OASIS Mailing List ArchivesView the OASIS mailing list archive below
or browse/search using MarkMail.

 


Help: OASIS Mailing Lists Help | MarkMail Help

odf-adoption message

[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]


Subject: Re: [odf-adoption] Proposal: ODF Icons


Hi,

Am 08.12.09 20:57, robert_weir@us.ibm.com schrieb:
> Hi Louis,
> 
> The challenge here is that some vendors want their icons to harmonize with 
> their application's visual design.  They want it to be an extension of 
> their "look".  So the user sees the document icons in their folder, and 
> that these resemble the icons for launching their editors, and these in 
> turn resemble the splash screen and title border of their application.  So 
> there is coordination of color scheme and other aspects of visual design 
> across all of these.
> 
> So I'm not sure you'll get wide buy-in on "Removal of any product- or 
> vendor-specific brand". 

I think we are not talking about icons that vendors must use, but icons 
that vendors may use.

If vendors want to add their "look" or (if Bart mentioned) want to show 
previews instead, then they may do so. But I consider it to be 
reasonable to anyway provide "neutral" icons for those who want to use 
them. These icons further may provide the basis for all those who want 
to add their "look" if we provide some basic rules how to do that.

Additionally, there may be places where the icons must be vendor 
neutral. For instance, if we want to add some icons to the Wikipedia 
entry on ODF/OpenDocument. Or if we want to ask OASIS to configure icons 
for IDF document into KAVI. Currently where are icons for PDF, HTML and 
even Microsoft Word documents, but none for ODF.

So, even if we know that not all vendors may adopt them, agreeing on a 
unified ODF icon set seems to be very reasonable to me.

Best regards

Michael


> 
> Another approach would be a unifying thematic element that all icons could 
> include in their own product-specific icons.  You see that, for example, 
> with the little "PDF" box you see in the upper left of a PDF document
> 
> Of course, this is far outside my area of expertise, so I'd love to hear 
> other views on this.
> 
> -Rob
> 
> 
> Louis.Suarez-Potts@Sun.COM wrote on 12/08/2009 02:36:27 PM:
> 
>> Earlier this year, in September, I sent a version of the message 
>> regarding a proposal for a Unified ODF Icon set. [0] Mary McRae and 
>> Bart replied but besides those two, the proposal fell into that 
>> familiar abyss. It's time to reawaken interest, for at the recent 
>> OOoCon, in Orvieto, Italy, there was more discussion on the icons 
>> and so I'm reintroducing them. I invite you to discuss the merits of
>> this idea here.
>>
>> There are several reasons for the new icons, and Lutz Hoeger spells 
>> them out in his post to GullFoss [1] of 18 September 2009. These 
>> reasons include:
>>
>> * Clean and unique visual identity
>> * Removal of any product- or vendor-specific brand
>> * Recognition of the ODF format regardless of vendor
>>
>> Put another way, the icons give recognizable form, colour, line to 
>> the icons, so that users can see them and recognize them regardless 
>> of the environment. The ODF universe is thus strengthened, and at a 
>> time when more and more vendors are implementing the ODF, this is, I
>> believe, quite important. It's especially so given our parallel 
>> interest in ensuring that all implementations of the ODF work 
>> smoothly together, which is to say, interoperable *because* of the 
>> format identity. And this format identity is given visual identity 
>> through these unified icons.
>>
>> History: The decision to use these icons was reached at the 09 March
>> 2009 Engineering Steering Committee (ESC) meeting, [2] and at first 
>> the idea was to use them in OOo 3.2. It's no longer the case that 
>> we'll introduce them then, but we will integrate them after that 
>> release. We invite people to work on them with the developers and 
>> designers operating out of the ODF Toolkit and they are at present 
>> in the Toolkit's repository. [3] Why is work being done there? 
>> Because these icons relate to the ODF, not to OpenOffice.org as 
>> such. They are definitively vendor neutral: that is the point, to be
>> recognizable *as* indicating ODF, not any one vendor.
>>
>> Discussions relating to their work can take place on the Toolkit 
>> lists, and to their merits, here, on this list, too. As well, there 
>> is a project page on the OpenOffice.org wiki that further supplies 
>> the motivation for their creation [4].
>>
>> I invite you all to discuss the merits, logic, logistics of these 
>> icons, and to take this post as a serious one to unify and 
>> strengthen the visual identity of the ODF.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Louis
>>
>>
>> ** Links
>>
>> [0] 
>> <http://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/odf-adoption/email/
>> archives/200909/msg00008.html>
>>
>> [1] <http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS/entry/unified_odf_icons>;
>>
>> [2] <http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/
>> ESC_meeting_minutes_20090309#proposal_for_unified_ODF_Document_icons>; 
> and, <
>> http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/ESC_minutes#Unified_ODF_Icons>;
>>
>> [3] <http://odftoolkit.org/pages/ODF-Icons>;
>>
>> [4] <http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Unified_ODF_Icons_-
>> _Project_Home_Page>;
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Louis Suarez-Potts, PhD
>> Community Manager, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
>> OpenOffice.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
>> generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
>> https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php 
>>
> 
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from this mail list, you must leave the OASIS TC that
> generates this mail.  Follow this link to all your TCs in OASIS at:
> https://www.oasis-open.org/apps/org/workgroup/portal/my_workgroups.php 
> 


-- 
Michael Brauer, Technical Architect Software Engineering
StarOffice/OpenOffice.org
Sun Microsystems GmbH             Nagelsweg 55
D-20097 Hamburg, Germany          michael.brauer@sun.com
http://sun.com/staroffice         +49 40 23646 500
http://blogs.sun.com/GullFOSS

Sitz der Gesellschaft: Sun Microsystems GmbH, Sonnenallee 1,
	   D-85551 Kirchheim-Heimstetten
Amtsgericht Muenchen: HRB 161028
Geschaeftsfuehrer: Thomas Schroeder, Wolfgang Engels, Wolf Frenkel
Vorsitzender des Aufsichtsrates: Martin Haering


[Date Prev] | [Thread Prev] | [Thread Next] | [Date Next] -- [Date Index] | [Thread Index] | [List Home]