want to lose time wondering each time I need to click on an icon (and it happens quite a lot in Inkscape, because I don't use the shortcuts or F-keys). Honestly, I hardly *see* the Tango icons.
- they belong to the Linux world. I know they are supposed to be suitable to multi-platform applications, but in the real reality, this isn't the case, and they say "Linux", they say GTK or KDE. As I said before, I use Inkscape on Windows. Why would I need "Linux-like" icons which clash so badly with any Windows (or, I guess, Mac) theme and which I cannot decode anyway?
- I do not use any other "free" software which uses the Tango icon set, such as The Gimp or..., so I don't care about "being used" to seeing such or such icons.
- I believe each application can have its own style, its own icons. I hate the "applications on a platform must all look alike" concept, it's sterile, it's boring, it's dull.
So, my user opinion is: if the Linux users are masochists and want to have Tango style icons for Inkscape, fine, give them a GUI to switch to Tango icons. Me, as a user of Inkscape on Windows, I just want clear, sharp, and decodable icons - just like the current icons! I pray you, Inkscape developers, please, keep the current default set as the default!
Thanks! (and again... no personal attack here :-)