GNOME Icon Status Report #14 -- "Land of Thousand MIME Types"

[mawarkus t-online de (Matthias Warkus)]

GNOME Icon Status Report
as of January 28th, 2000
by mawa

WHAT'S GOING ON?

The GNOME Icon Editor has arrived! Yawp! Finally, there is a tool
specifically made for GNOME icon artists. Feedback by renowned artists such
as Tigert and by unimportant technocrats like me has gone into it to make
sure that it will be as easy as possible to create GNOME-compliant icons
with this tool.

Progress is advancing steadily. New and original artwork as well as cunning
recombinations of the existing GNOME artwork base have led to the creation
of lots of new icons; I'm proud to announce that I committed more file type
icons than ever this time.

Konrad Mierendorff has made an interesting suggestion. By creating a little
collection of standard overlay icons to signify "backup", "configuration
file", "byte-compiled file" and such, consistency and ease of creation of
file type icons could be increased a lot. We'd probably need a discussion
about which overlays would be useful and which not. Well, just an idea. You
can contact Konrad: mierendorff@gmx.net.

Another thing: If there is any non-GNOME application that you've got a
GNOMEish icon for, don't hesitate to send the icon to me. I'll either have
the icon and a .desktop file for the non-GNOME program added or I'll send
the icon to the maintainers so they can include it somehow.

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE

Icons have been added for:
   
  * Adobe Font Metrics (.afm)
  * AUTHORS
  * COPYING
  * CREDITS
  * FastTracker II instrument (.xi)
  * FastTracker II module (.xm)
  * Gnomoku
  * GNOME app info (.desktop)
  * INSTALL
  * KDE app info (.kdelnk)
  * Makefile
  * PGP (.pgp)
  * Portable Compiled Font format (.pcf)
  * README
  * Scheme source (.scm)
  * generic spreadsheet files
  * TrueType fonts (.ttf)

MISSING ICONS IN THE FOOT MENU

Submenu icons
   
  * Administration
  * Settings (candidates available)

Applications
   
  * GNOME DB
  * GNOME DB SQL front end

Games
   
  * gTuring (candidates available)
  * Gnotski

Settings Submenus
   
  * User Interface Options

Settings
   
  * Gnome Edit Properties
  * Save Current Session
  * Session Manager Properties

User Interface Options
   
  * Application Defaults
  * MDI (there was supposed to be a candidate in the making)

Utilities
   
  * Text File Viewer (gless; candidate in the making)
  * GDict (candidate in the making)

MISSING ICONS IN THE PANEL CONTEXT MENU

"Add" submenu
   
  * Status dock

"Menu" submenu
   
  * Main menu

Amusements
   
  * Sixty Four Bits

Clocks
   
  * Clock
  * AfterStep Clock

Monitors
   
  * SwapLoad
  * NetLoad (candidate in the making)

Network
   
  * WebControl
  * URL Collector

Utility
   
  * Mini Commander
  * GDict (candidate in the making)
  * Where am I?
  * QuickLaunch (candidates available)
  * bug-applet

OTHER APPLICATIONS THAT NEED ICONS
   
  * memprof (memory profiler/debugger)
  * Gaby (personal database thingy)
  * gLife (ALife program)
  * GMath (mathematics system)
  * Gnome Transfer Manager (download thingy)
  * Pybliographer (bibliographer program)
  * XMMS Applet (XMMS multimedia player remote control)

FILETYPES THAT NEED ICONS

NB: this is a big and bold list. It contains nearly all the suffixes from
the suffixes(7) man page and more.
   
  * Assembly source (.s, .S)
  * Automake template (.am)
  * Awk source (.awk)
  * Backup file (maybe this should be done by laying something over the
    backed-up file type's icon)
  * ChangeLog
  * Common Lisp source (.lsp, .lisp)
  * C++ header (.H, .hh, .hpp)
  * Data file (.dat)
  * lib*db* simple database (.db)
  * Diff output (.diff)
  * DVI (.dvi)
  * Eiffel source (.e)
  * Emacs Lisp source (.el)
  * Emacs Lisp bytecode (.elc)
  * Fortran header (.fi) (try punched cards)
  * Fortran source (.f, .F) (dito)
  * FTP URL (.ftpurl?)
  * generic TeX font (*gf)
  * Ghostscript font (.gsf)
  * incomplete file (template) (.in)
  * .info file
  * .it audio file (ImpulseTracker module)
  * Java class (.class) (candidates available)
  * LaTeX class (.cls)
  * LaTeX style (.sty)
  * lex/flex source
  * Linux kernel (vmlinuz etc.; there should be icons for other OSes'
    kernels, too)
  * log files (.log?)
  * LyX files (.lyx)
  * M4 source (.m4)
  * Metafont source (.mf)
  * MIDI sequence (.mid)
  * NEWS
  * Nroff source for me package (.me)
  * Original file (.orig)
  * Pascal source (.p)
  * packed TeX font (*pk)
  * Patch (.patch) (candidates available)
  * Perl header (.ph)
  * Perl method (.pm)
  * Perl source (.pl, .perl)
  * Process ID file (.pid)
  * PGP armoured text (.asc)
  * PostScript font, ASCII (.pfa)
  * PostScript font, compiled (.pfb)
  * Python source (.py) (candidates available)
  * Python bytecode (.pyc) (candidates available)
  * RC (configuration) file (*rc, no suffix)
  * Rich Text Format (.rtf)
  * SGML (.sgml)
  * Shell script (.sh; the question is whether this makes sense, since most
    scripts have not got a particular suffix)
  * Stampede package (.slp)
  * Sun audio (.au)
  * Tcl source (.tcl; the same as for .sh goes for this)
  * TeX font metric (.tfm)
  * TeX virtual font file (.vf)
  * TeX virtual property list file (.vpl)
  * Texinfo source (.texi)
  * TODO
  * uuencoded file (.uu, .uue)
  * yacc/bison source (.y)

CONFLICTS
   
  * Balsa and TkRat using same icon
  * Gnome PPP, Internet Submenu, XSiteCopy using same icon
  * Printer applet, GULP using same icon

SUBOPTIMAL ICONS

    Bitgrazer
has text, is not shaped
    Glines
could use transparency
    GQview
a logo, not shaped, illegible, too massive
    Logview icon
metaphor is not international
    X-Chat
the new icon is better, but still a logo and not shaped
    Screem
is a logo
    Utilities menus
Swiss Army knife could do with more contrast

Feel free to comment.

TOTAL

This total figure has been getting sillier and sillier, considering that
it's going up all the time because people submit applications that need
icons. I think next time I'll drop this section for good.

Thanks to all who have contributed.

REMARKS

Send any ideas, remarks or contributions to me as I have now got official
permission to add them to the CVS tree. Have a thorough look at this report
and at the Gnome icons page before painting anything.

Don't compress icons individually when submitting them to me. Either pack
several into a tarball or (preferred) send unpacked PNGs. Zipping a single
PNG file is pointless as PNG compresses internally.

If you've got any nice, big logos for Gnome applications, please submit
them; they'll be needed for Phase 2. Should you have got ideas for
metaphors for yet-to-be-created icons or file types that are not in the
file type list, send them to me.

Please, please, please: If you want to make icons, make icons that are
mentioned in the report as needed. Don't send me another dozen of ZIP drive
icons or of Adobe PDF icons. Do not make a new icon before having checked
whether a candidate exists on the icon page. Thanks.

Last but not least, anyone who submits an icon that makes it into the tree
gets listed in the CREDITS file on the Web page. Now if that's not fame!

mawa (mawa@iname.com)
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