Refusal of small icons

[eaglersdeveloper]

In Unity 8, only one application icon was used. And now are 12 icons of different sizes. What if we refuse small icons?

Firstly, less expensive for developers. Secondly, possibility of using vector icons. Thirdly, looks better.

On the left is 256x256 icons. On the right is 48x48 icons.

P.S. I posted the same thing on Ubuntu Discourse, but no one responded: https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/call-for-participation-an-ubuntu-default-theme-lead-by-the-community/1545/2041?u=eaglers

[clobrano]

Icons are used also in other places than dock and dash. Some notifications for example uses it and might makes the notification bubble too big if there isn't the proper size available

[eaglersdeveloper]

Then refuse 48x48 icons?

[clobrano]

I don't think this would be an improvement, the adoption of .svg depends on the support available in gtk, not in the given icon and "looks better", well it depends on the application it is using the icon, I don't see a strong documentation of this, only one specific case in which this happen.

[Feichtmeier]

I think we should not make a rushed decision here. Better look at upstream Suru and GTK/GNOME here. I think there is something on the horizon for dropping that folder structure and rendering the smaller sizes automatically to have less detail, but I don't know the development status of that. Thus, I will close this here. We should stick to the convention as long as it is the standard

[eaglersdeveloper]

I don't understand what you are talking about.

[eaglersdeveloper]

GNOME has already refused small icons.

[Feichtmeier]

No, they didn't (at least not completely)

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/adwaita-icon-theme/tree/master/Adwaita

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/adwaita-icon-theme/blob/master/Adwaita/22x22/places/folder-documents.png

[eaglersdeveloper]

What about refusal of small application icons? And what about creating a single vector icon for export to a few raster icons?

[Feichtmeier]

I guess that would need to be changed in that render script. I bet that upstream suru will do this at a certain point by its own to adapt to the new gnome script so why don't we just wait for that? I think the difference is very minimal and the additional highlights in the smaller sizes are not that dramatic

[eaglersdeveloper]

Sam's repository hasn't been updated for a long time. Plus, I know a little Python.

[eaglersdeveloper]

It is important to act now. Otherwise, some developer will make an application icon for Ubuntu in accordance with the current guidelines. And one more developer. And one more. And more.

[clobrano]

I don't see any hurry actually. GNOME is still using the same structure we are using, that's it.

Otherwise, some developer will make an application icon for Ubuntu in accordance with the current guidelines.

which is totally fine

On Thu, 13 Dec 2018 at 13:43, Eaglers notifications@github.com wrote:

It is important to act now. Otherwise, some developer will make an application icon for Ubuntu in accordance with the current guidelines. And one more developer. And one more. And more.

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[eaglersdeveloper]

GNOME core applications use single vector icon.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/blob/master/data/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/org.gnome.Nautilus.svg

[Feichtmeier]

Yes I realized this, too So they have the adwaita icons with all the different sizes and as PNGs And also they make SVG only icons for all the gnome applications which are then installed in /usr/share/icons/fullcolor or inside the app itself if it is flatpaked But does Suru work with just scaling them down? Adwaita+gnome icons can do this because they have a symbolic icon for EVERY app. We don't have that. (that was a reason to remove symbolic icons from the app menu in gnome shell's top bar, message tray and notifications) Also, since we are discussing here, could you please answer on the other places I have pinged you? It is a a bit awkward

[clobrano]

GNOME core applications use single vector icon.

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/blob/master/data/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/org.gnome.Nautilus.svg

This is a strong indication about the direction taken, I agree with you. What it's still unknown is how many apps and use cases need old png icons, which is probably the same reason gnome still has them

[eaglersdeveloper]

Some notifications for example uses it and might makes the notification bubble too big if there isn't the proper size available

I just checked with vector icon pack, an icon in a notification displays normally in GNOME Shell 3.30

In GNOME Flashback, icons are also normal.

[clobrano]

I think the best thing is to ask gnome devs about the plan for this

[clobrano]

Gnome devs replied positively, scaled pngs are not necessary, but we must adhere to these guidelines. I didn't check them, so I don't know if we're ready for this yet

[eaglersdeveloper]

but we must adhere to these guidelines

What kind?

[clobrano]

There is a link to the guidelines...

[eaglersdeveloper]

But these are GNOME's guidelines

[clobrano]

I am talking about what applies to any icon, like svg resolution

[eaglersdeveloper]

You about this?

Full-color icons are colorful and detailed, and are optimized for larger sizes. They are defined as 128×128px SVGs, and are sharpest when scaled up in multiples of 128 (such as 256✕256 and 512✕512).The design of full-color icons also allows them to be rendered sharp at 64×64px and 32×32px, but is not advised to make them any smaller.

