Happy New Year everyone, hope it's good one, and that NeoOffice makes good progress in 2006!
So now you're on two sites, Sebastian! You're famous!
I do need to tidy up my site, and check that it all still works, but I'm sort of waiting on Brett's progress with the latest NeoIconer before I take down the orphan child NeoIconerX.
[there are fifty or so of the needed OPenOffice.org icons missing from that set], but he has moved onto the excellent and exciting Oxygen set for KDE 4
I had hoped that, if we got a full set from one source, the permissions might be straightforward, but such is not to be. However, Pinheiro did make it clear
1. that he was very pleased we were using his set
2. that the group working on the Crystal set had worked very collaboratively
So, I will proceed to make up the Pinheiro/Wadley set with icons from the OpenOffice.org Crystal set. I think that will be a complete set then, we will be clear what their origins are, and I would think permissions will be fine. That caters for those who are OK with the crystal type of icon [and I can tell that some aren't
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Sat Dec 31, 2005 4:21 pm Post subject: Icons 3
Last message on this for now:
I am not sure whether anyone is taking on the task of renaming the new and developing Tango set. Smokey called our attention to them. They are growing in number, although it is very moot as to whether they will ever give us enough to keep NeoIconer well-fed If no-one else is doing it [Smokey?] I am happy to work away at that task and hope they keep coming up with new ones [I think they have about 80 that we could use so far].
I also came across a free set with some promise at
These Silk icons are quite a nice pastel style, there's 700 of them, and they're free and under Creative Commons licence. I thought I had struck gold for a minute or two But...they're 16x16, and when I asked Mark James, the author, about the possibility of other sizes [I know, looking a gift horse in the mouth!], his response was understandably "Sorry Peter, the Silk icon set is 16x16 only. I'm afraid they were drawn at scale, so I can't easily resize them, and I don't have the time to do 900 icons in a scalable format."
Does anyone feel they would like to mock up a batch of these Silk icons to garner opinions? Have a look at them, anyway.
So, to complete the set is quite some work - and before I do more of that, I wanted to hear some opinions by the community.
Hi Seb,
I have taken a little time before responding but I hope you might agree it was worth the wait.
I'll be honest. My first reaction on installing these icons was fairly negative, in comparison to the KDE-based (I think) set that I had previously installed. That was until two things happened:
- I kept my initial view to myself and shared your icons with another 'seasoned user'. Her view was immediately very positive but only if the icons remain at 22x22 and not the 16x16 alternative I created as a trial.
- Later, while still using your icons, I noticed for the first time (in about 18 months of use) the possibility of invoking a drop-down menu by clicking and holding down on a toolbar icon (for example, I get directly to the "Paste special.." choices when I do this on the "Paste" toolbar icon). Looking at my other standard icon installations, although the green pointing-down arrowhead is always present, with your icons installed it takes on a visual significance that is lacking in all the others. Daft though it seems, your round button icons enhance the visual accessibility of these additional functionalities and, as a result, I could become a complete convert to your round icon approach!
I remain unclear on the legitimacy of the production method which I have understood to include using Apple's own icons as source material? Or have I completely misinterpreted your descriptions above?[/b] _________________ Ray Saunders
World Scout Bureau
Thanks for all the reply, positive andd critical. That's what it all is about, discussing things and hopefully improving
I have a few explanations about my icon set, to answer some questions that came up.
First, the set that is available on the two sites mentioned above is only a quick try to fiddle together the most common icons to give an impression and to get a few responses. It is by far not complete and by far not "fine-tuned" at all. It is work-in-progress, so share your good ideas with me, if you want!
Second, there seem to be some people that like the set - thanks for the compliments and encouragement.
Third, to answer rays' questions:
- I keep on concentrating on the 22x22 icon set, as this seems to be the most common for most of the users. If I'm wrong, please correct me before I have done too much work and therefore have to start all over again.
- The whole idea behind the round icons was to get away with the flat square "windows-style" buttons, and as I followed the discussion here on the board I was not alone in thinking them as ugly. But for Patrick and Edd, there is much more and more important work to do than that, and it seemed not to be an easy task at all to get rid of the square thing. So my work-around-idea was to use a round surface.
- The round surface I took from Apples Mail (2.0) and its unified toolbar buttons. But as these buttons are not round, but more "rectangular with rounded corners" (you all know what I try to describe), I had to modify them and build a 22x22-pixel circle that has roughly that desired style. So yes, I took impressions of Apples' icons. But no, I didn't steal them, because there is quite some amount of my own work in it. (Exception so far: the "undo"-button is too close to the "Reply"-arrow in Apple Mail - but that is to be changed. It's not a finished set so far, remember ...)
