kde 3.1 -- make Keramik default?

[Neil Stevens]

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On Thursday May 30, 2002 03:15, Torsten Rahn wrote:
> On Thursday 30 May 2002 19:02, Neil Stevens wrote:
> > 8. Write yet another kpersonalizer setting, to get the old KDE
> > defaults.
>
> For old hardware a fallback (probably to the current
> non-highcolor-default) for the lowest eye-candy-O-meter level in
> kpersonalizer should be implemented.

I still like the idea of adding another theme, but some affordance to older 
hardware is better than none.  Isn't KDE 2/3.0 on par with Windows and 
MacOS in our own minds enough to put KDE 2/3.0's look on equal footing in  
the personalizer?

> > So your only reason is marketing.  Fine.  Go right ahead. Trash the
> > existing icons, trash the existing look, for marketing purposes.  Just
> > turn your back on everyone who's been saying over and over that KDE
> > looks fine.  Or rather, stab us in the back by saying all of us KDE
> > defenders were morons.
> > If you think this meets the goals of KDE, do it.
>
> Of course I appreciate it very much that you like the current look &
> feel. On the other hand I should be the person who should stick most to
> the  KDE-icons for a good reason (I painted quite a few of them ;-)

That's true, but also if you're a humble person, you're equally likely to 
be the first to point out all the faults of your existing icons. :-)

> And the current icons won't disappear. We'll create a tarball "KDE
> Classic" if we remove them from kdelibs and put them into kdeartwork. In
> addition if you look at the icons which Everaldo made you'll realize
> that he based quite some icons on some of the current icons. So the
> Crystal icon set is actually a "child" of our current "hicolor" (and
> iKons) iconset. I'm very proud that this "child" has become that popular
> on kdelook and that it still contains some stuff done by me and other
> kde-artists.

Yes, but from the screenshots I've seen, the new icons have a different 
philosophy behind them.  By switching the default icons, people now have 
to re-learn the meanings of the icons, and get a feel for the new 
philosophy on top of that.

As we've been told time and again, the users who know the least are the 
least able to customize their own desktop.  So it's those users who are 
likely to be hurt by radical changes.

> Personally I still think that we could stick with the current
> hicolor-icons for quite some time as some of them (mostly the
> mimetype-icons, toolbar-icons and filesystem-icons) are IMHO very well
> designed.

I find the existing icon set very comfortable.  Most changes have been a 
gradual evolution, so adapting from one KDE release to the next has been 
very easy.

>
> On the other hand I feel that we have been sticking to this look for
> quite some time and even I am already a bit tired of it. It's time for a
> change and due to the fact that I feel that
>
> - we have an active maintainer for the Crystal icons (Everaldo).
>
> - we have quite some support from the community concerning the
> Crystal-icon-set (just look at the poll on kde-look and the
> "3rd-party-contributions" to Crystal).

kde-look is a self-selecting community of people dissatisfied with KDE's 
existing look.  People happy with KDE as-is won't even be visiting there.

> - we have a cool name for them ("Crystal")

Well, we can rename highcolor to Kool, too, you know. :-)

> > > > If we
> > > > decide to use these stuff for 3.1, that is no "Trash the existing
> > > > icons, trash the existing look", it is just a modernisation of the
> > > > look'n'feel
>
> I agree with this.

Can you define what modernizing a look means, then?  It seems to me that 
some people are just defining their own personal preferences to be modern, 
using the word modern as a propaganda tool rather than something with real 
meaning.

I think a decision this important should be made carefully and rationally.  
If we can be clear about what we mean, then we can be clear in what we 
hope to achieve.

- -- 
Neil Stevens - neil at qualityassistant.com
"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding
because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they
have not a single political argument left." - Margaret Thatcher
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