Drawing workbench aligned to Tango

[triplus]

Which correctly populates the dropdown with the correct icons, but as I said, the portrait ones are missing (except for A4 for some reason?)

Well you only provided portrait one in A4 size. Therefore you would need to add the remaining ones. That is corresponding .svg file for each size in portrait mode and add a line for each .svg file in the resources file. But i checked why was the icon parsing approach selected in the first place. You would need to provide icons for all this standard sizes if your approach would be used:

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(A|B|C|D|E)(\\d)_(Landscape|Portrait)

Or the icons would be missing when corresponding templates would be added by the end user. Therefore i feel best to revert your change and only do the A0 one. Or at best go after additionally providing the portrait icon mode as that can be achieved when using your approach. That would still be a nice addition. Beyond that preserve the line between text tags that gets parsed (check in text editor) and that is it. Results you want to achieve can be achieved and for the rest to still work as it does ATM.

[agryson]

Therefore you would need to add the remaining ones. That is corresponding .svg file for each size in portrait mode and add a line for each .svg file in the resources file.

At first I didn't understand because I had added the missing icons, but thanks to your tip about adding them to the resource file, I see that I needed to explicitly list them in the .qrc (I thought that was automatic once the icon was in the folder) The missing icons now appear correctly. Thanks

Therefore i feel best to revert your change and only do the A0 one. Or at best go after additionally providing the portrait icon mode as that can be achieved when using your approach. That would still be a nice addition. Beyond that preserve the line between text tags that gets parsed

"hot-fixing" the icons programmatically is not an option. While it's an elegant way to reduce filecount, it leads to silent pseudofailures in the event of a font not being available - replacing it with whatever that system's default is and also prevents accurate pixel alignment regardless. I prefer to explicitly create the missing icons using outlined text, even if this leads to redundancy in the short term, and in the long term (in part two) change all of these to a generic icon that does not contain text, simply the page orientation, and let the label carry the explicit page size information.

[triplus]

"hot-fixing" the icons programmatically is not an option.

Well address this one to Werner. I only said what it does but i didn't do it myself.

While it's an elegant way to reduce filecount, it leads to silent pseudofailures in the event of a font not being available - replacing it with whatever that system's default is and also prevents accurate pixel alignment regardless. I prefer to explicitly create the missing icons using outlined text, even if this leads to redundancy in the short term, and in the long term (in part two) change all of these to a generic icon that does not contain text, simply the page orientation, and let the label carry the explicit page size information.

Fair enough. Roughly 100 icons to cover all possible scenarios it is.

Note that when i was looking through the code i did a quick fly over your design work and i don't get one thing. You say you aligned the Drawing workbench icons to Tango but if i only look at the first icon the icon was copy/pasted from the Tango project:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons

It is the same icon? But you changed it to align it to the Tango guidelines? Sorry that just doesn't fly with me. The icon is already aligned to Tango guidelines as it is the icon from the Tango project. Don't get me wrong and i am not saying you shouldn't change it like you did. But saying you aligned it to Tango guidelines just makes no sense.

[sgrogan]

You wouldn't believe what definitions of the term i have read before finally getting to the correct one.

Common for me Wild Assed Guess
EDIT: I Googled it

[agryson]

Fair enough. Roughly 100 icons to cover all possible scenarios it is.

I think any reasonable person would agree covering the default templates delivered in FreeCAD is a good compromise until the generic icons can be delivered.

Note that when i was looking through the code i did a quick fly over your design work and i don't get one thing. You say you aligned the Drawing workbench icons to Tango but if i only look at the first icon the icon was copy/pasted from the Tango project:

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Tango_icons

It is the same icon? But you changed it to align it to the Tango guidelines?

Sorry, I'll clarify it for you (though I think we already discussed this on a few occasions...)

There's a couple of different elements so bear with me.

1. I admit that the title of the thread should simply say 'aligned to guidelines', my bad
2. The 'Tango' project icons were often copy pasted in 48px sizes, and often slightly changed or moved, misaligning them from the grid. I use the FreeCAD artwork guideline of 64px and resize/align to grid appropriately
3. The Tango guidelines are designed for export to bitmap icons like png:

   There are 4 major icon sizes defined that an icon theme should contain: Large, Medium, Small and Extra Small. Each of these sizes needs to be treated separately, simple scaling of a larger icon doesn't work and ends up looking fuzzy and unclear.

