[Geany-Devel] Drop GtkStock and use symbolic icons

[Colomban Wendling]

Le 11/10/2013 02:14, Yosef Or Boczko a écrit :
> On Fri, Oct 11, 2013 at 2:43 AM, Colomban Wendling
> <lists.ban at herbesfolles.org> wrote:
>> Le 11/10/2013 01:24, Yosef Or Boczko a écrit :
>>> Hi all,
>>
>> Hi.  I won't be much available this WE so I'm dropping a quick reply.
>>
>>> I think is good idea to make the UI more clean and modern.
>>>
>>> For this we need to port the images in the toolbar to symbol icons.
>>
>> Why would it be more "clean" and "modern"?  OK, GTK guys seem to think
>> that having a non-uniform desktop experience by dropping one of the
>> greatest features GTK had (stock items) is a good idea, so we probably
>> will have to do something at some point, but I highly doubt it will make
>> anything "cleaner".
>>
>> BTW, IIUC (I didn't read all of all the threads) even them realize that
>> breaking apps look with the same major toolkit version like they did for
>> 3.10 wasn't a good idea.
> 
> The icons in Stock is icons in some sizes, not SVG.
> The symbolic icons is SVG, better polished.
> Note: also for the symbolic icons have a themes.

No, no and no.  Stock icons *can* use SVG versions, in practice the
image file choice behind is *exactly the same* with named icons or stock
icons.  Most themes provide pre-rendered 16, 24, 32, and 64 sizes,
because it's faster, and because some size don't look that good just
scaled down -- it's common to have a different, simpler, 16x16 icon.
But in the end, stock or not, it follows the theme.  It really does.  I
tell you.  I double checked.  Twice.  And I even changed how our custom
icons are registered so a theme could change them.  And I tried doing
so.  And it worked.  I tell you.

BTW, we *do* provide SVG version of our icons, see icons/scalable.

>>> Also, in GNOME 3.10 the Stock items is drop [1], and UI with Stock is
>>> look outdated.
>>
>> How does the UI look outdated?  Using named icons won't change a thing,
>> in the end they all use the theme's icons.
> 
> The icons in the menus and in the buttons in the dialogs isn't add any
> information.
> I not think the 'OK' icon is add information there isn't in the string „Save”.

It doesn't add information, it adds a visual help.  Ask *anyone*, it's
easier to recognize a picture than a word.  Even if the picture isn't as
explicit as the word is, once you know it it's a lot faster to recognize
the icon than the word.

>>> I attachad a patch and screenshot (with GTK+ 3.11.0, from git).
>>>
>>> I missing some symbols: Choose a color, Build, Search & Replace,
>>> Compile, Save All, Reverte, Close All and Quit icons.
>>
>> It's weird for Quit icon, and probably revert and search, but Build,
>> Compiler, Save all, etc. are custom things so unless the theme provides
>> some it will always look different, no matter what API you use.  And the
>> other items also use stock icons, and they use your theme.
> 
> About the custom icons: same to add a GEANY_STOCK_SAVE_ALL icon,
> I want to add a symbolic icon for Save All.

We do have one, just add your preferred geany-save-all icon to your
theme and you're good to go.  I'm sorry GTK doesn't provide a "save-all"
icon we could use, heh, if there was a stock for that we'd use it ;)

>> <ot>(and BTW dropping stock items will most likely make weird icons more
>> and more common)</ot>
>>
>>> For Stock Icons I missing many places, but I started to work on this
>>> (it just search and replace).
>>
>> I don't like it, at least like you did it, because it drops a lot of
>> icons (like in buttons).  And I like icons on elements, it makes common
>> things like Cancel or OK a lot easier to recognize at first glance.
> 
> As I sad:
> „The icons in the menus and in the buttons in the dialogs isn't add any
> information.
> I not think the 'OK' icon is add information there isn't in the string „Save”.”

As I said, "It doesn't add information, it adds a visual help.  Ask
*anyone*, it's easier to recognize a picture than a word."

>> I'm not saying that we should keep using stock items or something, but
>> AFAIK there currently isn't much non-deprecated API that exists both in
>> GTK2 and GTK3 that allows for icons (and even better, allows for icons
>> at the user's choice -- I can't get why having or not icons can break a
>> UI design, but I guess I'll never understand UI designer's POV apart
>> that they love removing useful stuff because they think users a so duuuumb).
> 
> GTK+ 2.24.0 released in 2011, soon we are in 2014.

So?

> Also the widgets with image in a menu is deprecated (GtkImageMenuItem, for
> example), and also the function to create a buttons with Stock item is
> deprecated
> (gtk_button_new_from_stock() and gtk_image_new_from_stock() for example).

Yeah I know and I really don't like this.  BTW, IIRC even the GNOME HIG
want icons for some menu items.