Joining forces with GNOME?
Posted Nov 17, 2005 18:05 UTC (Thu) by
aseigo (guest, #18394)
In reply to:
Joining forces with GNOME? by proski
Parent article:
Oxygen Icons Website Launched (KDE.News)
> I wonder if Oxygen is going to be compatible with the freedesktop.org
> icon theme specification
yes, just as every icon theme we (KDE) has shipped for the last few years
has been. seeing as we were involved in writing that specification, it
would be a bit odd if we didn't follow it ;)
the naming standardization that is only now happening is also a good
thing, and we're also in support of that.
> why have another theme at all?
if we could agree on what looked nice, then sure. but if you look at tango
icons and oxygen icons, i think you'll see the difference in approach is
obvious.
> but what has it to do with KDE and GNOME?
there are three aspects to it: visual identity, application requirements
and personal taste.
KDE and GNOME have different ideas of what their visual identity is. and
yes, visual identity is pretty important. it's why most men don't wear
dresses in public in most western societies. so rather than "project X
doesn't want to look like project Y" it is a matter of "project X wishes
to look like project X". ask apple why macOS looks so different from
microsoft windows.
applications also have some impact here. most applications ship
their own custom icons, because they aren't "part" of a desktop in that
they aren't shipped with it. these icons need to have a look and feel and
GNOME likely isn't going to ship icons for kdissert (a rather nice little
mind mapping tool) which has need for both an app icon as well as toolbar
icons specific to its domain. since their art "budget" tends to be pretty
thin, they only ship one set of icons. given that there is a difference in
visual identity, those icons tend to match the desktop of origin.
that said, with the icon spec (and now that we're moving towards
standardized names) you can fairly easily switch between icon sets. so it
becomes a matter of personal taste.
i would like to see both GNOME and KDE ship icons that visually agree, but
then we'd first have to arrive at the same visual identity. personally, i
think the Oxygen icons are gorgeous and that Tango icons look very 1998
and unappealing. the Tango artists would almost certainly disagree. visual
identity. =)
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