Re: Icons for core modules

Robert Town wrote:

> Seems to me this goes to your upstream idea, though I have to wonder, 
> what % of icons will we still need to make, if it is great enough do we 
> not stand a better chance just making our own set of 100% original icons?

As a guess off the top of my head, we would need to make about 20 new 
icons to replace all the icons currently in the core.  That many, or 
maybe a few more, can be repurposed from Tango.

For example, Tango has several edit icons, but none of them are just 
"edit", they are all more specific:

edit-clear
edit-copy
edit-cut
edit-delete
edit-find-replace
edit-find
edit-paste
edit-redo
edit-select-all
edit-undo

Our only use for these is probably in WYSIWYG modules, but there's 
nothing broad enough in Tango we could apply to singluar terms we use: 
edit/modify.

Among the new icons I made, there is at least one that could readily go 
upstream: Authsystem (the keyring).  GNOME and KDE both have keyring 
applets, so that visual metaphor is an even better fit than it is for us.

> 
> Seems to me that is a missing area in the web apps age, an icon 
> standard, and a central place to get said icons.

My thinking is, if there is a growing standard corpus of desktop icons, 
why not bring it onto the web?  If Drupal and probably other web apps 
have adapted the Tango style (even while being cautious of license 
incompatibility), then we might be able to work with Tango and other web 
app projects to find a solution that makes it easier for Tango icons to 
be used in GPL apps, web or otherwise.

> 
> Tango has some good standards, I agree with the naming and other parts 
> of their standards but it seems some of it needs to be tweaked to apply 
> well to web apps.

I haven't thought much about if we would adopt Tango's naming 
guidelines, much less how.  Many instances of simple a change.

> 
> Either way I do think it is about time this was explored. Could make 
> dashboards, and menu icons a reality. Look forward to these or any icon 
> solutions implemented!!

Another issue is the image format we would use.  GIFs can be ugly due to 
1 bit transparency, depending on the icon and the underlying theme, JPG, 
being lossy, is lousy for icons, and PNG support is famously lacking in 
IE6.  Personally, I'd prefer PNG; IE6 can't go away fast enough.

> 
> 
> 
> "Marty Vance" <[email protected]> wrote in message 
> news:[email protected]...
> 
>>
>> Yes, I was planning to pull icons for common operations from Tango.  
>> But as I mentioned previously, Tango has some gaps that need to be 
>> filled for web aaplications. 
> 
>