It looks like your rendering the font with anti-aliasing, could you take a look at the readability with anti aliasing turned off?
Hardkrash On Jan 24, 2009, at 9:23 PM, Nico Weber wrote: > (This mail contains inline images, so it's probably best viewed with > Mail.app or something similar.) > > Hi all, > > A while ago there was some discussion how the smallest document icons > that MacVim uses should look ( starting from the fourth post in this > thread: > http://groups.google.com/group/vim_mac/browse_thread/thread/29e00dde8a22f591/e27ff4048c83587a > ). The consensus seemed to be that people want to be able to tell > the file type from the 16x16 icon; the XCode 16x16 document icons were > mentioned as a good example. > > I have been playing with this a bit. People agreed that the other > docicon variants (32x32, 128x128, 512x512) are ok as they are, so this > mail is only about the 16x16 variants. Furthermore, as we have 55 > document icons, they have to be created by a script and we can't hand- > draw every 16x16 icon (which is what the XCode guys seem to have > done). > > > > 1.) Here's how the 16x16 variants currently look: > > > > > <16-curr.png> > > > This looks like the 16x16 docicons of most other apps (which is a > plus, in my eyes). However, the extension text is much too small to be > readable, and the MacVim icon is not really discernible, either. I'm > pretty sure the latter could be fixed by making the V a bit lighter, > though. > > > > 2.) The first experiment is to leave out the extension text and > instead make the vim icon a bit larger: > > <16-icononly.png> > > > Now, the icon is a bit more visible (again, I think this can be > improved by making the V a bit lighter). However, now all small > docicons look the same, so this is probably not a good idea. > > > 3.) The next experiments all drop the icon and instead increase the > extension text. The good news is that I found a font that makes it > possible to pack up to 3 characters into a 16x16 icon and keep the > text at least somewhat readable: > > <16-text-green.png> > > > The bad news is that for some file types it's not obvious what these 3 > letters should be (e.g. "diff", "fscript", ...). Still, this looks ok > to me – the text might not be completely readable, but at least the > icons look a bit different from each other. The font in this version > is Envy Code R bold. > > > 4.) Next up is the same, but with different colors for the different > file types: > > <16-text-rnd40.png> > > > This makes it easier to distinguish the file types, but it's a bit > weird that all higher-resolution docicons look similar and greenish > (because of the vim icon) but some 16x16 variants are red or pink. > Furthermore, since the 16x16 icon is displayed as proxy icon in the > title bar, these icons might be a bit distracting. > > > 5.) This is the same as the first text-only version, but with Envy > Code R non-bold: > > <16-text-thin.png> > > > > 6.) Finally, this is with a non-monospaced font that Damien Guard, the > creator of Envy Code R, is currently working on (this font has no bold > style yet): > > <16-text-st.png> > > > Note how for example the "tex" and "txt" (first row, first and third > icon) look clearer with this font. > > > What do you guys think? > > Nico --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message from the "vim_mac" maillist. For more information, visit http://www.vim.org/maillist.php -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
