Re: [libreoffice-design] Re: Better branding (was: Re: Towards useful icon themes)

Hi ape, Christoph,

On 1 March 2012 19:40, Christoph Noack <christoph@dogmatux.com> wrote:
> > A.1 I agree, but the "Chart" had a green frame in the
> > OpenOffice.org_Galaxy_ver.3.0.
>
> Also targets A.2, A.3.
>
> The basic decision we've made was to only highlight the most essential
> document types and that led to only few colored application icons. The
> main goal is to avoid too much mixture of color (frame) and additional
> icons (the small graphic inside). A sub-goal is to establish the native
> TDF / LibreOffice symbol - for many people TDF and LibreOffice are still
> inexistent or very new ;-)
>
> Consequently, we do only serve 5 icons with colored frames to our users.
>
> For all other document types, icons with black borders are used. For
> example, also the HTML document icon features a black border - although
> it is opened in Writer. We also use a black border for the Master
> Document - because it "only" embeds other ODT documents (and due to the
> black border, Master Document icons and Writer Document icons can be
> easily distinguished when using very small icons sizes).
>
> Concerning the differentiation between document icon and application
> icon - there is none, because we estimated that it doesn't add any
> value. People start the application in a Start or Applications menu (no
> document icons to be seen here) and they mainly use documents when they
> browse documents (no applications to be started here). So we help users
> to get a straight connection if we avoid any differences ...
>
> Finally, personally I think these assumptions are still valid. But if
> the goals changed or the team comes to a different conclusion, then its
> surely time to update the icons.
>
> > A.3 I'll be back to the provost embodiment, it is easy to do.
> >
> > A.4 I think you're wrong. Two files (ODT and DOC, ODG and VSD, ODS and XLS
> > etc) have the same name. They will be denoted by the same symbol. You can
> > not define the eyes, "who is who," if Windows Explorer is turned off "Hide
> > extensions for known file types" (see attachment). LibreOffice uses in its
> > "Explorer" different *.png (images.zip) to ODF\MSO files and do not have
> > this problem.

First, most users shouldn't see our custom file picker at all. For
good reason – it's a copycat of the Windows 95 file picker.
In the custom file picker, we indeed use different icons, for
instance, in Tango we have the following (these are examples):
* .od*/.ot* – the LibO icons
* .xls/.doc/.ppt – generic Tango spreadsheet/text document/presentation icons
* .txt – Oracle's colourless standard ODT icon
... since we probably don't want to use generic Tango icons in Windows
Explorer, to me it sounds like a better to try to unify the icons in
the Tango theme (to use the normal LibreOffice icons). Should I do
that?


> Hehe, concerning the last statement, then its a bug ;-)

A bug in Windows' default options or a bug in LibreOffice? (And
indepently of this: should we still try to fix it?)


> Seriously, nobody had the time to provide numerous icons for the same
> document type ... it might not only happen to MS Word files, but all
> other Text related documents LibreOffice is able to handle (Works, Word
> Pro, WordPerfect, ...). The main alternatives are:
>      * use the same icon for LibreOffice and foreign (equivalent)
>        document types
>      * use one icon for LibreOffice and a different icon for all
>        foreign (equivalent) document types
>      * use individual icons for all document types

The cheapest way to do that is probably to add file extensions to the
icons. I don't know if we want that.


> > B. Windows_NT-6.x Explorer reduces itself on the desktop icon 256*256 to a
> > size 96*96, if you are using the classic (windows) theme. Icons 256*256
> > applications LibreOffice blurred (see attachment). This led me to modify
> > these figures.
>
> So, if I get it right, we need 96x96 icons, right?

The question with that still is, if Vista/7 will accept the extra icon, I guess.

Astron.

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