[eaglersdeveloper]

:thinking:

[eaglersdeveloper]

I think that symbolic icons isn't needed because fullcolor icons look good even in small sizes.

[ubuntujaggers]

For me, the time-consuming bit of the different icons is actually re-drawing the icon at different sizes to make it as clear as possible, which I do with mixed success.

Having one graphic and scaling it to the different sizes is certainly easier. But, if we're happy with that approach, then making the different sizes in Inkscape would become thirty seconds of a job anyway, because we'd just be resizing the graphic rather than changing it.

So, the main question for me is whether it looks better to optimise the icons at different sizes. If not, then it doesn't really matter to me whether I quickly resize the icon in Inkscape and stick it on five different squircles, or let the desktop environment take care of it. If it does look better to optimise/change the icon for the different sizes then I'm happy to carry on doing it.

In Suru, I do think the difference between the 256 and the 48 icons is an assett, it's the others I find a bit fiddly :)

[eaglersdeveloper]

For me, creating small icons takes 15-30 minutes. And this is not only moving a pictogram, but also creating folds. And this all applies to application icons. Difficult to imagine a device icon creating.

[Feichtmeier]

I think most of the fullcolor icons we have could be scaled down and still recognized as what they are because they are very minimalistic. But here are some exceptions, for example the simple-scan icon

[eaglersdeveloper]

Yes, @Feichtmeier!

[ubuntujaggers]

@eaglersdeveloper

"For me, creating small icons takes 15-30 minutes. And this is not only moving a pictogram, but also creating folds. And this all applies to application icons. Difficult to imagine a device icon creating."

Oh yeah, it takes me ages lol, it's my least favourite bit :) but I think that's because we're taking a bit of care to make each size look as good/pixel-clear as it can do?

Possibly we could just draw a 256px that will look good when scaled to each size, but, in that case, if you want a nice clear line that's 1px when shown as a 16px icon, then the same line will be very thick in the larger sizes. If you want a less chunky line in the larger sizes, then it will be <1px and not crisp in the smaller sizes. It might be recognisable but maybe not as great as it could be? So really I guess the question is how happy people are for the smallest icons to be a bit blurry (like the "person" glyph is in your example).

[ubuntujaggers]

Here's a comparison of a few randomly-chosen icons - left is the existing 16px version, right is the full size icon simply scaled down to 16px:

Looking at them side-by-side, I think the main advantage of having a separate 16px icon isn't actually the clearness of the pictogram (which is only a little clearer in the current icons), but the nice crisp 1px border around the squircles. If this was the same graphic scaled to different sizes, then that same border would have to be really chunky at the larger sizes to exist at the smallest one - something like:

(EDIT: I feel a bit like a turkey voting for Christmas because it's obviously easier for me to draw one size :) but I guess I'm making the point that it isn't a completely pointless endeavour, it does result in a quality improvement. The question is whether it's a big enough quality improvement to be worth the extra work.)

[eaglersdeveloper]

I want the same icons everywhere, not different.

[clobrano]

I must say I've mixed feelings. I do see that it seems unnecessary now to use many PNGs and I see that might be a burden (more o less) for the developer. At the same time, @ubuntujaggers comparison is quite clear, as of today, some icons need adaptation to small sizes. Of course, we know that Gnome direction is to get rid of PNGs and to use SVG directly, but my point here is different, are we supposed to push for this transition just now?

It is possible that the new Adwaita icon set is made in a way that smaller sizes are as good as big ones in svg, but as @ubuntujaggers shown, it is not the same for Suru at the moment.

One last point, what happens if we simply start providing only the SVG version for new icons only? I expect the system to use the SVG version, am I right?

[eaglersdeveloper]

One last point, what happens if we simply start providing only the SVG version for new icons only? I expect the system to use the SVG version, am I right?

No. Only new icons will be vector.

[clobrano]

No. Only new icons will be vector.

That's exactly what I said.

On Mon, 31 Dec 2018 at 05:53, Eaglers notifications@github.com wrote:

One last point, what happens if we simply start providing only the SVG version for new icons only? I expect the system to use the SVG version, am I right?

No. Only new icons will be vector.

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[Feichtmeier]

So upstream does kind of the same https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/Initiatives/issues/2#description

Developers making applications for GNOME should not have to undertake more work to target our platform than they do others (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, etc.) by having to provide extra icon assets for small, low-resolution icon sizes. As such, to avoid developers having to put in the effort on them, the 16x16, 24x24, 32x32 & 48x48 icon sizes will be deprecatedin favour of symbolic icons and a single, scalable, high resolution application icon. These new application icons will be in vector (SVG) format to better suit scalability.

