RFC: plasma logo as start menu icon and ksplash logo

[Thomas Pfeiffer]

On 31.05.2016 22:38, Ivan Čukić wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> There are two main reasons why I'm against this (regardless of what
> ends up being plasma logo, and regardless of whether it will be pretty
> or not - the KDE logo would not win any beauty pageants :) ):
>
>   - (as previously mentioned) the gear-logo is a recognizable brand
> (easy to spot on on TV or elsewhere)
>   - the menu is entrance to the KDE world (even if there are a lot of
> non-kde apps in it) - most Plasma users use other KDE applications as
> well. Changing this logo might feel like we want to separate ourselves
> from those applications and their developers. I would rather like to
> see something that joins the community together than splitting it
> apart.
Seeing Plasma's launcher (and with that, Plasma) as "the entrance to the KDE 
world" is one of the reasons why people still see them as closely related.
People are not supposed to see Plasma's launcher more as an entrance to "the KDE 
world" than as the entrance to the world of any other software available for 
their system, nor should they think that Plasma is a better entrance to "the KDE 
world" than any other desktop (or operating system).
> I honestly do not see this as a part of KDE-is-not-the-desktop
> rebranding effort.
Your argument above exactly shows to me why this _is_ related to the rebranding: 
You seeing Plasma's launcher specifically as an "entrance to the KDE world" 
shows me that even you still think of Plasma as more closely related to KDE 
applications than to other applications and vice versa.
That's what the rebranding wanted to change, and we're holding ourselves back if 
we insist on that visual connection.
> Microsoft is not Windows (they share the logo) and
> Apple is not OSX shell (they also show the logo as the 'menu' button),
> MATE project is not only the desktop (and they use the project logo as
> the 'menu' button).
>
> MATE is insteresting in the way that they include the file manager,
> archiver, image viewer, document viewer etc (what is traditionally
> considered a DE). If we had a unified logo for Plasma and Dolphin,
> Okular, etc. this would be much more fitting.
This is an excellent point: We have made several attempts to define what, apart 
from plasmashell, makes up "the Plasma workspace". The consensus seemed to 
always have been that some applications are considered to be a core part of the 
workspace, but individual opinions differ regarding specifically which 
applications these are.

The VDG is convinced that it would be hugely beneficial if we (along with the 
maintainers of the respective applications) would finally define which apps 
belong to the workspace, and then to put them all under one brand.

Cheers,
Thomas