Returning on the OS's default theming and colors, I think there are
only a few things to change.
Back when Mandrake was created in 1998, the chosen color was blue to
reflect the sky. The sky not only shows up stars during the night, far
from cities and inhabited places, but also has various colorations of
blue that we can use.
I insist on the fact that Mageia needs to save and show in a very
visible way it's identity as it should have always been : a good,
reliable and easy alternative to the Windows and Mac OS operating
systems. I therefore think :
- We keep "Blue" as the default "flagship" color for the official
artwork and design, with the possibility of using several nuances of blue.
- The reference to the sky can give inspiration to the designers who may
want to place from magic and beauty in their artwork.
- We definitely need a refreshing theme for Ia Ora. That's not high
priority though as we need that the system works well before that. A
theme for both GTK and QT is also not easy to do so we need to take the
time to carefully design a new fresh one, with the same fine and
professional touch a lot of people do notice and appreciate. Currently,
I'd say "That'll do" for Ia Ora in the meantime. The most important
thing is to get the OS working really well. Artwork has to come second,
especially if there is a lot of work to be done behind.
- For GTK based environments and applications, I suggest that Mageia use
the Gnome-Brave icon set by default. It's blue color and its very neat
finishing makes it a modern icon theme, compliant with the light angle
usually used on Gnome and other environments. Oxygen does not fit good
on GTK at all.
- Oxygen theme is just fine for KDE and QT, it complies wonderfully to
the artwork color and reference. If people have a real problem with the
trash can, considering the more important work that needs to be done on
Mageia in overall, please talk and convince the artists that made the
Oxygen theme to improve it. But there is much more important things to
do than to improve a trashcan icon, especially when very subjective
observations are made.
People might think we're close to Fedora's artwork and design : well,
Mandrake's color theme and the reference to the sky is dated from before
the Fedora era and we have the right to keep it.
I see no valid reason to change the artwork fundamentals as it is part
of the identity and as Mageia continues with the exact same aim as
Mandrake and Mandriva. However, I do think that Mandriva could have done
much better on the eye candy side (here, I also speak about the
Drakxtools's GUI who do sometimes miss a neat organization and
appearance) and I think that Mageia will have to be eye candy to seduce
and make people feel at home, even with the default settings.
So basically, I think it's better to keep the essentials and consolidate
the artwork by improving what needs to be improved, no useless changes.
Mandriva Linux was already often seen as a pretty system after all. :-)
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