trinity-devel@lists.pearsoncomputing.net

Message: previous - next
Month: February 2016

Re: [trinity-devel] Visual facelifting proposals

From: "E. Liddell" <ejlddll@...>
Date: Fri, 26 Feb 2016 07:44:16 -0500
On Wed, 24 Feb 2016 20:35:18 +0100
Thomas Maus <thomas.maus@...> wrote:

> Conversative stance and traditions not withstanding, TDE might profit from some 
> visual improvements, IMHO. Nothing fundamental, just some low-hanging fruits.
> 
> Perhaps worth considering: The icon sets from "http://www.ravefinity.com/". 
> They claim to do only Open-Source work, so this should be feasible -- either 
> for direct inclusion, or as a theme source.
> The "vibrantly simple" icon set works very well vor me, for example.

Adding a new icon set isn't quite as simple as just packaging it up--we need to
retouch some individual icons to provide, for instance, a "T"-logo menu icon
variant.   A new set addition is currently in (admittedly, slow) progress.

> Some of the icon sets have problems, e.g.
> * TDE-LoColor -- does this actually has still an use-case? your are not aiming 
> at car dashboard display, aren't you? it is very low-res, too.

Old hardware, especially stuff that isn't standard home PC hardware.  Plus, just
leaving it there as an optional set does no harm that I'm aware of.

> * iKons -- IMHO nice, but quite incomplete?

Which icons do you feel are missing?  It may be possible to create/retouch/repurpose
something to fill in the gaps, but we need to know what they are.  (This is the "royal
we", more or less--with Alexandre having left the project, I'm the one who'd most
likely be trying to do the work of creating additional icons.)

> * Tango -- only apps icons!?

Not a TDE icon theme--in fact, I think it's intended for Gnome.  TDE installs 
CrystalSVG, iKons, KDEClassic, Kids, Locolor, Slick, and (in the accessibility 
package) Mono.  Candidates for addition would normally be KDE icon themes,
which already have icons for most TDE applications.

> You might ask "so what?".
> Well, they might scare off some users, before they find the more pleasing 
> themes.

The first icon theme any new user is going to see is CrystalSVG, which is a complete 
theme with decent artwork, although in a style that isn't currently fashionable.  We 
can live with that, I think.

> For discussion: What about having a kind of "tag mechanism" for artwork?
> We could then tag artwork as "colorful", "dark theme", "light theme", 
> "monochromatic", "accesibility optimzed", "nostalgia", "kids", "modern", 
> "conversative", "flippant", etc. (multiple tags can be applied to an artwork!).
> The user might set preferences in the control-center, which limit the artwork 
> actually presented for selection -- this would be innovative, improve the 
> harmony of the resulting setup, reduce the clutter in the selection lists and 
> would enable a harmonic co-existence of old and new visual styles, without 
> need to drop legacy artwork.

What we really need for that sort of thing is probably Planet Trinity, to
encompass enough artwork to usefully fill out the categories without
supersizing the artwork packages.  I've considered that from time to time
(if only as a place to give users a clear list of what greeter, k3b, etc.
theme packages will work with the Trinity versions of those applications),
but I simply don't have the time to administer such a site.

One place that recommendations could be put right now is the wiki.

> Finally, about the TDE/Trinity logos, which are still very KDE-ish:
> 
> If that is wanted -- OK.
> 
> If more visual distance would be welcomed, have a view at:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triquetra
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triskelion
> Would some simple, color-ramped (to stay clear of well-established meanings) 
> Triquetra or Triskelion be of interest? I can draft those on positive 
> feedback.

There was some discussion of changing the logo artwork a couple of
years ago (I agree that the current one has problems, and they go beyond
being KDE-like--there's a reason the original logo had the K off-center).
If I recall correctly, Tim nixed it in the end.

E. Liddell