'Low-Color icons'

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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Low-Color icons
From:       Cristian Tibirna <ctibirna () total ! net>
Date:       1999-07-31 7:34:51
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HI Torsten

First and foremost, I would like to assure you of *all* my respect for
your excellent work on the artistic side of KDE, as well as for your
determination to build a better aesthetic reputation for our project.

I strongly believe you do an extraordinary job.

> I found out that quite a lot of persons still don´t know about my 
> decision to drop the current 32x32 - 40-color-icons from our 
> standard-packages. Please don´t blame me. I tried to inform everyone
> as you can see at the bottom of this mail ... I don´t feel guilty if
> developers don´t even read release-informations that were posted 
> on kde-core-devel (I feel rather discouraged).

Well, maybe using *short* messages with suggestive subjects. This is a 
valid advice for many of our fellow KDE developers and I also sinn by
writing too long messages (even this message is a proof of sinn).

This is especially valid when highly surprizing topics come to hand (like
anihilating 2 years of work on KDE icons).


> To keep it short. This was what I intended for the next KDE-release:
                                  ^^^^^^^^^^

You are aware and conscient that this is *not* possible, do you? This is
an open work project. We all work here for pleasure. None of us can
"intend" or "decide" by himself. What do you think I'd do if somebody
"intended" tomorrow to drop the smart placement in kwm just because he
decided so, and without asking for peer opinion?

> In addition we are planning to provide an additional set of 
> 40-color-icons that would have to be downloaded *optionally*.

We? Who we? I surely didn't see a majority agreement on this. I mean,
there was no discussion on the "optionanlly" part.

> That would mean that all 32x32-pixel-icons that are currently part
> of the CVS-tree would be removed (I already did this for 
> kdegraphics) from the curent modules!

Removed? Why? Who gives anyone of us the right to remove things from the
CVS without good reason? What's the good reason? Yes, we decided we'll
provide hicolor icons. But there was no decision to remove the lowcolor
icons.

> O.k. as I found out quite a lot of developers seem still not to know 
> about this so I encourage you to discuss this topic
> 
> If this discussion would result in a different decision that would 
> probably result in a delayed release-date. But good software is
> more important of course than release-aims.

The delay could result only from the fact that the things weren't dealt in
the usual manner. And the cause is a possible misunderstanding of yours
about what team work means.


> - If we would use High-color-icons they would be dithered on 8-bit
>   graphics-adapters.

It seems you're not aware of some technical facts. Use of 40-color icons
was imposed by the fact that initial use of hicolor icons was sucking up
completely the color palette on 8 bpp machines. This resulted in extremely
ugly palette focus switching and hence almost unusably ugly desktops. It's
not about dithering, it's about usability (or lack thereof). We now have
dithering in kpixmap, but problems still occur.

> - 8-bit graphics-adapters are used on quite a lot of Sparc-stations 
>   yet. Many of us use them as many us work at university. But is 
>   that representative for our userbase? How much percent
>   do still use 8-bit graphics-adapters? Is it important 
>   that you wouldn´t enjoy best quality there if we would ship 
>   using HiColor-Icons only? Do you actually need best quality
>   if you work in front of a computer with 8bpp?

These questions are irrelevant. We all agreed to ship KDE with hicolor
icons. But there is no viable reason to alienate users of older hardware
(and there are many of them than we're ready to accept). *Adding*
hicolor graphics to KDE is very benefic. But this *doesn't imply* removing
lowcolor graphics from KDE. On the opposite, removing lowcolor graphics
harm both unpriviledged users *and* KDE project. You weren't around to
testimony the storm triggered by initial hicolor icon use in KDE.

> This would result in the simple question: Which users do we care
> more about:
> 
> a) 8bpp-users who would be annoyed by dithering of HiColor-icons
> 
> or
> 
> b) PC-users who are annoyed by 40-color-icons as most of them 
>    own current graphics-adapters and want to make use of them.

Nobody forces us to choose. We definitely can support *both*.


> technical problems:
> 
> - The 40-color-set would have to be repainted partly due to 
>   changes in the new HiColor-Set. (That will take some time ...)

? Why the old can't be used? The did quite well for so long time. KDE
was never considered ugly because of its icons. On the contrary.

> - If you would want to provide all icons at once -- well how 
>   would you like to switch: we have:
>   
>   16x16 Locolor
>   32x32 Locolor
>   32x32 HiColor
>   48x48 HiColor
> 
>   There won´t be any other sizes/color-depths in addition.
>   No chance ...

OK, I think every body agrees on this. But by your actions you decided
(all alone, and in our names of all of us) that 32x32 Low-color icons are
gone.

>   So between what options would you like to switch? How can
>   we tell the user easily about choices?
>   This could also mean that you would have to extend the current
>   directory-tree ...

If you wanted to have a solution for this dillema, I'm sure developers
could have had come with something, but they would have needed to have the
icons in the CVS so that they can test and experiment. As long as I'm
aware, only 9 hicolor icons are now in CVS.

> - file-size increases. The size of every additional iconsset
>   has also to be considered as we still use xpm (which is quite
>   huge after being untarred.) 

Are you kidding? Icons occupy right now 1M on my system, from a total of
63M occupied by KDE.

> We should use PNG for KDE2!

Right.

> - Do we still want to support 40-color-icons for KDE2? Would it make
>   sense to implement something complicated now to drop it for KDE2?
>   Will KDE2 still run on computers that support 8-bit-adapters only?

I'm pleased that you ask these questions. Yes, we want to support 40-color
icons. Yes it makes sense, since KDE-2 will not drop anything of these.
Yes, KDE-2 will still run on computers that support 8-bit-adapters only.

> I have posted my thoughts about this topic quite a lot of times.
> and those postings underneath have been partly mirrored on 
> quite a lot of different news-pages (linuxtoday, lwn, kde-news).
> So don´t blame me if you think that I haven´t tried to tell you
> anything about this topic earlier ...

OK. I apologize about this. It's true I overlooked your messages. Anyways,
be sure that if I was aware of your lonely decisions, I was trying to
contact you (and trigger discussion) immediatly. BTW, only one of these
messages clearly states your lonely decision to remove 40-color icons.

> 
> http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~navindra/kde-devel/kwn-10/kwn-10.html
> 
> http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~navindra/kde-devel/kwn-3/kwn-3.html
> 
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-cvs&m=93171029628962&w=2
> 
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=93325132614111&w=2
> 
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=93265414720996&w=2
> 
> http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-devel&m=93085984305446&w=2
> 
> 

IN CONCLUSION: 

Hi-color icons (and graphics) will be the default set of KDE-1.2 and
KDE-2.X.

Nobody forces us to drop 40-color icons. We just need to find a good
filesystem standard solution.

When doing major changes to KDE, be sure that people are aware of what
happens.

I personally am glad this discussion happened now. This way we avoid the
disaster of a release dubbed stable and being really of alpha quality. And
we know how bad this could be from outside experiences.

Thanks a lot for the patience and listening

Cristian

Cristian Tibirna     : ctibirna@total.net     : www.total.net/~ctibirna
PhD Student          : ctibirna@gch.ulaval.ca : web.gch.ulaval.ca/~ctibirna
KDE contact - Canada :  tibirna@kde.org       : www.kde.org

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