Icons, logos, Tango, consistency, the user experience, and our project looks like a 2D champaign flute
A user submitted a bug report to launchpad complaining that the Wine icon is not Tango compliant: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wine/+bug/358645
So, what is Tango Compliance? Well, the Tango icons all use a set of design standards, and you can find them here: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
In short, it means the Wine icon looks very out of place when it is placed alongside all the other Tango-compliant icons on the system. If you click the Applications button on an Ubuntu system, for instance, you'll see 7 three dimensional, front perspective, on the table, lit from above, well-bordered and highlighted icons. At the bottom you see a two dimensional, heavily tilted underneath perspective, hovering in midair, lit from the lower right, thick-bordered Wine icon.
In short, it's ugly, but our real goal here is usability. Making Wine blend in is part of that, however it's also important we deliver a consistent experience: as ugly as it is, I thought, that icon is our project's logo, so we should use the same image throughout.
But then, I realized, we don't use the same logo consistently! If you go to winehq.org you'll see another logo, which fits in with the website theme very well but is nevertheless quite different from the Tango icons. From a user's perspective, changing the Wine icon on the system can present a very slight familiarity issue: you're jarred for a second while you realize that the old Wine icon is gone and the new icon (helpfully next to the familiar words Wine) is actually the same program.
This is the main place where the user sees the Wine icon, as we don't yet display it on other areas where they may be interacting with Wine (eg, by placing a small Wine icon next to the program icon as in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ideatorrent/idea/2141). Accordingly, a change here will be narrow, and if we make it now (before the icon needs to be used elsewhere) there is a minimal amount of familiarity loss.
A new icon makes a program feel new, so the user will expect some change. Accordingly, I'd like to propose updating our icons when we move forward with the 1.2 release. This will coincide with the inclusion of several of the Wine integration projects I'll be including in the coming months, such that the user will see it all (with a new, consistant icon) in one big package in the October wave of distro releases like Ubuntu 9.10.
So, what should that new icon be? Well, tango compliance is one major goal, as is recognizability as a Wine glass. Fortunately, someone has already made a Tango-compliant Wine logo here: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/tango-artists/attachments/20060331/631...
Now, if you're like me, the second you saw that you went "Whoa, that doesn't look like the Wine icon! It looks completely different!" The glass on the website, for instance, is much more narrow: http://winehq.org/images/winehq_logo_glass_sm.png
Now, I'm not a drinker, but I do know that real wine people can be very, very picky about these kind of things. After giving the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_glass) and a few other websites a full read, I can categorically state one thing: we're using the wrong glass for red wine.
Now, whether the icon we use should be the right kind of glass or not is an aesthetic choice. Personally I'd use a red wine glass but one with a slightly narrower bowl than in the tango icon above (a "Bordeaux" glass rather than a "Burgundy" glass) http://www.the-gift-of-wine.com/Images/glass_bordeaux.jpg http://www.the-gift-of-wine.com/Images/glass_burgundy.jpg
Anyway, I suspect most of you really really won't care, as long as it looks something like a wine glass and has the words Wine next to it. But I did want to start a discussion, especially because this represents our projects logo and is, to a real extent, more than just an icon.
Meanwhile, I'll try drumming up some artists to see if I can get a few different Tango-compliant icons for us to chose from.
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
I mentioned this issue before - and I agree. Personally I'm interested in good integration across the whole of Wine - this includes for example the icons which appear in the file dialogs. ReactOS have adopted Tango to great effect.
The downside is that there's really no way of making Wine's icons theme responsive because they have to be compiled in to the various dlls as resources. Nonetheless, I would still be interested in participating in an effort to standardise Wine on Tango, because as a standard, Tango is meant to satisfy useful usability criterea. The outlines are designed so that contrast is retained on both light and dark backgrounds, and the style guidelines are an attempt to make the icons look good on Gnome, KDE, Xfce, MacOS (and Windows - though that doesn't apply to this project) all at the same time.
Personally I'm not bothered by the shape of the Tango glass, but we could make it more slender easily enough. I'm sure people on the Tango project would be very excited to contribute patches if they thought they'd be well received - and I think they'd make a very good job of it.
Joel
On Thu, 2009-04-16 at 13:55 -0700, Scott Ritchie wrote:
A user submitted a bug report to launchpad complaining that the Wine icon is not Tango compliant: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wine/+bug/358645
So, what is Tango Compliance? Well, the Tango icons all use a set of design standards, and you can find them here: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
In short, it means the Wine icon looks very out of place when it is placed alongside all the other Tango-compliant icons on the system. If you click the Applications button on an Ubuntu system, for instance, you'll see 7 three dimensional, front perspective, on the table, lit from above, well-bordered and highlighted icons. At the bottom you see a two dimensional, heavily tilted underneath perspective, hovering in midair, lit from the lower right, thick-bordered Wine icon.
