OSD symbols

[Jakub Steiner]

> Maybe, but then someone would have to maintain a color naming
> specification (however simple) alongside the icon naming specification.
> I know of only one attempt to do something similar: CSS system colors,
> which was a failure. <http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/ui.html#system-colors>
> We'd need to identify what went wrong there and how not to repeat it.

Hi Matthew,

I'm not very happy that we don't have a standard widget look and have
to bother with theming/customizability. Unless those colored elements
are defined in the widget theme (and some basic name scheme is defined
with color fallbacks), you will run into legibility issues with some
themes. Just hardcoding a subset of possible colors will not work as
every distro looks different. In the course of playing with this
symbolic style I grew to really like the monochrome look, treating
symbols like text and avoiding the complexity of multicolor.

> A symbolic icon for battery critically low should be able to use the
> text color for the outline of a battery, while using red for the charge
> level inside it. We shouldn't have to choose between a red background or
> a red entire icon.
>
> A symbolic icon for "you have new messages" should be able to use the
> text color for the outline of an envelope, with green for the starburst
> on top of it. We shouldn't have to choose between a green background or
> a green entire icon.
>
> And a symbolic icon for muted volume should be able to use the text
> color for a speaker shape, with a red cross over the top of it. We
> shouldn't have to choose between a red background or a red entire icon.

Having the symbolic colors is sure an option but I really wonder if
it's not complicating the spec for a marginal benefit. We can do quite
well with monochrome icons in both of your cases.

A warning sign can work just as well if not better than a colored stripe --

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24178/osd/battery-warning.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24178/osd/battery-warning-color.png

I believe you can live without color for the unread mail overlay as well.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24178/osd/unread-messages-color.png
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/24178/osd/unread-messages-mono.png

cheers

-- 
Jakub Steiner <jimmac at gmail.com>
http://jimmac.musichall.cz