   (emphasis mine, quoted from here)
   This means that other Tango guidelines like the requirement for a single pixel outline regardless of icon size can't work in our case (because we use the svg directly) so interpretation is necessary - I add a 2px outline at 64 px which, thanks to its high contrast and alignment to the grid, is generally intact even at 16px
4. The icon you speak of is just a page, so there is no major geometrical change to the icon after my edits, as you can see in more detailed icons like import spreadsheet (See my work on the spreadsheet workbench which reuses many Tango icons) I tend towards keeping the geometry unchanged but do change some things like line thicknesses to make them work at our sizes. (See 2 and 3)
5. I had just come from the TechDraw workbench where these page icons had received widespread approval, so opted to do what the community seemed to prefer rather than limiting ourselves to prior art (except where necessary, see 4)
6. As you say yourself, these are guidelines, not rules, in the end I interpret them to minimise impact as described in the description of Project Align based on a decade of experience using guidelines like these in a professional capacity daily.

Interesting note: The Tango guidelines specifically advise against what we do in FreeCAD (create a large icon that gets rescaled down) as it produces fuzzy icons - my work tries to minimise that effect, but please don't confuse me with a magician who can make it disappear - some day, if we want to treat the issue seriously, that scaling issue will need to be handled in a more direct manner.

[triplus]

We need to try to keep the existing design contribution workflow steady and attract new design contributors. As we are still heavily "understaffed" in this area. Both of this goals are challenging.

I like the work you did on Path Helix icon. That is what we need to attract more. The work you did on Draft Stretch icon or on a copy/pasted Tango icon introduces some old design contribution patterns back. We should avoid that as it was hard to change them in the past. If Yorik can't contribute an icon without immediate need to fix it or if reusing prominent Tango icon isn't possible as it doesn't align with @agryson theme. That is wrong and that is overstretching. Design contribution workflow to FreeCAD upstream is different compared to workflow appropriate for an individual creating an icon theme pack.

As for the Drawing template drop down menu icon. Current solution supports templates:

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(A|B|C|D|E)(\\d)_(Landscape)

Subset of your solution could further do:

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(A|B|C|D|E)(\\d)_(Landscape|Portrait)

That is sensible thing to do!

Beyond that you need to provide different solution and it can be evaluated further. Or just do a pull request and see how it goes. If core devs feel your solution makes sense then i don't have problems with that. I was there when custom drawing template support was added to the drop down menu in the first place and i was there and seen when custom drawing template support in Drawing WB broke down on an unimaginable scale (mostly fixed in FreeCAD 0.17). Therefore i feel i will be able to survive icons in drop down menu not working any more beyond the subset of A sizes if that needs to happen.

[agryson]

If Yorik can't contribute an icon without immediate need to fix it or if reusing prominent Tango icon isn't possible as it doesn't align with @agryson theme. That is wrong and that is overstretching. Design contribution workflow to FreeCAD upstream is different compared to workflow appropriate for an individual creating an icon theme pack.

This is a little unfair for several reasons. I've shared my palettes and techniques with everyone and as I've already told you in other threads, will be working on upgrading the current guidelines to include templates, palettes and tutorials. Also, in the precise case you mentioned (@Yorik's icon) I provided details in the pull request as to how to avoid the misalignment issues in the future - which would pull me entirely out of the equation.

Edit: Just a PS here: Please read points 2,3,4 & 5 in my preceding post again, because the section I quoted from you does not seem to take them into account.

If you hope for more designers to join the project, I strongly suggest you start with your condescending tone - if it hadn't been for the hearty welcome and encouragement of the rest of the community, your intransigence would have had me turning tail. It's a great pity that you can't just work collaboratively rather than constantly talking down at fellow contributors.

I've already created several new icons to cover existing default templates and will ensure I've covered all default templates prior to submitting a pull request. This is currently in testing. Thank you nonetheless for your help in spotting the initial problem.

[triplus]

Yeah i feel you.

I would probably feel the same in your position. But on the other hand i feel i was fair with you and did a proper design contribution review when i got involved. Mainly to show you i take your work seriously. And you must admit you occasionally ended up agreeing with me at least up to a point. As i have seen that reflected in your work.

P.S. But point taken and i learned something too. More sugar coating and less plain bread crumbs for now.

[agryson]

Yeah i feel you.

Thank you for understanding. And I of course value your input and integrate it when I can, and will continue to do so.

Now, onwards and upwards !