[Appeal] Appeal & Tango: Care to Dance?

[Torsten Rahn]

Am Sonntag, 16. Oktober 2005 18:56 schrieb Steven Garrity:

Hello Steven,

> Greetings all,
> My name is Steven Garrity - I've been helping out a bit with the Tango
> Project [1]. The goals of the Tango project seem to line up pretty
> closely with the goals of the Appeal project.

Yes and No. From what I've seen of Tango both projects try to deliver a 
beautiful desktop.  But that's all that is in common already. It's not like a 
"Tango" is the "Gnome" version of KDE's "Appeal Desktop Project".  

Tango focuses mostly on standardization of the cross toolkit Desktop design.  
Appeal's main focus is set on the "Innovative ideas for KDE 4" thing. 

> Is there any interest here in talking to see what our projects could share?

Sure!

The good thing about Tango is that it already uses the common icon names from 
freedesktop.org which can be truely shared across desktops. This is clearly a 
concept which will be shared by all future iconthemes as well (including KDE 
4's default iconset "Oxygen"). The result is a desktop which gives a much 
more consistent look and feel for the user and iconthemes that are easier to 
develop, no matter whether the icontheme is named "Tango", "Oxygen" or 
anything else. Now we only need to manage to create suggestions for common 
metaphors for all the iconnames. That way we can pull the whole icontheme 
thing to enterprise level. People who offer support or write documentation 
will be able to say stuff like:
" To select this part of the screen press the select-icon -- the one with the 
LASSO depicted"
.. and they can be 100% sure that as long as the icontheme is an enterprise 
icontheme (opposed to a fun theme) it _will_ depict a lasso -- no matter 
which icontheme is chosen. There will always be different iconthemes around 
as many projects, many distributors and even many free and commercial 
applications are promoting their own default iconset (think of Linspire's 
Clear-e, Redhat's Bluecurve, etc. who try to promote their own Corporate 
Identity). 
And if we manage to get a specification out which gives advice to depict a 
certain metaphor for each iconname and if we manage that all companies and 
all projects involved will follow this spec then we have accomplished another 
big step with regards to iconthemes in enterprise environments. Then we do 
not only have a consistent icontheme experience across toolkits but also a 
situation where people who offer support, who write documentation etc. don't 
have to worry about the icontheme installed.

> I have seen some comments that the icon theme work happening on the
> Tango project is too close to the Gnome visual style. If that's the
> case, come and let us know! It's not too late to help steer the visual
> style of the icon set.

Tango as it is is described on the website might surely be a well-meant 
project. But it goes way over the top in order to be successful already.

What are we aiming for? Freedesktop.org is about sharing common technical 
interfaces to give a better desktop experience to the users and to the 
enterprise.
Visual design isn't a technical interface and therefore doesn't belong on 
freedesktop.org but we need some common basic specs on iconthemes to avoid 
problems while dealing with different iconthemes.

I feel though that these specs should _not_ cover a standard style because 
this will run our projects as well as distributors like Novell into severe 
trouble. Styles are subject to:

- Trends (which changes really fast these days and gets more and more diverse)
- varying Corporate/visual Identity
- Promotion (if the look of a product won't change significantly over a 
certain period of time you won't be able to encourage users to update)

This is even more true these days than in the 90's. The 90's were a time where 
you tried to standardize on a certain look. I'd mention "Bluecurve" as a 
child of the 90's as one of its motivations goes back there. These days 
"Bluecurve" isn't even acknowledged as successful by Redhat people anymore 
because it doesn't meet the spirit of the age anymore. 

These days diversity is the motivation that makes people buy new products and 
try new stuff. I feel that Tango as long as it includes suggestions on color 
palettes and styles is way to restrictive to allow the creativity needed to 
make Linux desktop successful to attract new users.

> Something that might be a quick/easy win for all of us is the Icon
> Naming Specification [2] at Freedesktop.org. This could make it easier
> for both of our communities to share artwork (both ways). We could use
> your help in filling out the spec as well.

Right and we will definetely help with that and we will even go beyond that by 
providing "icontheme metaphor specifications for enterprise icons".

-- 
Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind regards,

        Torsten Rahn

--
Dipl.-Phys. Torsten Rahn, credativ GmbH
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