Future of Bluecurve & Partial Bluecurve Guidelines Available (was Re: bluecurve)

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi Matthew,

Matthew Swasey wrote:
> I would like to know if there are any specific plans for bluecurve as of
> yet.  Although it is my favorite icon set, it could use some updating
> and revamping.  Was the original author Garrett LeSage?

The original author was Garrett LeSage, although I don't know so many details 
about its origins as a Red Hat old-timer would. I'm on the Red Hat Network team 
and we use the icons extensively in the web gui, so I work with the icons a lot 
and I've created a few (very few) additional icons to the set. I'm sure Diana 
has too.

What kind of updating / revamping do you have in mind?

> Although I would not mind seeing some of the tango guidelines applied to
> bluecurve, it would be sad for Fedora/RedHat to ditch the bluecurve
> icons and replace them with Tango icons.

I agree, the Tango guidelines are great, and I think it would be a good project 
to 'Tangoize' Bluecurve such that it follows the Tango icon specifications. I'm 
not aware of any current project doing so...

It's my hope that we don't end up using the Tango icons if Bluecurve gets 
ditched, though. I think we need our own look. Tango is too close to Bluecurve 
to be compelling enough to switch IMHO.

> I always thought the bluecurve icons (and other theme elements) gave
> Fedora a look of it's own, separating it visually from other distros.
> Ubuntu just developed their own icon set, but it's a little to hard on
> the eyes for day to day use IMO.

I know quite a few old-timers are sick of Bluecurve as it is now since it's been 
around since Red Hat Linux 9. I've also heard complaints that it's too cartoony 
and we need something fresh.

If people enjoy it though, I don't see any reason why anyone shouldn't be able 
to contribute new icons to the set. It's definitely a very large set of icons. I 
haven't actually contributed my additions 'officially' in any capacity, for 
example, because there is no clear process for doing so. The icons are GPL'ed, btw.

I have made a start at putting together some guidelines for creating icons to 
fit the set at: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BluecurveIconGuidelines
Diana, will you document the palette for this page? :)

I'd like to build that page into a full set of guidelines up for those who'd 
like to create additional icons, and get a nice gallery of all the current icons 
in SVG format. Any feedback on what I've got so far would be greatly appreciated. :)

~m