- As soon as I had defined the circle as background, the rest is easy to do: I was and am looking for some good looking icons from different (free) sets, such as the KDE/Crystal/OOo-icon sets, and layer them on top of the circle background using Photoshop. Some resizing is required sometimes, but mostly it looks good anyway. The challenge is to find good-looking and descriptive icons for the different buttons and funktions behind them, and to fiddle everything together. If I don't find anything appropriate, I think of something else and try to realize it, for example the "bold/invers/underlined"-buttons: It is the font "Gentium" (freeware -> Google) and I typed the "I"/"B"/"U" in Photoshop on top of the circle background. That is the work-in-progress right now.
BTW, Peter, Thanks for your icon sets - these are good stuff to work with!
- My question now is: How close can I get to Apples system-wide iconography? I wound like to describe my approach on two different icons and ask you about your opinion: First, the "Gallery"-Icon (far right, upper bar). That is an icon I "invented" myself, symbolizing a picture frame, which I think is pretty descriptive for the "Gallery"-funktion. This one is for sure out of any copyright-problems, but it is some work to do for 500+ icons, and the icon is "new" for the newbie and maybe not as descriptive as I hope. Instead, I would prefer to use Apples icons or similar ones, like I did for example in the "Navigator"-icon. That is, clearly enough, a scaled-down Safari icon.
What do you think: Is the "Navigator"-icon acceptable - or is it too close to Apple's icons and therefore a copyright-issue? This is only an example, but the question reappears if I think for example about the "save"-icon (now a floppy disk, but I would like to use the Apple hard-disk icon) and the like.
Joined: Feb 12, 2005 Posts: 607 Location: Australia
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 3:59 am Post subject: Tango
Couple of things
First: well done, Sebastian. A great addition to this topic. I know that you must have spent hours and hours on this, and it is appreciated. Q. Had you thought of doing the icons in 24x24? I reckon they could use a little more definition, and 24x24 seems to be the standard now for OpenOffice.org icons.
Second, can anyone help with Tango icons? I have downloaded sets from the Tango project page, and from kde-look.org. What I get is a promising-looking folder with hundreds of "icons", but in fact the majority of them are 4Kb aliases. I have about 150 *real* icons, the rest are just aliases. Has anyone got around this?
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:00 am Post subject: New Document Icon
I have a question for you, Sebastian:
I noticed in your icon theme, you have sucessfully replaced the "New Document" icon. The only way I currently know how to do that is by compiling NeoOffice with it in the source (and a rather hit-and-miss package replacement thing I've been wrangling with.)
I was just curious what method you were using to get it to appear.
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:16 am Post subject: Re: Sebastian's Icons
aussie149 wrote:
I do need to tidy up my site, and check that it all still works, but I'm sort of waiting on Brett's progress with the latest NeoIconer before I take down the orphan child NeoIconerX.
You can probably go ahead and clear out NeoIconerX if you like, NeoIconer 0.8.2 is a comparable release. Actually, I doubt if the two programs are significantly different.
A few notes about the roadmap for NeoIconer:
Firstly, I have been called away for a couple of weeks, so I won't be able to get 0.8.3 debugged until mid-month. Sorry to all who got stuck with it being broke. I am moving it to an 'Alpha' directory, and anyone who wants to use it, please let me know any trouble (or successes) you have with it.
0.8.3 is going to be the last version I'm targeting at NeoOffice 1.x. I have been playing with the X-windows version of 2.0, things are set up a little differently there (including the entire slotlist, which will have to be re-worked), and I'd like to focus on that. Especially as I feel 2.0 is the version we are most likely to have our (NeoOffice's) first completely separate set of icons for.
I also want to have the time to make it do a complete icon replacement, and to create a packaging program (so you can send your icon sets to your friends very easily, without having to include NeoIconer).
If all goes as planned, NeoIconer should not just include a new icon set, but should allow normal folks to switch between several "themes", and these themes should be fairly easy to build. High hopes, so I need the lead time if there's going to be any chance of it happening.
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 2:40 pm Post subject: Re: New Document Icon
berchca wrote:
I have a question for you, Sebastian:
I noticed in your icon theme, you have sucessfully replaced the "New Document" icon. The only way I currently know how to do that is by compiling NeoOffice with it in the source (and a rather hit-and-miss package replacement thing I've been wrangling with.)
I was just curious what method you were using to get it to appear.
Thanks,
brett
Hi brett,
if you use my set, you'll find out that yes, the "New-Doument"-icon is defined in the set, but no, it will not be replaced by NeoIconer. Sorry, I didn't find any shortcut to replace that icon
Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 6:17 pm Post subject: Re: New Document Icon
Anonymous wrote:
if you use my set, you'll find out that yes, the "New-Doument"-icon is defined in the set, but no, it will not be replaced by NeoIconer. Sorry, I didn't find any shortcut to replace that icon
Best regards
Seb.
So did you get the icon into NeoOffice by compiling, or what? I'm really just curious how people do it, is all.
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