Re: GNOME Icon Theme 2.13.5[.1] AKA the HOLY CRAP, ICONS! release

[Rodney Dawes <dobey novell com>]

On Tue, 2006-01-17 at 21:46 +0100, Emmanuele Bassi wrote:
> I was about to open a bug for it, but I'll mention this issue here
> anyway: the current "gdict" icon should be deprecated and deleted from
> the theme, since gnome-dictionary ships its own.

Great. This is actually what we want to do with app icons. For things
like gdict or gnome-terminal, it kind of makes sense to have generic
icons, as little utilty applications like these, tend to be part of the
desktop. But for things like Evolution, Epiphany, and Firefox, it is
best to have a branded application icon, so it's easier to distinguish
the items in menus, by means other than simply text.

> Also, I'd need some of the fine GNOME icon artists to give it a spin
> (I'm no icon artist, nor expert of Inkscape whatsoever, so the current
> icon[1] still kinda sucks).

Hrmm. That icon looks like it's done a bit in the Tango style already.
Did Andreas draw that? It's pretty nice icon, visually speaking. But,
the metaphor is lacking. The connection between book and dictionary is
loose, as there is no text or other symbolic imagery on the icon. We've
been tring to come up with a better metaphor for dictionary, than simply
book, but haven't come up with anything concrete yet. You're welcome to
join #tango on freenode or mail the tango-artists list, and discuss
possible solutions to the dictionary metaphor problem, so that maybe we
can have an amazingly nice icon for the dictionary.

I suggest the tango list and channel here, as standarized metaphors is
also something we want to add to the naming spec, so that it may help
artists create icon themes in the future, prevent icon ambiguity, and
allow applications for various desktops and toolkits interoperate better
on a design level.

-- dobey