In short, it's ugly, but our real goal here is usability. Making Wine blend in is part of that, however it's also important we deliver a consistent experience: as ugly as it is, I thought, that icon is our project's logo, so we should use the same image throughout.
But then, I realized, we don't use the same logo consistently! If you go to winehq.org you'll see another logo, which fits in with the website theme very well but is nevertheless quite different from the Tango icons. From a user's perspective, changing the Wine icon on the system can present a very slight familiarity issue: you're jarred for a second while you realize that the old Wine icon is gone and the new icon (helpfully next to the familiar words Wine) is actually the same program.
This is the main place where the user sees the Wine icon, as we don't yet display it on other areas where they may be interacting with Wine (eg, by placing a small Wine icon next to the program icon as in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ideatorrent/idea/2141). Accordingly, a change here will be narrow, and if we make it now (before the icon needs to be used elsewhere) there is a minimal amount of familiarity loss.
A new icon makes a program feel new, so the user will expect some change. Accordingly, I'd like to propose updating our icons when we move forward with the 1.2 release. This will coincide with the inclusion of several of the Wine integration projects I'll be including in the coming months, such that the user will see it all (with a new, consistant icon) in one big package in the October wave of distro releases like Ubuntu 9.10.
So, what should that new icon be? Well, tango compliance is one major goal, as is recognizability as a Wine glass. Fortunately, someone has already made a Tango-compliant Wine logo here: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/tango-artists/attachments/20060331/631...
Now, if you're like me, the second you saw that you went "Whoa, that doesn't look like the Wine icon! It looks completely different!" The glass on the website, for instance, is much more narrow: http://winehq.org/images/winehq_logo_glass_sm.png
Now, I'm not a drinker, but I do know that real wine people can be very, very picky about these kind of things. After giving the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_glass) and a few other websites a full read, I can categorically state one thing: we're using the wrong glass for red wine.
Now, whether the icon we use should be the right kind of glass or not is an aesthetic choice. Personally I'd use a red wine glass but one with a slightly narrower bowl than in the tango icon above (a "Bordeaux" glass rather than a "Burgundy" glass) http://www.the-gift-of-wine.com/Images/glass_bordeaux.jpg http://www.the-gift-of-wine.com/Images/glass_burgundy.jpg
Anyway, I suspect most of you really really won't care, as long as it looks something like a wine glass and has the words Wine next to it. But I did want to start a discussion, especially because this represents our projects logo and is, to a real extent, more than just an icon.
Meanwhile, I'll try drumming up some artists to see if I can get a few different Tango-compliant icons for us to chose from.
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
2009/4/17 Scott Ritchie scott@open-vote.org:
A user submitted a bug report to launchpad complaining that the Wine icon is not Tango compliant: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wine/+bug/358645
So, what is Tango Compliance? Well, the Tango icons all use a set of design standards, and you can find them here: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Icon_Theme_Guidelines
In short, it means the Wine icon looks very out of place when it is placed alongside all the other Tango-compliant icons on the system. If you click the Applications button on an Ubuntu system, for instance, you'll see 7 three dimensional, front perspective, on the table, lit from above, well-bordered and highlighted icons. At the bottom you see a two dimensional, heavily tilted underneath perspective, hovering in midair, lit from the lower right, thick-bordered Wine icon.
In short, it's ugly, but our real goal here is usability. Making Wine blend in is part of that, however it's also important we deliver a consistent experience: as ugly as it is, I thought, that icon is our project's logo, so we should use the same image throughout.
But then, I realized, we don't use the same logo consistently! If you go to winehq.org you'll see another logo, which fits in with the website theme very well but is nevertheless quite different from the Tango icons. From a user's perspective, changing the Wine icon on the system can present a very slight familiarity issue: you're jarred for a second while you realize that the old Wine icon is gone and the new icon (helpfully next to the familiar words Wine) is actually the same program.
This is the main place where the user sees the Wine icon, as we don't yet display it on other areas where they may be interacting with Wine (eg, by placing a small Wine icon next to the program icon as in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/ideatorrent/idea/2141). Accordingly, a change here will be narrow, and if we make it now (before the icon needs to be used elsewhere) there is a minimal amount of familiarity loss.
A new icon makes a program feel new, so the user will expect some change. Accordingly, I'd like to propose updating our icons when we move forward with the 1.2 release. This will coincide with the inclusion of several of the Wine integration projects I'll be including in the coming months, such that the user will see it all (with a new, consistant icon) in one big package in the October wave of distro releases like Ubuntu 9.10.
