Code-completion icons

[Andreas Pakulat]

On 16.07.09 22:02:53, David Nolden wrote:
> Am Donnerstag 16 Juli 2009 21:35:46 schrieb Andreas Pakulat:
> > > I have no time to worry about that. I need to use KDevelop to be
> > > productive.
> >
> > Then you're not obliged to complain about the icons look. Sorry, either
> > you want to work with the artists or not. If not then you'll have to
> > accept what they produce or create your own icon theme.
> I just want things to not get broken in a second I look away.

Well, as there's no release yet with those icons and neither a release
of kdevelop things that break are expected. We also don't commit the
port of a plugin or a new feature once its 100% implemented and tested,
we commit very early for others to try out, even if its incomplete.
Icons are not different from code in that way.
 
> > > > > So anyone has an idea how to force KDE to pick up the icons from our
> > > > > "mini" directory, instead of the KDE icon?
> > > >
> > > > We're not going to. When Pino is done with the icons mini will be
> > > > deleted.
> > >
> > > I have to oppose here. We should only delete 'mini' if the new icons are
> > > actually better then the old ones, which remains to be seen.
> >
> > They are by definition better because they integrate into the desktop
> > experience of KDE4. The point of getting new icons is not "to get new
> > icons" but to get a fresh look that integrates nicely with the other
> > icons the user sees. The current icons in KDevelop look totally
> > out-of-place (mostly) if compared to the oxygen iconset.
> The considerations for the completion list are different from the rest of the 
> UI. It is not a classical UI element, and the icons don't need to look "oxygen 
> like".

That doesn't matter. amaroks embedded widgets are also no "classical UI"
elements, but still the icons should fit the overal icon theme. Our old
icons don't, hence new ones are needed that better fit the theme. 

> The only important thing is that they are not annoying as the user sees 
> them all the time popping up in front of him, and they have to allow an easy 
> association of the underlying concept. Of course they can look pretty, but the 
> other parts are more important.

As I said, if you don't like how the new icons look like, please talk to
the artists.

> Also since most other IDEs use the same icons, they will already have fixed 
> associations to many programmers, and thus it would be advantageous stick to 
> their general design.

Neither the colors, nor the basic look of the class icon changed, it
just looks more vibrant. Its still _very_ similar to the old one and its
thus also still very similar (similar enough to be easily recognized) to
other IDE's.
 
> Well maybe I can get used to it. I feel myself slowly starting to like the new 
> class icon more then the old one. But I still don't like the thought of 
> randomly popping up new icons created by artists that have not been designed 
> and tested for the specific usecase (completion list). And that's why IMO 
> these completion list icons belong into kdevelop/pics so they can be managed 
> by us.

So you want to draw them? If not, then oxygen-icons is a perfect place
for the icons, because thats where the artists will work on them using
the directions/input we give them. 

I'm actually not sure what the "larger plan" is about icons, but I do
have the feeling that icons are generally moved "upstream" into the
oxygen iconset. 

I also have problems with this a bit, as for example if you switch the
iconset to something different now you'll miss the icons from oxygen as
thats not a fallback theme as defined by fdo. 

Feel free to raise this on kde-core-devel or with the artists, I'm using
oxygen and hence don't care about other icon themes missing icons.

Andreas

-- 
An avocado-tone refrigerator would look good on your resume.