[ubuntu-art] Quick Update

[Michiel Sikma]

On Jun 26, 2006, at 10:29 PM, Mark Shuttleworth wrote:

>
> OK, I think we are making progress here!
>
> Michiel Sikma wrote:
>> 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.
>
> You have a good eye for those inconsistencies. Would you like to  
> join the team improving Human? As I see it the process would be:
>
>  - continue to identify and prioritise icons on the page at:
>      http://daniel.holba.ch/ubuntu/ic/
>  - discuss inconsistencies and give the AIC feedback
>  - develop a set of "style guidelines" that capture the essence of  
> what has been done
>  - not change the key style established in Human (i.e. the folder  
> icon and others)
>  - not redo icons unless there is a significant inconsistency
>  - contribute icons that fit with the emerging style of Human
>
> We would like to flesh out and complete Human during Edgy, and will  
> backport that to Dapper (along with Frank's Firefox-Human theme) in  
> a point release.

I will make this my priority for now.

Maybe someone, who is listening in on this conversation, could use  
this occasion to give me an idea about the status of Adobe  
Illustrator as a suitable vector program. I'm willing to learn how to  
get used to Inkscape, since it seems to be not too difficult, but I  
was wondering if it's also possible to properly export SVGs with  
Illustrator. I don't want to contribute anything that's useless to  
anybody besides the folks who use that particular program.

>
>> 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.
> It also misses the basic fact that the KDE community wants  
> different things from the Gnome community. While you may want  
> consistency, that's a little bit like trying to make the Mac and  
> Windows look the same. You could probably do it but you would end  
> up with a bastard halfbreed that pleased nobody.
>
> Gnome and KDE are not just different colours. They have different  
> philosophies. One of the key ingredients of our success in this  
> project has been that we respected the difference rather than  
> trying to shoehorn their vision into a combined platform. Red Hat  
> and SUSE have done the shoehorning, we have quite deliberately  
> allowed the Gnome and KDE communities to express their differences.
>
> If you want to be involved in the art in this project, then you  
> really need to grasp how important that distinction is. While a  
> "consistent user interface" is a beautiful idea, it should not come  
> at the price of the feeling that KDE and Gnome have that Ubuntu /  
> Kubuntu are the best places for THEM to express their ideas. THEY  
> write the software, we just package it.
>
> This is absolutely essential for everyone to understand.
>
> Tango misses this.
>
> Now, don't get me wrong. We want the different desktop environments  
> to learn from one another. We learned a bunch of stuff during  
> Breezy with Ubuntu, and as a result we tuned the Kubuntu desktop in  
> Dapper. But we did not try to make them look the same. Just like we  
> have not tried to make either of them look like Windows (one common  
> request) or like the Mac (another common request).

Hmm, I actually think that we're not entirely on the same page when  
it comes to the Tango project. I actually don't really value its  
attempt to unify GNOME and KDE that much as I am interested in it  
unifying just GNOME. I'm very unknowledgeable on KDE, actually. I  
can't really argue with you there, but it's true that GNOME and KDE  
have different philosophies, so you must be correct when it comes to  
this aspect of Tango.

My feeling is that, like you say, it's important to have a firmly  
established style, but by doing that, one mustn't sacrifice the  
identity of a desktop environment. Killing off an identity will ruin  
the particular charm that such an environment has. I guess that there  
wasn't a reason for us to even begin the Tango discussion in this  
particular context.

I still value its attempt to become a central authority in usability.  
It's most likely not a good idea to unify GNOME and KDE, but in the  
context of GNOME, it might very well be a good idea to provide people  
with one (careful and open) central idea of how a system should (or  
might) visually behave. Not in the sense that you have mentioned, and  
I'm glad that it turns out I agree with you on that as it is indeed a  
very important issue.

Michiel Sikma
michiel at thingmajig.org