I guess the better way of stating my idea is that gnome should abstract the icon from its presentation. Make the flat EPS icon, but then allow the GUI to present it how the user wants, with backgrounds, shading, size, and _perspective_ all up to the user. If those attribute policies were defined by the user/GUI instead of the icon maker, then making icons would be VERY simple, and they would ALWAYS have a consistent look and feel because they would scale well, be the right persective, have the right shading, and not have problems with background interference. This would also allow the user to have as simple or complex a desktop as they want; low-memory system would still be able to use their desktops, high-end systems would have a SWEET looking set of icons that could be customized to the user. Also, this would later allow a more '3D' GUI to emerge, because the icons themselves can be the same ones as in gnome, but with on-the-fly translation into the environment. If gnome were able to do this, it would not only make the desktop VERY good looking, it would trump all of the other desktops (including MacOSX) on looks AND user-definability.
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