Inkscape

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?

-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tango-Icons-tf4320411.html#a13448311
Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

On 10/24/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...> 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.

-- 
bulia byak
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org

On 10/29/07, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 10/24/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...> 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!? :)

-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tango-Icons-tf4320411.html#a13478807
Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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@...> 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@...> 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@...> 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/

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=48140. 
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 :)
-- 
View this message in context: http://www.nabble.com/Tango-Icons-tf4320411.html#a13480582
Sent from the Inkscape - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.

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, Joshua A. Andler <joshua@...> 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.

-- 
bulia byak
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org

On 10/29/07, jiho <jo.irisson@...> 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
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org

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

Hi Dave,

Could you give a brief synopsis of what libspiro is?

Bryce

On Mon, Oct 29, 2007 at 01:24:13AM +0000, Dave Crossland wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> FYI :-)
> 
> Forwarded Conversation
> Subject: [Fontforge-devel] libspiro
> From: George Williams <gww@...>
> To: fontforge-devel@...
> 
> There is now a separate project
>    http://libspiro.sf.net
> It contains the source code for the spiro library under svn (not cvs!).
> 
> The ffspiro subdirectory of the fontforge project has been removed.
> 
> FontForge's configure script has been tweaked to look for libspiro.
> 
> I hope this will be last major change in this area.
> 
> I need to:
>   Post some docs so other people (InkScape, etc.) can use libspiro too
>   Wait a little bit and see if it works for other people before posting
>         some libspiro releases.
> 
> (I should add that these sources are based on Raph's updated work in his
> garden rather than the released tarball -- there's a shell script to
> grab current stuff from the garden included in the svn repository).

On 29/10/2007, Bryce Harrington <bryce@...> wrote:
>
> Could you give a brief synopsis of what libspiro is?

The primary author of FontForge, George Williams, is not willing to
move his project to the GPL from BSD license, in order to take
advantage of the Spiro splines developed by Raph Levien. Therefore he
has set up a libspiro project that users can download and compile
FontForge with, to enable the Spiro functionality now in FontForge.

He hopes that the library will be of use to Inkscape, which will have
no problem integrating it, since it is GPL. Still, it would be good
for FontForge users to benefit from any improvements, so doing a
libspiro project seems like a good idea.

Before the project was set up, users had to download Spiro from Raph's
darcs repo, and there was a shim in the FontForge trunk. I wrote a
recipe for this at
http://understandinglimited.com/2007/10/26/ff-spiro/ but its now
stale.

-- 
Regards,
Dave

On 10/28/07, Dave Crossland <dave@...> wrote:
> (I should add that these sources are based on Raph's updated work in his
> garden rather than the released tarball -- there's a shell script to
> grab current stuff from the garden included in the svn repository).

So, does this lib contain the fallback which forces lower level
approximations instead of doing wild curves when it can't solve the
points? Last I checked this was in Raph's Javascript demo but not yet
in the C code.

-- 
bulia byak
Inkscape. Draw Freely.
http://www.inkscape.org

On 29/10/2007, bulia byak <buliabyak@...> wrote:
> On 10/28/07, Dave Crossland <dave@...> wrote:
> > (I should add that these sources are based on Raph's updated work in his
> > garden rather than the released tarball -- there's a shell script to
> > grab current stuff from the garden included in the svn repository).
>
> So, does this lib contain the fallback which forces lower level
> approximations instead of doing wild curves when it can't solve the
> points? Last I checked this was in Raph's Javascript demo but not yet
> in the C code.

http://levien.com/garden/ppedit/ shows that spiro.c was changed on
03-Oct-2007, so I think so, although I'm not sure.

-- 
Regards,
Dave

Jon A. Cruz schrieb:
> I'm seeing behavior that would seem to indicate that when you close  
> the views on a document, the document stays in memory.

A while ago I also got the impression that this is the case. On a less 
code-oriented basis, though - just by working on two documents one of 
which contained a lot of objects. When closing this (but keeping the 
other window open), my computer's memory indicator remained at the same 
level. Now that I try it I can easily reproduce this by duplicating a 
simple rectangle over and over until a considerable amount of memory is 
used. Closing the corresponding window (without exiting Inkscape 
altogether) keeps the memory in use until I totally quit.

Max

Correct me if I'm wrong but could it be that the garbage collector
hasn't decide to collect it yet. That would be my first guess, maybe
it should be more aggressive with purging documents from memory.


Joshua L. Blocher
verbalshadow

On 10/28/07, Maximilian Albert <Anhalter42@...> wrote:
> Jon A. Cruz schrieb:
> > I'm seeing behavior that would seem to indicate that when you close
> > the views on a document, the document stays in memory.
>
> A while ago I also got the impression that this is the case. On a less
> code-oriented basis, though - just by working on two documents one of
> which contained a lot of objects. When closing this (but keeping the
> other window open), my computer's memory indicator remained at the same
> level. Now that I try it I can easily reproduce this by duplicating a
> simple rectangle over and over until a considerable amount of memory is
> used. Closing the corresponding window (without exiting Inkscape
> altogether) keeps the memory in use until I totally quit.
>
> Max
>
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