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List:       kde-artists
Subject:    KDE icons stuff
From:       "Samo Korosec" <samo () teamxype ! com>
Date:       1999-08-09 17:32:42
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Hi again,

after much of the 'KDE artists' stuff is about icons, as if icons are the
only way of doing art for a DE, I have some ideas. Torsten don't give up on
me yet ;o)

1) KDE could use a fixed palette of 4 [or more] colors for icon gradient
colors [representing the main part of the icon - being a file, folder, app
or whatever]. I the theme's main color is blue, the gradient adapts to a
given palette of 4 blue colors wich the artist can define in a text file. So
an icon for C++ source file would be a sheet of paper using the gradients
and a C++ sign on to of it. If the theme changes to yellow, the paper would
use yellow gradients, if the theme turns green, the sheet would show up
green.
Now this idea is somewhat more complex to code [although by no means
impossible], yet it gives the icons more power to adapt to different themes,
thus making the whole look of the desktop more appealing.

2) More simple to implement and yet as powerful would be icon layering. This
technique basicaly uses two types of icons - the theme icons and the KDE
default icons. The artist creating a theme would require to provide some
basic icon templates with his theme. This templates [standard file, source,
compressed, executable, folder, etc] would be used when actually drawing the
icons as the background and the KDE defaul icons would be drawn on top of
them. So KDE would include the top-icons for C, C++, Java, Pascal files and
the artist would make the templates for placing underneath, in this case the
template for source files.

Also interesting would be to have OnMouseOver [maybe a 2 pixel wide border
around the icon to highlight it, in the theme or a gradient color] and
OnMouseClick [maybe the icon brightening or something] effects for the
icons, which would let the artist be much more creative or, if not more,
would help with the round border/pastel colors dillema. Plus KDE would have
a active desktop.... >o)

my 0.02 cents.

hant,
xype|samo korosec

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