Icon Theme

[David Nielsen]

Rahul Sundaram skrev:
> David Nielsen wrote:
>>> The main point of the icon-naming side of the tango push is to make it
>>> a more feasible task to do a complete set of icons, by reducing the
>>> overall number of icons
>> Great, now when does Firefox, Thunderbird, The GIMP, Gaim and 
>> OpenOffice.org plan to support this scheme? Before they do (and I 
>> have no doubt that they will eventually but it might take years) this 
>> is still a perfectly valid concern, especially since all but one of 
>> those apps are in our default desktop.
>
> It is a valid concern, yes but forcing one theme style is not the way 
> to move ahead. It is very important that themes should be easily 
> replaceable all across the desktop environment and applications. If 
> not, thats a bug and should not used as a argument to adopt one theme.

Having a default is forcing a setting on the users, Echo is no less 
forcing a style on our users than Tango is. The question is do we want 
to force a good setting or a bad setting on our users. Tango has a 
vibrant developer community, is widely adopted, is vetted for usability, 
accessibility and style. Echo sadly has issues, some of which I pointed 
out months ago which are still not addressed. I would feel more 
comfortable with a real debate as to which default we are going to have 
for the forseeable future instead of handwaving about standards which 
have yet to be universally adopted (after which the art team will have a 
much easier job and the users a better experience whatever the art team 
decides to do).
I know it's hard to express an opinion on a subject like this without 
stepping on some toes, that is not the intend, but Echo is simply not a 
good nor a logical choice currently. The only unifying option we have is 
Tango. Given that it is so hard currently to change the entire look of 
the distro (not just icons might you) do we want the default to be as 
good as it can be?

I would be much more comfortable with a widely adopted default now, 
given that Fedora moves quickly, once the standards we require are 
adopted and Echo matures, it can be dropped in place - for the time 
being however that is simply not possible, all idealism aside.

This is ultimately about the user experience, I fear that at it's 
present level and that of the forseeable future Echo will not be able to 
provide the best possible experince, the art team is perfectly welcome 
to prove me wrong and have a consistent, vetted theme ready based on 
Echo ready for FC7. I doubt they can make that deadline especially given 
that they would have to cover applications which current are not under 
the naming standards, even big ones like OpenOffice.

This all aside the fact that Tango is a damn fine piece of work, it has 
great usability testing, it's accessibility friendly, wide adoption and 
a development pace that is out of this world. I know at least this about 
Echo, in the months I've followed it's development, it still has many 
issues like widely inconsistent emblem use (try looking at the 
indication for new just for a quick example) - I have tried pointing 
this out but nothing has happened and sadly I am not skilled enough to 
fix it myself only to spot it.

>>
>> I fully support the naming effort but it's not there yet so we need 
>> to be careful, we should also leverage the great work that has 
>> already been done by some of the FLOSS communitys finest artists, not 
>> to mention the large team they have already built to work on the 
>> Tango project.
>
> If the Fedora art team wants to move ahead and adopt a different 
> style, they should be encouraged and allowed to do that.
>
Nowhere did I tell the art team what they could do with their sparetime, 
however I plea Fedora as a whole to pick the best possible defaults for 
any given release, realistically Echo isn't it yet.. some day it might be.

My proposal is this, we create the missing bits of artwork in Tango 
(anaconda, rhgb, backgrounds, etc.) and use that for FC7. Echo being a 
work in progress is available both via the wiki and as an Extras package 
so it is sure to get real world testing, if need be we can ask users to 
test it out and maybe install it as a non-default theme so people can 
switch over easily. Once we get to a point where we have the required 
coverage, we make the switch, preferrably after consulting the users but 
if desired the art team can make that decision alone since it is now 
trivially easy to switch to whatever the users like. I promise on 
beloved aunts grave when it is dead simple to change the overall look of 
Fedora, then I'll shut up forever on this subject since I will then have 
a choice, right now I don't so I want the default to be as good as it 
gets - not just for me but for the good of our users.

Can Echo reach full coverage for FC7, realistically? If it can't, can it 
at least compare to what we can do with Tango today (There are Tango 
icon packs out there for Gaim, OpenOffice is work in progress and tests 
are available afaik). Also how do we encourage the various upstreams to 
make it easier do awesomeartshit (I imagine people like Mozilla might 
not be happy if we change their artwork in the name of consistency so we 
might need to convince them somehow).

- David