[Tango-artists] Antw: Re: improving overview

[Hendrik Eggers]

Hi,

thanks for your quick answer, ...


>>> Rodney Dawes <dobey.pwns at gmail.com> schrieb am Donnerstag, 19. März
2009 um
20:47 in Nachricht <1237492066.15384.36.camel at lunatari>:
> On Thu, 2009-03-19 at 11:33 +0100, Hendrik Eggers wrote: 
>> For intuitive icons in the web applications, we decided to rely on
>> tango. But there where some icons missing.
>> Please see the post
>>
<http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/tango-artists/2008-July/001852.html>
>> on this list for more information and
>> <http://tango.freedesktop.org/RRZETangoSet> for a current overview.
>> 
>> While working with tango we found it hard to find an overview of
what
>> icons are available and where?
> 
> We don't even know what all icons are available and where. We only
know
> where the ones we made are. Tango is about the style, not the icon
> theme, which is but a single implementation of the style. There are
> thousands of icons available that follow the Tango style. Some are
part
> of tango-icon-theme, most are not. There is also gnome-icon-theme
which
> follows the Tango style, and is under the GPL. Lots of applications
also
> use Tango styled icons (such as those in Houdini 9).
> 

Well, but if volunteers start to create such an overview why not give
them a hand and let them document what they have found?
We can make a remark that this lsiting is incomplete but I would prefer
to a central starting point, a place to start from, searching for icons
in tango style fitting their needs. Why not give it a try, to make the
wiki such a place.

>> The picture at the wiki
>> <http://tango.freedesktop.org/Image:Tango-feet.png> gives a good
idea
>> but it's hard to find a specific icon once you choose it from the
>> picture.
> 
> That picture is but a pebble upon the ocean. It is an appetizer, not
> meant to represent the full set of all possible Tango icons ever
drawn.
> It would be crazy to have that in a single image.
> 
>> What I would like to suggest is enhancing the ArtLibreSet page and
>> creating new pages in the format of
>> <http://tango.freedesktop.org/RRZETangoSet> where you have a
detailed
>> overview on the collection. I hope you understand what I mean?!
>> 
>> Sadly only Art Libre Set is available under
>> <http://tango.freedesktop.org/static/cvs/>.
>> So I checked out all icons on
>> <http://ftp.uni-erlangen.de/pub/rrze/tango/>, one of Germany's
major
>> ftp mirrors which is operated by my employer. I would of course
prefer
>> having them on the freedesktop server.
> 
> I didn't realize that artlibre was still there. I should probably
> remove /static/ from the server to avoid any confusion (and to keep
> people from attempting to link to it).
> 

Deleteting /static/ would break the wiki page of ArtLibreSet.
The only alternative is to upload all images into the wiki and link
them internally. This would keep the traffic limited to the wiki server
itself.

>> To create the overview pages in the wiki more easily, a colleague
of
>> mine is currently programming a perl script for creating the wiki
code
>> for the pages dynamically. This will be published as well as soon as
it
>> is finished.
> 
> We already have a php extension to MediaWiki that generates a
gallery
> page based on the docbook xml for the icon naming spec. However, we
> disabled this page for several reasons. We can't have pages
embedding
> icons directly from webcvs.freedesktop.org. It puts too much load on
the
> servers, and the FreeDesktop admins asked me to disable the gallery.
So,
> the gallery was disabled. Also, a single page with a list of 5000
icons
> on it is not especially useful, not least in that it causes Firefox
to
> waste a lot of memory, takes forever to load, and puts an
unnecessarily
> large load on the server that is serving the icon files.
> 

Tango icon theme for example consists of 1.800 files.
If we limit the overwiew page only to 22x22 scaling every browser could
handle this.
A complete overview page with all icons linked could be linked with a
warning hint, that this page will take ressources to load.
What's left is the server traffic. And there I only see two
alternatives
1. upload all icons to the wiki and link them internally - hard to
manage
2. upload all icons to a static directory on the same server as the
wiki
But the outgoing traffic keeps high.

Btw: What do the admins mean with "much load". Perhaps there is a
possibility to add some ressources?!

>> 
>> Hopefully, I've now made clear what my intention is: Creating
overview
>> pages for all sets to ease access and increase overview of what is
>> available.
> 
> What we really need is an indexed, searchable database of icons.
Just
> having lots of pages that list static images isn't really helpful.
If
> that's what you want, then you should probably just pull the icon
theme
> source, from cvs, git, or a tarball, and open the directory in a
file
> manager. But also, the goal of tango-icon-theme, nor the Tango
project,
> is to provide a huge library of icons that can be used arbitrarily.
We
> want to improve the Linux desktop, not simply enable developers to
have
> new pretty icons, while still keeping the same old problems in their
> UIs. It can be hard to strike the right balance dealing with app
> developers, though I think we have been doing a pretty good job.
> 

There are two products <http://gallery.menalto.com/> and
<http://coppermine-gallery.net/> that fullfill the need for what you
propose.
It's no problem to do a test installation of both of them and try if
they fullfill our needs.
Just give me a go, and we will do a demo setup and post the link for
everone to test here.

May I cite from ESR's "The Cathedral and the Bazaar": 
"14. Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great
tool lends itself to uses you never expected."
Why be limited on the desktop?
In times of netbooks and web 2.0 more and more applications go online.
The desktop is only the thing behind you need to start before you can
access the web and start working. Realising that, we try to transfer
more and more applications to the web. Doing this we need a accessible
and intuitive UI online. And using the same icons like e.g. firefox or
other application is recognisable for the user and make her/him feel
home.

It's ok for me that tango sees it's focus on the desktop, but has a new
group of users to build their own home or can we act at one place?

>> And one last information: Yes, RRZETangoIconSet was refused to be
>> included in tango repository due to scaling and colour issues.
>> Scaling issues are fixed and I am currently hiring a designer for
>> adjusting the colours and creating more icons. I would like to make
>> clear that we are highly interested in tango and willing to invest
in
>> the project. I will also instruct the new designer to participate
on
>> this list.
> 
> Those weren't the only reasons. A lot of the icons there dilute the
> metaphors we've built in the icons in Tango. They also don't really
make
> sense for the majority of users for tango-icon-theme. The
> tango-icon-theme project is but one of the projects we all work on,
and
> it only includes some icons. It is not a catch-all repository for
any
> and all icons in the Tango style. Even if the RRZE icons had all the
> colors, scaling, metaphor, or whatever similar issues resolved, I am
not
> sure that they would make sense in tango-icon-theme.
> 

I think you got us wrong.
We don't want to be in tango-icon-theme. We would only appreciate to
house our icons in the versioning system on the same level as
ArtLibreSet.
And perhaps there are more out there that look for the chance to have a
place to share their icons on a central place even if they are not focus
on the desktop.

Perhaps this list should discuss about a place like gnome-look to share
additional icons to keep the tango library "clean".
I think about a name like "tango bazaar". A place where you can upload
and document your own creation and get an overview of other available
icons.

But I really have to stress that I rather would see
tango.freedesktop.org in such a place!
I would appreciate that very much!

>> So again - sorry for breaking the rules.
>> I hope that we get the chance to make a contribution to tango. RfC
...
> 
> They aren't rules exactly. They are however, the generally accepted
> practice for all open source projects. You need to be an involved
member
> of the project's community, to be able to get the privileges you've
> asked for.

kind regards
Hendrik