On September 13, 2020 at 1:47:26 AM CDT, Jaroslav Tulach
<jaroslav.tul...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Eirik,
thank you for your reply and these lists...
[2] https://people.csail.mit.edu/ebakke/misc/netbeans-icons/prioritized.html
[3] https://people.csail.mit.edu/ebakke/misc/netbeans-icons/
...they are helpful. There was a question about the amount of NetBeans icons
to redraw inside of OracleLabs and it is great there already is an answer.
Graphic designers on UpWork ...
... crowdsourced effort ...
... the ideal way to do this would be to crowdfund the effort ...
Apache can certainly accept donations. If you guys organize a crowdfounding
effort and use the money to draw icons that are then donated to Apache, then
great!
The effort would have to be supported by users of NetBeans, not developers - at
least that's what I get from comments like the one by Matthias:
I still fail to see the difference between repetetive work on the code
base working on source code and repetetive work on graphics.
I also consider it unfair to pay a designer, but not pay me as an architect
;-) But if somebody wants to donate the money, then be it!
how to draw icons in
Illustrator
Again, if somebody pays for that fun, be it. However as others noted, we are
Apache and as such it would be better to adhere to open source style. No
Adobe, please, try [Apache Draw](https://www.openoffice.org/) or at least
[Inkscape](https://inkscape.org/).
-jt
PS: A note on design...
If many people are working on the effort, a single
person will still ...
cleaning them up to a consistent standard
People used to claim that [design cannot be done in a committee](http://
wiki.apidesign.org/wiki/Teamwork). NetBeans is a proof that it can be done -
one just need to sit down and [specify guidelines](http://wiki.apidesign.org/
wiki/API_Design_Checklist).
* Programming and graphic design are two different skillsets
I believe there are common meta-design principles behind API design and UI/
icon design. As such guidelines (like
https://material.io/design/guidelines-overview) could help. Of course, there is
an overhead to it, but when the
scale is large (there cannot be a single designer for all Android apps,
right?), there is no other way to move forward anyway.
Dne úterý 8. září 2020 19:14:41 CEST, Eirik Bakke napsal(a):
In my opinion, the ideal way to do this would be to crowdfund the effort and
have new icons be drawn by a single paid, professional icon designer. I'd
be interested in hearing your thoughts on this.
In my experience, drawing an icon takes 30 minutes on average [1], after
getting up to speed. Graphic designers on UpWork are perhaps $30-60/hour
(we'd need to find someone who's qualified for this particular job). For an
initial effort, there are about 160 icons that should be converted [2].
Ideally, we'd find someone to do it who could later be called upon to do
another 6-700 icons to cover most of the remaining interface, if the first
project is a success.
As an alternative, for a crowdsourced effort, I'd be happy to do a
"training" session by Zoom to show contributors how to draw icons in
Illustrator according to the style guide described in NETBEANS-2617. I'm
swamped until February 2021, though...
Some issues to consider:
* Programming and graphic design are two different skillsets. Programmers do
not always produce tasteful graphic designs. * In the long term, we'd want
to convert at least several hundred icons, maybe thousands [3]. This may be
beyond what is possible with a volunteer effort. * If too many different
people work on this, we will get a hodgepodge of different icon styles. *
Normally, cosmetic issues are not very important. But in this case, the
purpose of the effort is to make NetBeans look good, so aesthetics is
actually a primary concern. * From my own experience, it took about 4 hours
of icon-drawing work in Illustrator (which I already had some experience
with) before I was fully "up-to-speed" with designing new icons. If
multiple people are working on the icons, each person will have to go
through this learning curve. * You often end up copying and pasting shapes
between different icons. If many people are working on the effort, they
will end up redrawing shapes that others have already drawn. * There are
lots of little issues that contributors will get wrong--e.g. how vertices
are aligned to the pixel grid. A lot of familiarity with the drawing
software is needed. * If many people are working on the effort, a single
person will still end up having to go through all the Illustrator files and
cleaning them up to a consistent standard, naming scheme etc. For the
simpler icons (e.g. two rectangles), this takes up as much time as drawing
the icon itself.
-- Eirik
[1] See
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/NETBEANS/HiDPI+%28Retina%29+imp
rovements?preview=/110692909/110692926/vectorized.png [2]
https://people.csail.mit.edu/ebakke/misc/netbeans-icons/prioritized.html
[3] https://people.csail.mit.edu/ebakke/misc/netbeans-icons/
-----Original Message-----
From: Jaroslav Tulach <jaroslav.tul...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 8, 2020 4:29 AM
To: dev@netbeans.apache.org
Subject: Status of converting icons to SVG
Hello everyone, hello Eirik.
It is a while since the [support for SVG icons](https://github.com/apache/
netbeans/commit/
51a01eb9cbfc6f342a1827d47f0b37e1b2f070a3#diff-721be4afbc5aed18d39b11702d02c
9fd) landed into NetBeans code base. Is it used or is it just laying around?
I do remember there was an attempt to start a community supported conversion
of the icons. What's the status of such conversion? Were some (at least
those visible in the toolbar by default) icons converted?
Maybe we should ask guys that have a say in the wider community like Jirka
Kovalský, Geertjan, etc. to make some buzz around the conversion? Have an
"icon-a-hack-a-ton"?
Last time I asked for help with reorganizing source files layout per
cluster, the community reacted quite well. A lot of people contributed.
Contributing icons shall be even easier and more fun, right?
-jt
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