So they are just avoiding that small full color icons everywhere and replace them with symbolic icons + make what @eaglersdeveloper desires for the bigger icons

Is this what you did in your PR @eaglersdeveloper ?

The problem I see is 18.04 support

After my latest icon request fail for printers, I realized that GNOME 3.30 started to replace many icons with symbolic icons.

A solution could be to provide the humanity icon fallback as always and dodge a branch change again

[ubuntujaggers]

Do I understand the quoted text correctly: where the full colour 48px icon is used currently, in future it will be the symbolic version that's used in those contexts?

If so, that will have a big (IMHO undesirable) impact on Ubuntu's visual identity, if Ubuntu falls 100% in line with Gnome, because the 48px version is the one that's used by default on the launcher. I don't think a launcher of monochrome symbols would look very Ubuntu...? I think the full size icon only routinely appears in the app grid.

[Feichtmeier]

No :) App icons will be replaced with SVGs in full color But gtk 3.30 apps exchange all the small icon occurences with symbolic icons by enforcing the toolkit to use symbolic icons like in the printer example

[Feichtmeier]

But this would also mean, that we need to work on these:

So I'd say, before those aren't matching our fullcolor apps (regarding completness) I'd say let's not overreact and rush something

Since their idea is that the small full color icons become obsolete when small icons are all symbolic :bulb:

[ubuntujaggers]

@Feichtmeier

"So I'd say, before those aren't matching our fullcolor apps (regarding completness) I'd say let's not overreact and rush something"

And from #1053:

"There are other more important things to do for you two guys :) like symbolic icons of all our all icons / update them"

Aha, now I think I understand - so to keep pace we need to make a symbolic version of every app icon that exists in Suru?

Looking at the existing app symbols, am I correct in thinking that the symbolic version of an app should only represent the pictogram (e.g., music, app store), unless the squircle is necessary (e.g., terminal)? Or do we want all the app symbolic icons to be squircles like terminal and calculator currrently are?

[ubuntujaggers]

@Feichtmeier @clobrano @madsrh

To make the transition properly, should we go as far as making symbolic versions of apps like:

??

[Feichtmeier]

@ubuntujaggers yes

If we want svg only icons, we need our Yaru app icons to also have symbolic icons For example they will be used in the next gnome-settings app

:)

[ubuntujaggers]

I'm guessing they will also replace the 16x16px at the top left of the desktop, that would mean we see an awful lot of the symbols if so:

For starters I've had a go at making the notepad symbol match the Suru icon:

[Feichtmeier]

That is currently disabled, but we could switch it back to symbolic.

And wow you are fast! :)

[ubuntujaggers]

I think if Yaru is going to switch to one full colour svg + one symbolic svg for each app, then it might be a good idea to switch the top bar back to the symbolic, simply because the symbolic is optimised for 16x16px and the full colour svg won't always scale very clearly to such a small size. E.g., notepad is one of the apps in the comparison above, and I think the new symbolic version is clearer than the full colour one at 16px?

[Feichtmeier]

Yes totally. I think it was a semi good idea to remove the symbolic icons in the app menu and the message tray If @clobrano and @madsrh agree I can fix that right away (Reminder: we disabled the symbolic icons because third party apps mostly not support them thus having some apps symbolic and some apps full colour. But imho that's not a strong argument against symbolic icons for pre installed apps)

[eaglersdeveloper]

I saw, symbolic icons isn't needed. They are boring, monochrome. Colored is visible in small size.

[Feichtmeier]

Ehhh, I don't agree. Also we are still a GNOME project and thus won't do anything against their decisions. There isn't much room for discussion in this case. We need the symbolic icons.

[ubuntujaggers]

I don't have a strong feeling about whether full colour or symbol looks best at 16x16px, but I do enjoy doing the symbolic icons so it's all good from my point of view :)

I think once you get down that small, though, it's slightly better to have an icon that's optimised for 16px (whether it's colour or not) rather than just scaling a large icon down.

This is how far I've got with the symbolic icons... here you can see the revised notepad symbol, the LibreOffice symbols, and also I've started working through the apps in alphabetical order, so you can see symbolic versions of accessories-character-map, addressbook-app, amazon-store, and aptdaemon-download which are faithful to the full colour versions in Suru.

This is 1:1 size:

...and this is zoomed in:

Because all the symbols go in source-symbolic.svg, if more than one person wants to work on these, we'll have to coordinate PRs carefully, because otherwise we might accidentally remove each other's changes (e.g., if person A edits icon X while I'm adding icon Y, and person A does the pull request before me, I might accidentally revert icon X when I do mine).

[eaglersdeveloper]

Also we are still a GNOME project

We are a Canonical project