New Icon Set...[echo]...

[Diana Fong]

I believe there might be a few things confusing the matter...hopefully 
this will help to clear it up a bit.

[Bluecurve, Tango, Echo...etc]
For those that like Bluecurve, don't fear it will still be included in 
our next releases.  However, this should not stop us from trying to 
creating a new icon set.  Perhaps Echo might not be THE icon set ... but 
maybe by exploring this together we can come up with something better 
than it's starting point. By opening its development early on, it is 
hoped that through the input of various people, the new set could 
somehow be better. 

By saying that you just don't like it...is valid but perhaps by creating 
a few examples with modifications, the rest of us can follow your 
example to creating something better.  If you say further that it's just 
not an improvement over the others and efforts should not be spent on 
this...perhaps you could suggest better alternatives...even if you've 
got a great idea in a completely different look, it would also be 
great...and this start would have been all worth it...for echo to serve 
as a starting point to something more usable.  At this point no icon set 
is without faults, echo is an icon project intended at creating, what I 
had hoped to be a better style, but more importantly to really develop 
an icon theme that is from the collaboration of the community.  If small 
sized icons are what's dear to you, please do help with the creation of 
them.  By getting involved, you can influence the direction of things 
rather than ...perhaps feeling a bit antagonized by what other people 
create and throw at you.  If you believe it is beyond help 
then...well...there are other icon sets, not everyone has to use the 
same one.  However, I have seen some useful suggestions even in the many 
emails this weekend and ask that perhaps you can think of it as it's own 
project.  Bluecurve, Tango and others aside, how can we improve echo.

[smaller icons]
Some people's overall dislike of the set was a bit confused with the 
issue of it looking bad in smaller sizes.  My question is, therefore, at 
it's current size...do you like it?  At this point...I'm looking for 
feedback on the look and feel of the icons.  The angle, the colors, the 
shadow.  Previous messages of the shadow being a bit too dark was useful 
as well as someone's current mention of the "grave cross" "add" icon.  
With the shadow, this icon set is no longer a simple copy and paste of 
icons into a square, accommodations have to be made for the shadow, and 
therefore, with different shapes, icons such as the "pause" might seem 
larger than the "skip forward" and whatnot it's placed next to.  But 
these are exactly the kinds of consideration that are useful when 
brought up.

Each smaller sizes will have to be either cleaned up at the .png or the 
vector stage to make it more readable.  Currently, smaller sizes have 
not been created.  Help is greatly appreciated in this area.  The 
package created by Leon was a quick test of the icons and should not be 
criticized.  Even with this package, we learn that the icons cannot 
simply be scaled down, work has to be put in to clean up the smaller 
versions...but maybe we can see which icons did work by simply shrinking 
and thus lessen the amount of work. At the smaller size I do realize 
that the current perspective will cause trouble and thus the suggestion 
for them to be head on and definitely simplified. 

Something I found interesting/useful was the small icon 
discussion...when does the icon start to break down?  I had originally 
thought of only the 16x16 as requiring the simplified version and was on 
the fence for 24x24...but from the feedback, it seems that the icons 
need to be simplified even before that size.  So, instead of saying that 
it's just horrible and unusable at smaller sizes, if we can figure out 
at what point the icons need to be fixed, then that would be 
constructive.  I know in the Leon's package, there included 22 and 24 in 
addition to 48...and the 22 was probably horrendous...but there's also 
32 and 36 versions that are used as well...how do those look?

I've also posted some of the early icons in the fc5 screen setting 
[1]...those are actually cleaned up smaller icons.  Is that _still_ 
bad...or maybe better?  A few pixels cleaned here and there can really 
make a difference. =)

[svg file size]
Yes, they are large...horribly so.  Nicu's example of slimming it down 
is awesome and I really hope someone could perhaps run through them.  I 
wish my original wasn't so large to begin with but at this point I am 
trying to create as many as possible to provide for better coverage and 
to also get to the smaller icons in time for release.  Maybe it's 
wishful thinking...I dunno, but must be hopeful.  Attached is an example 
from Andy Fitzsimon...when he first saw my svgs he laughed at the 
ridiculous sizes...but instead of criticizing them...he went ahead and 
showed what could actually able to get it down to 1.9k!  If you want to 
check it out...fyi. it came with the warning of...

"Warning: it uses an svg filter for the drop shadow ( gnome's librsvg
displays this fine but Inkscape will only display it on our next release )"

So while he might not be interested in populating yet another icon set, 
he is interested in optimizing svg files...and that's awesome.  It does 
make me hopeful to see this and really contributes to the evolution of 
the icon set.  But this is what I mean...with the feedback and talents 
of various people the set can evolve into something more. 

There is, of course, always personal preference so while it might be 
better for some, it might not be for others. 
We all have different needs and are entitled to our opinions...let's 
just try to focus and make what we write here useful to this project.

Sorry about the long email, was just trying to address the many points 
brought up over the weekend.

Thanks,
Diana
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