On Jun 26, 2006, at 2:42 PM, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:
Michiel Sikma wrote:
I don't think it's just my opinion that differs. As I've mentioned
before, I've got valid criticism for the Human icon set. I simply
believe it to be inferior to Tangerine/Tango for various reasons.
Michiel, Human is incomplete. It's your choice as to whether or not
you want to help make it complete and consistent, or whether you
would rather put time into Tangerine, or Outdoors, or one of the
other themes. I don't mind where you choose to spend your time. I
think it would be a great contribution to Ubuntu if you help make
Tangerine stunningly beautiful. If it's good enough, Tangerine will
ship in Edgy, and people can select it and appreciate your work.
Please understand that it is not your sole say what the default
theme for Ubuntu will be. Nor is it a democratic decision on this
list. It is for the moment my decision, and in time I hope to
delegate that to a dedicated art director and an art team. But
first that team has to prove that it can make good plans, harness
resources, and execute its plans, meeting a deadline.
We spent quite a bit of time in Paris sketching out what that
structure would look like, and there is plenty of space for people
to work on Human, Tangerine, Outdoors, etc.
Firstly, I'd like to apologize in case it seems like I'm only
interested in negatively contorting Human. It's not my intention to
do this. My goal, when starting this discussion, was to give a
general account of the artistic conditions under which the Ubuntu
artwork suite was formed and will continue to be produced, and then
figure out whether such a direction is suitable. I might have gone
overboard on this occasion, especially since it's currently early in
the process. I do intend to contribute things rather than just sit
down and complain; don't worry about that. I guess that I'll think of
this as a wake-up call, mostly, since I was interested in debating
with the folks from Oxygen-icons, while this isn't very appreciated
(in this way) at this time.
I also don't see why you simply say "guidelines are great, but we
make exceptions". I don't see why you can just admit that some of
the icons in the Human set are inconsistent.
They are inconsistent purely because we have not had time to
complete the set. The current set was produced in a rush during
Dapper, I plan to continue to invest in the Human icon set and to
work with a growing team of community volunteers to turn it into a
fantastic and consistent set of icons. I think you have a great eye
for consistency and clarity and would welcome your participation.
You can help identify inconsistencies and provide icons which
follow the style of Human but improve on the consistency. But if
you are dead set on using Tangerine, the please simply focus your
efforts there and stop talking-down Human. Make a positive
contribution somewhere, not a negative contribution.
What I do appreciate is that Human was used in Dapper while it was
incomplete as an extra impulse to get people to complete it. I'll
definitely make it one of my things to do to point out things which I
believe are bad choices in Human. Because, like I've said, Human
isn't a bad icon set (at all), to me personally, there are small
things that add up and make a large difference. These aren't things
that are difficult to solve. In such cases, my main criticism is that
such icons are usually available in the Tangerine set, but more
developed and already figured out to not have x or y attributes due
to possible improbabilities concerning the final look of the product
once the icons have been assembled and blended into the UI; a lot of
icons in Human also seem to be made while they are also available in
Tangerine and yet don't seem to be significantly different
("reinventing the wheel"). Again, these are just minor things, and no
reason to stop using any icon theme.
This doesn't take away that most of the icons in the system should
just come from Tangerine/Tango, as the Tango icon set is likely to
be the style of icons for _all_ default application icons in the
future.
I think there is plenty of room for Ubuntu to establish a style of
its own. I think Tango has been over-rated because it attempts to
bind Gnome and KDE together in a way that they do not want to be
bound together. I may well be wrong, which is why I don't
discourage you from investing your time and energy in Tangerine,
but I am confident in my opinion, which is why I'm investing my own
time and energy this way.
It will most definitely become very popular, and I don't think it
is a good idea for Ubuntu to say no to that style because "we want
it to be a little different".
Distinctiveness is ESSENTIAL. I'm afraid I won't budge on that
point. Tango will NEVER be the default theme for Ubuntu because it
is entirely un-distinctive.
I think that I've been misunderstood on this point a little, though.
I don't think that it's not a good idea for Ubuntu to make itself
distinct as a Linux distribution, as it _is_ a very important and
unique one. I do support the "Ubuntufication" of the user interface,
but feel that the way to go about this is by ensuring that such an
attribute does not get in the way of usability, consistency and
affiliation with the general user interface system of operating
systems as a whole. Thus, ways to go about making a custom user
interface flavor for Ubuntu would imply that it's likely not a good
idea to change icons in a way that they lose some of their iconic
value, and I believe that this is the case for some of the icons in
the Human theme. I would like to help resolve such issues.
There is another thing that I would like to address, and it is the
fact that Tango aims to give people a method of aligning the user
interfaces of all Linux programs onto one centrally decided standard
by means of (mainly) guidelines. This is, to me, an extremely
interesting project, as it's usually consistency that is sometimes
missing in Linux user interfaces. I feel that the Tango project will
be very important to Linux user interface development in the future
and that it should expand beyond just providing an icon set. I think
that it's important to realize that outside development will always
be the largest portion of an operating system, and that once this
portion becomes consistent with itself, Linux will become a whole lot
more interesting for lots of people to use. Ubuntu should not blindly
follow this, I agree, but should also not stray too far from what
could be a great collaboration in the Linux community as a whole.
Of course, I don't have a crystal ball. I can't tell what the future
will bring. But allowing Human to blend in with Tango will definitely
be a good thing. It's already well on its way, and in that sense,
Ubuntu is leading the way (especially when compared to, for example,
Fedora). This, however, is the reason why I feel that it's not always
necessary for the Human icon theme to "re-invent the wheel". Such a
feeling is partially philosophical.
Sending in "here's a cool picture that is totally different to
anything that has been seen before" mails does not in any way help.
The art council will lead us through a clear artistic definition
process for the different themes, establishing what their
highlights and selling points will be. Once that is done, then you
can help by selecting one of those themes, joining the team working
on it, and quietly helping to shape it into an awesome, consistent,
complete theme.
Again, I'm sorry. The last thing I want is to slow down the creation
process of this distribution. I hope that the art council will help
maintain a workaholic attitude. I do think that discussions such as
this one are very useful, and don't see it as just a verbal brain-
dump. Call me crazy, but I actually think that it might be useful to
have discussions such as the preceding mails in the future (yet
slightly more structured, maybe) every now and then, perhaps
scheduled. I personally think that global evaluation should have its
place in the planning at some point if there are like-minded
individuals. But I don't know. Maybe I'm just in the wake of an old
working method that didn't work. :)
If this team is going to be a proper part of Ubuntu then it needs
to be professional. Go through a professional process, pick a
direction, deliver the goods.
Mark
Seen as how you felt that this had to be mentioned, I'll respond by
saying that I (thankfully) don't speak for the whole team. :)
With lots of respect,
Michiel Sikma
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
ubuntu-art mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-art
