Desktop integration

[Peter Backlund]

Hello.

I'd like to give my point of view of the current state of Bluecurve and
desktop integration in Fedora, focusing on the artwork.

-- The icon set --

The BC icon set is of course comprehensive and generally of very high
quality, but there are areas where it is lacking: very small icons,
16x16 or 20x20, are often badly hinted. It looks like the 48x48 version
has been scaled down, and a very sharp black edge has been added along
the perimeter. Sometimes hinting is missing entirely, leaving a very
blurry icon. Also, too much detail is crammed into the small icons.

Compare these two screenshots of the Gnome file selector:

http://petrix.se/fedora/fileselector_bluecurve.png

http://petrix.se/fedora/fileselector_gnome.png

The Gnome icons on the left are not only scaled-down versions of the
larger ones, but completely redesigned. The Bluecurve Home and Desktop
icons are good examples of down-scaled, black-outlined icons with too
much detail, and the filesystem icons are missing hinting.

I think focus should shift from providing half-done icons for every
single menu entry (Sound Juicer, XChat, etc) to improving the icons that
make sense for cross-DE (desktop environment) integration, such as basic
operations (open, close, home), navigation, RH/Fedora specific
applications (system-config-*) and maybe a few main applications (web
browser, email program). Build on top of the existing Gnome and
KDE/Crystal icon sets, adding a unique "feel", instead of replacing
100%. Ximian Desktop only changed the folder icons and a handful of
others, but along with the Gtk theme it made a huge difference. The KDE
Crystal icons go very well with the BC icons, and KDE would benefit
enormously from better 16x16 icons.

-- KDE/Qt --

KDE and Qt are obviously not the main focus of the Fedora desktop team,
but the Bluecurve Qt theme was a pioneering effort. However, the version
shipped with FC3 has a long list of rendering differences from the Gtk
theme. I have personally done some hacking on the Qt theme, trying to
bring it closer to the Gtk one:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=141125           

None of it has yet shown up in Rawhide, despite being well received. A
lot of 3:rd party commercial/scientific applications are written in Qt,
and having a near-perfect Qt theme will add to the professional feel of
a Red Hat/Fedora desktop. 

Maybe Qt could be modified to use the Gtk file selector, when an
environment variable is set?      

-- OpenOffice.org/NWF --

The state of of NWF in OOo in 1.1.x, and also in 2.0, is promising at
best. If it were up to me, I wouldn't ship it for a few more months. The
widget coverage has increased in 2.0, but the quality of individual
widgets is still very low.

http://petrix.se/fedora/OOo.png

Sizes, alignment, shapes, highlighting etc etc. Since the Open Office
suite is such a prominent application, I believe more manpower should be
thrown at the problem. I know this comes off very negative, and I do not
mean to diminish the efforts of the NWF hackers (Dan W for example). It
will look tremendous once it's done. It's just that 100% of the widgets
are 50% finished, and it would look a lot better if 50% of the widgets
were 100% done, and the rest were #ifdef-ed out until they are done. 

A guide to hacking NWF would be great to attract outsiders, and a list
of tricks to build the beast for limited (NWF-only) testing. Stuff that
can be ./configure-ed out, ccache etc.

-- Firefox/Thunderbird (XUL) --

FF/TB look fairly good already, but have a number of annoying rendering
bugs. Submenu arrows, icons alignment on buttons and so on. Better icon
coverage in the menus would also be nice -look at the Industrial theme,
it has icons for nearly every menu entry:

http://linuxart.com/log/archives/2004/09/20/industrial-for-firefox/       

-- Conclusion -- 

So let me sum up:

* Fewer, but better Bluecurve icons. Focus on the small ones.

* Fix the Qt theme. Patch and bug list in Bugzilla. Not complete, but a
good start.

* More manpower to OOo/NWF, it's farther behind but very important.

* Better icon coverage in menus/preference dialog in FF/TB. 


/Peter Backlund