Choosing the 'right' icon for an application

[Robin Norwood]

On Tue, 15 Jul 2008 09:22:57 +0300
Nicu Buculei <nicu_fedora at nicubunu.ro> wrote:

> Robin Norwood wrote:
> > o Pick an appropriately-sized icon png (probably 48x48).
> >   - We could also store svg instead of png.
> 
> I don't think there is a need to store the SVG, there is no 
> straightforward way to embed in in a web page (and have it rendered 
> correctly by all browsers).

Cool.  I was thinking perhaps convert to png's at the desired size on
the server side, but that doesn't seem as straightforward as I'd
hoped.  png's should be fine.

> > o When picking an icon to show the user, pick the one from their
> > currently-selected theme and OS (if we know it), falling back to an
> > icon from the Fedora or 'generic' theme.
> 
> I am curious to identify which icon theme is the user using. The
> browser does not know this info, the only way I can imagine it
> working is to have smolt reporting the theme and link data from smolt
> with amber. I don't think you want to go this route (complicated,
> privacy issues, smolt is off by default)

Ah.  Well, to do the actual package install, we'll be using a browser
plugin (probably) which will probably send us some limited information
- like what version of Fedora the user is running, for instance.  It
might be possible to include the current theme in this info.

> > Does this sound sane?  I don't know enough about how icons work to
> > know if I've missed something.
> 
> I want to add that we are not sure at this time which icon set will
> be used in F10 as default, we try to have Echo but we may end staying
> one more cycle with Mist (but this should be easy to solve, both
> themes are using the same naming structure).

OK.  I'll keep an eye out on this list for updates.

Thanks,

-RN

-- 
Robin Norwood
Red Hat, Inc.

"The Sage does nothing, yet nothing remains undone."
-Lao Tzu, Te Tao Ching