Tangofied Fedora Logo Icon

[Peter Gordon]

On Fri, 2007-07-27 at 22:05 +0200, Stephen Brandt wrote:
> Hi Peter,
> 
> Since I haven't heard anything for a while I did a bit of research on
> the Fedora Art project and noticed Diana is absent since half of march.
> I have no idea why, and if there's some other person we should get in
> touch with - to get approval for the icon.

I think she left Red Hat, but I'm know none of the details.

> I also noticed that besides Echo, the Tango icon theme is not in Fedora
> 7 either (well, at least not default). So what are the Fedora icon theme
> goals anyway?

It's in the Fedora repositories, just not installed by default. Just
install the tango-icon-theme (base set) and tango-icon-theme-extras
(extra icons for multimedia things such as iPods, Dell Jukeboxes, etc.).
If you're using a graphical package manager such as Pirut or YumEx, they
are located in the "GNOME Desktop Environment" category.

(CC-ing Fedora Art list for their input. For any list replies, please CC
me to this email address, since I am not subscribed. Thanks.)

Art List, Essentially the issue is that there is a Tango-ified Fedora
logo [1] that I'd like to include in a downstream package of the Tango
icon theme instead of the default pair of feet as the icon for the GNOME
main menu; but I am attempting to get it approved legally, since it is a
trademark of the Fedora Project and I do not want to abuse or violate
any of the trademark guidelines.

Now, the icon is almost unchanged from the standard Fedora trademark,
except that it uses the Tango color palette and is made into a vector
image. I'm under the (perhaps mistaken) impression that since this would
be used in Fedora proper, it would be a valid and appropriate use of the
trademark in spirit. However, I've yet to receive a Yea or Nay on this
from Diana Fong or anyone else at Red Hat. (There was an OTRS ticket for
this long ago; I don't know if it still is open.)

Personally, I believe that Fedora should use the Tango icon set as the
default theme, as it provides an icon set which:
 (1) adheres to the FreeDesktop.org naming guidelines;
 (2) contains consistent and easily distinguishable design patterns
(through a specific set of usability guidelines [2]); and
 (3) is being absorbed upstream as default theming for major desktop
projects such as OpenOffice.org, The GIMP, Pidgin, and others [3].

This would make the Fedora desktop experience much more fluid overall,
since everything in theory would be using the same icons and same
styling, thus being less of a learning curve for end-users.

While I greatly appreciate the efforts of the Echo developers, I do not
fully understand the motivation for it. One of Fedora's main goals is
getting things done in upstream proper so that everyone benefits. Yet,
we ignore the Tango project even though its goals coincide with our own
(proper desktop "look and feel" integration, strict usability
guidelines, upstream involvement, etc.). If it's entirely about branding
and whatnot, the default setup already has _four_ separate ways of
determining that it's Fedora, hence my confusion:

Firstly, there is the "About Fedora" item in the "System" main menu.
Secondly, the "System Monitor" item (under the "Administration" category
of the "System" main menu") shows the Fedora release and codename in its
first page/tab. Thirdly, Firefox and other browsers all default to the
locale-specific Fedora release notes as their homepage. Lastly, some
major applications such as Eclipse have a "Powered by Fedora" or similar
notice on their splash screens.

Thanks for your input, Stephen and others!

[1]
http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/tango-artists/2006-December/000788.html
[2] http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
[3] http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Showroom
-- 
Peter Gordon (codergeek42)
GnuPG Public Key ID: 0xFFC19479 / Fingerprint:
  DD68 A414 56BD 6368 D957 9666 4268 CB7A FFC1 9479
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