[Tango-artists] VMware-related Tango questions

[Christian Hammond]

Hey Jakub.

On 3/27/07, Jakub Steiner <jimmac at novell.com> wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2007-03-26 at 11:58 -0700, Christian Hammond wrote:
> > Hey everyone.
> >
> > As some of you are probably aware, we've been converting our icon
> > style in VMware Workstation 6 to match Tango in order to fit in better
> > with the desktop. So far, I think we've managed to make the people at
> > work who use and develop the Windows version of Workstation
> > jealous ;)
> >
> > We're gearing up for a release and need to know if there's anything
> > special we need to do to attribute Tango, as per the CC. We have a big
> > file that has the licenses and copyrights for all the open source
> > software we use, but is there anything else that is needed?
>
> Hi Christian.
>
> In the past we have asked projects using Tango icons to attribute the
> Tango project as a whole (as opposed to individual artists), linking to
> the Tango website.


Okay, cool. That's what we have in our list so far.

> Also, while the interface looks much nicer now, there are a couple of
> > icons that stand out as being very out of place. Not Tango icons, but
> > rather icons from one of Tango's fallback themes. Specifically, the
> > Favorites icon, USB icon and Memory icon (and a number of people have
> > commented about the Ethernet icon looking like a kitchen tool or
> > airplane toilet seat, but I'm less worried about that one). Tango
> > doesn't appear to have versions of these (correct me if I'm wrong
> > please, though my Ubuntu Feisty install doesn't show any). This is a
> > shame because the fallbacks just don't fit in.
>
> There is an icon for flash memory which in tango's base set looks like a
> generic memory module [1]. But as you want to use it as a fallback, I
> don't think that would be a good choice. Maybe we want to add a generic
> memory device icon name, Rodney?



The flash memory icon actually looks quite well as a a generic memory icon.
The fallback icons define a "devices/memory" icon that we're referencing. We
actually are using a symlink to point to the flash memory right now and
referencing that for our fallbacks (used if no icon theme defines "memory"),
as it looks pretty close to a RAM stick :) (at least at 16x16).

As for USB icon, you mean the USB logo? I wasn't able to find out the
> use terms on the usb.org website. It looks like the old 'hub' logo isn't
> being used these days anymore anyway. It will be very unlikely to have
> this defined in the naming spec though as 'usb device' is very vague and
> hardly a useful fallback.


Having a generic "USB" icon is quite useful actually. While it's all well
and good to have an icon for every type of USB device, you would want a
fallback I would think, and sometimes you want to reference the concept of a
USB device rather than specific USB devices. For us, it's a definite
necessity, as we're indicating "USB support" rather than any one specific
device. The icon is saying "You have support for USB for this virtual
machine."

CrystalSVG is defining a "usb" icon currently. This means that when Tango is
selected, we get a really out of place (sort of ugly) icon instead of the
one we're shipping.


In what context do you use Favorites icon? Wouldn't emblem-favorite work
> for you?


A favorites list in the sidebar. emblem-favorite would work, but it seems
wrong somehow to be using an emblem icon when you're not putting the emblem
on anything, even if it is the right size. I would see a dedicated favorites
icon being useful in sidebars, menu items, and buttons. For example, Gimmie
has a button for Favoriting an item, and an emblem wouldn't necessarily make
sense, imho.

The fact that you're using the style is more beneficial to the Tango
> project than the actual artwork (but sadly only for the Linux client,
> make the windows guys more jealous ;). Would you mind sending me some
> screenshots and allow us to put WMWare Worstation 6 in the 'Showroom'
> page?[2]


Yeah, we figured though that we've benefited so much from Tango that we
should give back anything we make that we can legally give back, with the
hope that somebody else would also find it useful.

We'd love to be in the showroom :). Here's a screenshot you can use:

http://osiris.chipx86.com/screenshots/ws6.png

That's probably the most interesting screenshot, as it has the largest
collection of icons in one window, but if you want more I can take
screenshots of some other dialogs.

For reference, here's how it looks when using the USB, Memory and Favorites
icons provided by Tango's fallbacks:

http://osiris.chipx86.com/screenshots/ws6-tango-fallbacks.png

Thanks,

Christian

-- 
Christian Hammond - chipx86 at chipx86.com
VMware, Inc.
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