Icon theme for ubuntu

[David Nielsen]

On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 08:13 -0500, Matthias Clasen wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-11-21 at 13:39 +0100, Jakub 'Livio' Rusinek wrote:
> > I think it's not hard to create professional looking icon theme.
> > Try Echo with Infinity theme - this is proffesional? I don't think so.
> 
> If it is not hard, why do you do it and come back when you have
> something to show ?

yum install tango-icon-theme, there's something to show. 

Shall I start filing bugs on all the components in Fedora that currently
does not accept an easy theme change such as rhgb, gdm, anaconda and so
on (preferredly something like replacing the fedora-artwork package or a
similar option). I believe that was the proposed solution we got from
the art team the last time, yet no work has gone into enabling said
choice of the user. A choice which will be needed since echo has poor
accessibility - However this was claimed as not being a target (a
complete understandable and acceptable design decision if it wasn't for
the fact that the aim is to be our default iconset), despite the rest of
the distro aiming for good defaults for handicapped people. Advancements
such as PolicyKit are being integrate which will enable using a screen
reader on applications which would normally not work, a specific goal on
moral grounds as pointed out by davidz in his linux.conf.au 2007 talk
"Gluing a desktop and a kernel together[1].

Why should our artwork go against such a goal, being handicapped myself
and having worked extensively which people suffering from a wide range
impairments I can honestly say this group of users have very little
choice currently not to mention they are tied to proprietary platforms.

Fedora has a clear market opening if we want it, furthermore with laws
being the way they are in most countries we cannot be used in government
deployments unless we are accessible (Section 508 in the US e.g.). 

I have mainly been a pain about this because I think it's a moral
obligation to ensure that everyone has the option to use Fedora and I
believe the default should strive for a mix of good looks and good
accessibility - Tango has that and it has good adoption upstream
(OpenOffice, GIMP, Jokosher.. many projects default to using Tango
icons). 

The only way to offer Echo, Tango and everything else which is on the
table would be to easily allow theme changes for the entire system, not
just session icons and select a sensible default - this work has not
been done, seeing as the artwork team wants Echo and originally offered
this solution I assumed they would be filing the bugs - this however
does not seem to be the case.

This is not about my personal opinion on the look of Echo, it's about
being able to offer the choice of freedom to a group of people who
currently has none and expanding our potential userbase.

Untill you have seen the change of life quality the ability to
communicate and work does to a person who is paralysed from the neck
down, I doubt anyone will truly understand. I happen to have seen this,
an accessible computer gave this person the option to work 10-15 hours a
week - the change in his life cannot be expressed. I would like to see
us offer that without the hefty pricetag and exclusion from common
applications they currently have. I would like this kind of profound
change to be part of what we help give to the world. I think it starts
with addressing the most widespread impairments.. eye sight (degraded
eye sight, color blindness, etc.). Much of that can be done with good
defaults, some requires the option of having e.g. high contrast icons
(colorblindness can now been aided by compiz plugins - I'm unsure of the
current state of tie in to the accessibility settings).

Additionally an option to change the system unified look would make
branding for special deployment as well as spins much nicer.

Thank you for your time,
David Nielsen

[1]
http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2007/video/talks/220.ogg
(about 24 mins into the video)
http://mirror.linux.org.au/pub/linux.conf.au/2007/video/talks/220.pdf
(as well as page 49 in the slideshow pdf file)
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