[scribus] Icons again.

[Gregory Pittman]

On 08/14/2011 12:01 PM, Alexandre Prokoudine wrote:
> On Sun, Aug 14, 2011 at 6:40 PM, john Culleton wrote:
>
>>>> But a longer lasting solution to changing sizes would be to redo
>>>> them in svg via Inkscape. Then any size png icon could be created
>>>> as needed in the size needed by the developers.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately, no. You still have to draw versions for different
>>> resolutions, because display graphics = pixel alignment. You can't
>>> get that automagically by just scaling down things. So SVG only
>>> allows to tweak things easier.
>>>
>>> See this for illustration: http://i.imgur.com/atDpC.jpg
>>> The icon are: 256x256, 48x48, 32x32, 24x24, 16x16.
>>>
>>> I zoomed in so that you could see the differences introduced manually
>>> to fit destination resolution.
>>
>> Another thought: prepare the initial icon in a large size and then
>> downsize as needed in e.g., Gimp. IMO the icon need not be elaborate
>> or have fine detail at any size. It is after all just a symbol. If we
>> can upscale or downscale fonts more or leas without limit we should be
>> able to do the same with a "font" of icons, similar to dingbats.
>
> Let me introduce you to the beautiful world of applied semiotics.
> Software icons ascend to pictography which partially gave life to
> hierogliphic writing systems which, in return, often have so detailed
> representations (symbols, as you say) of ideas, that e.g. many CJK
> fonts (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) have embedded bitmaps tuned for
> particular font size.
>
> So no -- unfortunately your reference to fonts is not entirely
> correct, and scaling things down won't help (there is no such thing as
> hinting for icons). You still have to tune design for smaller size to
> ensure pixel grid alignment.
>
> OTOH, I'm pretty sure that many icons currently used in Scribus could
> be redone in stencil/symbolic style. Here are current GNOME's symbolic
> icons: http://i.imgur.com/vanfo.png
>
> Please note, however, that stencil approach to icon design implies
> using the icons at their original (small) size. If you start scaling
> them up, you lose the appeal of symbolic style.
>

At the same time, all of this presumes that there is some abiding desire 
to have icons that meet some standard of quality. The purpose of icons 
really comes down to having something I can recognize for its purpose.

I might easily enough change all of my icons to ones that only I would 
recognize. Maybe I could just have the text frame icon a box with a T in 
it, which would also serve the purpose of showing the keyboard shortcut. 
We spent an absurd amount of time creating the new Render frame icon, 
and ended up with something that has no particular meaning for me.

Greg