I've tried the new icons and I like them. I agree that they desrve to become the new default set. Crisper, much more consistent across the set, yet at the same time sufficiently similar to the old ones so that to not cause confusion.
However I also have a few comments and requests for the author:
- The file is too large. At least, please vacuum defs and remove the text labels - yes they help work with the icons, but please consider that this 1M file is completely loaded on each start of the program. Another very important opportunity to speed it up is by replacing duplicates by clones. We do not plan to break the file into separate SVG icon files, so feel free to use clones of the same object across as many icons as necessary. This can bring huge savings.
- The color scheme is nice, but the bright yellow-orange gradient should only be used as an accent, not as the main color. This rule is broken in the Gradient tool icon, which looks much brighter than the other tools and stands out on the panel. Please consider using some other gradient for it.
- The two pencils and the pen in the tool icons are all different scales, positions, and angles. This looks noisy and annoying. Please consider making these icons more unified, so that the drawing tools look more like a group.
- I understand that the shape icons all use the same standard palette, but I still think that the old scheme where each shape had its own associated color is better for novices. So can we make an exception here? The colors needn't be as bright as before, just hints. The pentagon/star icon for the Star tool looks a bit too noisy and hard to read, especially with the transparency of the top star. And the spiral by default comes up without fill, so the spiral tool icon should reflect that.
- Something is wrong with the pupil of the eye in the statusbar layer visibility icon.
-- bulia byak Inkscape. Draw Freely. http://www.inkscape.org