Sketcher icons (finally) aligned

[Kunda1]

sweet!

[NormandC]

Hello Alex,

Gigantic amount of work here...

I want to point out an issue about this icon:

FC_Sketcher_icon_aligned_toggle_internal_geom_01.png (38.65 KiB) Viewed 1699 times

Its purpose it to toggle the visibility of internal geometry in ellipses, and now also in B-Splines.

Internal geometry shows blue, like construction geometry or reference "constraints" (sic):

FC_Sketcher_Ellipse_01.png (10.12 KiB) Viewed 1699 times

I'm wondering why you chose to switch the color from blue to green. Maybe because the other icons in the "Sketcher tools" toolbar use green? The problem is that for this specific icon, green does not comply with the actual color of the internal geometry.

I think it should be the same blue color as this icon:

FC_ReferenceRadiusDimension_01.png (43.67 KiB) Viewed 1699 times

[agryson]

I'm wondering why you chose to switch the color from blue to green. Maybe because the other icons in the "Sketcher tools" toolbar use green? The problem is that for this specific icon, green does not comply with the actual color of the internal geometry.

Actually, if you look closely, the original icon is a dark green with a dark blue outline. If you are on the color blind spectrum it may be difficult to see, but if you use a color picker in gimp or inkscape you'll see what I mean.

Now, I personally think that's an awful idea to mix blue and green like that, but wanted to stay as true as possible to the original icons in terms of which colors were used, I only changed the tone to align them to the palette.

If you think it is an error in the original icon then I have absolutely no problem going through them again to correct that and make them blue (now that they're aligned, that can be done quite quickly actually - for all icons with this green/blue thing it shouldn't take more than half an hour.)

[NormandC]

Actually, if you look closely, the original icon is a dark green with a dark blue outline.

OK I give you the point.

If you think it is an error in the original icon then I have absolutely no problem going through them again to correct that and make them blue (now that they're aligned, that can be done quite quickly actually - for all icons with this green/blue thing it shouldn't take more than half an hour.)

My comment was only for this specific icon. And yes, I consider that using green here is an error.

As for the other icons in the Sketcher Tools palette, they relate to copying/mirroring geometry, not to reference (blue) geometry, hence the choice of green to differentiate I guess.

[agryson]

My comment was only for this specific icon. And yes, I consider that using green here is an error.

As for the other icons in the Sketcher Tools palette, they relate to copying/mirroring geometry, not to reference (blue) geometry, hence the choice of green to differentiate I guess.

OK, because there are 5 separate Ellipse icons that have this blue/green issue:

• Sketcher_Element_Ellipse_All.svg
• Sketcher_Element_Ellipse_Focus1.svg
• Sketcher_Element_Ellipse_Focus2.svg
• Sketcher_Element_Ellipse_MajorAxis.svg
• Sketcher_Element_Ellipse_MinorAxis.svg

If you're reasonably certain it's only the first for which this is an issue, I'll only do that one. Otherwise, (and others are welcome to jump in here) I can do those 5.

[NormandC]

AFAICT only the first one is used in the GUI.

I'm unsure of the purpose of the 4 other icons, but I'm guessing it's to toggle the visibility of only specific internal geometry elements.

I had never noticed that in /src/Mod/Sketcher/Gui/Resources/icons there are a lot of unused icons I've never seen.

If the long term goal is to add these unused icons to the GUI (I'm not even sure the functionality for these tools exists internally?) then they would need to be adapted as well. But that is your choice to leave them as be...

[agryson]

If the long term goal is to add these unused icons to the GUI (I'm not even sure the functionality for these tools exists internally?) then they would need to be adapted as well. But that is your choice to leave them as be...

Yeah, you're not the first person to mention the possibility of icon cruft... In any case, I've aligned every icon in /icons/ so if we want to update the colors a little from here on in it shoudl only be 3 or 4 clicks per icon. I'll be doing a "second pass" that goes into more depth once I've finished this preliminary pass.

[NormandC]

In 0.16:

FC016_Sketch_&_Clone_icons_01.png (18.76 KiB) Viewed 1648 times

Now:

FC017_Sketch_&_Clone_icons_01.png (19.09 KiB) Viewed 1648 times

I'm sorry but IMO at a small size like in the Model tree, the old icons with their thinner outlines were much clearer... Now the Clone icon is so dark and without contrast that to my eyes it looks like a dark blue spot.

[agryson]

I'm sorry but IMO at a small size like in the Model tree, the old icons with their thinner outlines were much clearer... Now the Clone icon is so dark and without contrast that to my eyes it looks like a dark blue spot.

No need to apologise, I'm the one who changed the icons!

First the solution I propose: This first pass was always intended just to get things aligned ("Project Align"), but given the quantity of icons to align, and the multiple contexts in which they can be seen, some icons are bound to slip in the short term. I can increase the internal value contrast a little on these particular icons (now that they're aligned, it is literally two clicks - before alignment it would be much longer!) - this will solve the immediate issue.

I can have something in an hour or two (that's the advantage of aligning first!).

The Problem: There are, in all of the old icons vs. the new aligned version, two competing factors.
Contrast within the icon <---> Contrast of the icon against its background
So any icon designer needs to find a balance between high internal detail and contrast on the full range of background colors - having both is effectively impossible. The old icon was detailed but did not work on all backgrounds, the new works on all backgrounds but is not as crisp. Naturally some icons will be more or less successful in this regard and will have to be redone. To ensure success in this, screenshots like yours help pinpoint the problem, in context.

After six or seven hundred icons, knowing I need to tweak twenty of them doesn't seem like much! So keep the feedback coming, I'll be doing several vulture passes in the coming weeks to ease all the icons into the different contexts.

[agryson]

There, colors tweaked:

spritesheet.png (251.42 KiB) Viewed 1641 times

20 minutes...

As you can see, on a gray background, the version updated based on your feedback suffers from a lack of contrast, but it's not too bad. Now, even here it's not finished, there's much more work to do (the merge and reflect icons still have too much detail)

I'm building a test now, but more feedback welcome before I submit a pull request.

Edit: Tests look fine, I think we've solved your issues here.