Hi Bernhard,
sorry for the late reply, I took some time off.
Bernhard Dippold wrote:
Hi Peter, all,
Peter Junge wrote:
John McCreesh wrote:
> On Thu, November 26, 2009 6:59 pm, Bernhard Dippold wrote:
> [snip]
>> 1. ODF branding is important, but should not lead to weakening of OOo
>> branding on user's desktops.
>>
>> 2. The OOo document icons are part of our visual identity and
therefore
>> used in several marketing areas. We should not give up this chance as
>> there might be an alternative (icons with both branding elements).
>
> I remember how annoyed I was when I installed an early beta of Lotus
> Symphony and it replaced all my OOo desktop icons with the horribly
garish
> IBM ones.
Isn't this a general issue? Whatever installation comes last provides
the icons.
If it is not customizable during installation...
I do not remember any setup routine of any application, that gave me any
choice in that regard.
>
> As ODF becomes established, users may well have multiple ODF supporting
> applications on their desktops. So IMHO having all those applications
> sharing a standard set of desktop icons is not terribly useful.
Users need
> to know what application will start when they click an icon.
>
Unfortunately, there can only be one icon per file format with current
desktop environments regardless of the number of supporting applications
installed, as well different users might have a different preferences to
choose standard or application specific icons, hence there has to be a
solution to meet the users will in an easy way.
My approach: show the user by the icons which application is the
standard one to open a certain file format. This may be done by an
application symbol in rather low contrast (to keep the main interest on
the ODF part).
Is this a real use case? I know, all people discussing here have of
course several applications installed that are implementing ODF, but out
does this apply to the average user?
In case their are several applications installed, the user should be
able to choose using the context menu, Gnome for example does it that
way. A next step to better user experience could be to first display a
common icon, as proposed here for ODF, and when hovering over it a list
of application specific icons pops up. But that's not within the scope
of OOo, but it's up to the desktop projects.
At least if people want to modify their documents it is important which
application is opening, beacuse the features differ quite a lot. If you
only want to view a PDF or JPG file (or hear a MP3), this is less
important.
Well it's certainly a difference if a JPEG is opened with a viewer or
with a manipulator.
General remark: I didn't find the time to read the whole discussion
here, so I might reiterate things that have already been said. Anyway I
think this discussion is mostly happening at the wrong place. As we have
often emphasized "OOo is not equal ODF". Consequently, a standardized
set of icons for ODF should be specified and provided by the ODF
Adoption TC at OASIS [1]. Subsequently the ODF Adoption TC would
recommend the use of this icon set to the implementers and later measure
the success of its work.
The present iconset has been created by the art team at Sun and is
already integrated in StarOffice 9.2. Integration in OOo has been hold
back (probably until OOo 3.3) to coordinate with the project while in
the meantime contact to OASIS has been searched.
In my eyes this should have been coordinated before - and I read some of
the comments here and on other lists, that there are several backdrafts
in the present icons that should be handled before the request to define
them as officially approved OASIS iconset.
BTW, everybody is welcome even encouraged to send comments to OASIS TCs,
for the ODF Adoption TC, you find the how-to here:
http://www.oasis-open.org/committees/comments/index.php?wg_abbrev=odf-adoption
Personal remark: I would strongly prefer standardized icon sets for any
file format. IMHO the clear type recognition should be the main priority
for ease of use.
As mentioned before: because different applications provide different
actions to one file format (one is viewer, others are meant to modify
the file), I'd like to add an area in the icons that shows a symbol or
graphical element of the standard application opening the file.
Likely it would also be good to add another graphical element that
indicates the action after opening.
A consistent set of icons provided by the desktop seems
to be very nice from the artwork point of view, but sometimes leads to
hardly distinguishable similarities.
I agree with you on the benefit of a general symbol language - without
regards to the application, a text document should be represented by the
same symbols. But I don't see a reason to remove the application
information from the icons...
Well I guess we're in trouble anyway. The desktop projects are creating
their icon sets to guarantee a common artwork for their product.
Distributors often change it, because of a similar idea. Applications
often change the icons too, as in the Lotus Symphony example, likely
with the intention to provide also a common look and feel for their
product portfolio. Now we are discussing the idea to provide the icons
depending on the file format. I guess all the parties mentioned here
also follow their concepts due to certain (e.g. business) interests,
probably we are heading towards complicated discussions with lot of
parties involved. ;-)
Best regards,
Peter
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