So, what should that new icon be? Well, tango compliance is one major goal, as is recognizability as a Wine glass. Fortunately, someone has already made a Tango-compliant Wine logo here: http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/tango-artists/attachments/20060331/631...
Now, if you're like me, the second you saw that you went "Whoa, that doesn't look like the Wine icon! It looks completely different!" The glass on the website, for instance, is much more narrow: http://winehq.org/images/winehq_logo_glass_sm.png
Now, I'm not a drinker, but I do know that real wine people can be very, very picky about these kind of things. After giving the wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wine_glass) and a few other websites a full read, I can categorically state one thing: we're using the wrong glass for red wine.
Now, whether the icon we use should be the right kind of glass or not is an aesthetic choice. Personally I'd use a red wine glass but one with a slightly narrower bowl than in the tango icon above (a "Bordeaux" glass rather than a "Burgundy" glass) http://www.the-gift-of-wine.com/Images/glass_bordeaux.jpg http://www.the-gift-of-wine.com/Images/glass_burgundy.jpg
Anyway, I suspect most of you really really won't care, as long as it looks something like a wine glass and has the words Wine next to it. But I did want to start a discussion, especially because this represents our projects logo and is, to a real extent, more than just an icon.
Meanwhile, I'll try drumming up some artists to see if I can get a few different Tango-compliant icons for us to chose from.
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
Seems like a lot of fuss over a few trivial details: 1) The Wine system icon is ugly (I'm all in favour of changing it, but you make a BIG fuss over it) 2) If the icon is changed, it should be done in time for Ubuntu 9.10. (I have BIG issue with this. Wine is not exclusive to Ubuntu and Ubuntu should be given no additional thought time over any other distribution when making decisions.) 3) The glass is the wrong shape. Is it really THAT important? If anything it makes Wine distinguishable from the beverage. Do we get any outraged wine enthusiasts posting on wine-users or the forum telling us that we use the wrong glass in our logos?
My final qualm about all of this: Isn't Tango an icon theme, and by going to a "Tango-compliant" icon, aren't we snubbing every other icon theme out there (in particular Crystal-SVG, or whatever it's called, the preferred theme on KDE)? We should not tie ourselves down to something that is only "preferred" on some systems (i.e. Gnome in this case).
On Fri, Apr 17, 2009 at 2:19 AM, Ben Klein shacklein@gmail.com wrote:
Seems like a lot of fuss over a few trivial details:
- The Wine system icon is ugly (I'm all in favour of changing it, but
you make a BIG fuss over it) 2) If the icon is changed, it should be done in time for Ubuntu 9.10. (I have BIG issue with this. Wine is not exclusive to Ubuntu and Ubuntu should be given no additional thought time over any other distribution when making decisions.) 3) The glass is the wrong shape. Is it really THAT important? If anything it makes Wine distinguishable from the beverage. Do we get any outraged wine enthusiasts posting on wine-users or the forum telling us that we use the wrong glass in our logos?
There's no fuss. Just a call for discussion. If you need new icons, you might as well make some plans about the time frame, and discuss details like the actual icon development. Since Ubuntu is a big user of Wine, it makes sense to cater to that user. Also keep in mind that Fedora and OpenSuse have releases around that time too. It seems that the distributions are indeed converging to similar release dates, which Mark Shuttleworth called for.
My final qualm about all of this: Isn't Tango an icon theme, and by going to a "Tango-compliant" icon, aren't we snubbing every other icon theme out there (in particular Crystal-SVG, or whatever it's called, the preferred theme on KDE)? We should not tie ourselves down to something that is only "preferred" on some systems (i.e. Gnome in this case).
Tango is not one theme, but a set of guidelines to make icons "fit in" with major desktops such as Windows, Gnome, KDE, Mac OS X. I think it was born out of Mozilla's Firefox icons that needed to fit in with all those platforms. The Tango theme is one such example theme. But there are others, such as Tangerine, Human, Foxtrot, Mist. Wine's icon would not be part of any tango theme. It would just be a tango icon.
The new KDE icon guidelines are called Oxygen. It's like the Tango guidelines, with a few differences. The old Crystal icon theme is a theme, while consistent, without guidelines. It's just a theme.
Remco
On Thursday 16 April 2009 20:19, Ben Klein wrote:
2009/4/17 Scott Ritchie scott@open-vote.org:
A user submitted a bug report to launchpad complaining that the Wine icon is not Tango compliant: [...]
In short, it means the Wine icon looks very out of place [...]
In short, it's ugly, but our real goal here is usability. [...]
-1
Consistency != Usability
Sure, it might look out-of-place, but Windows applications are somewhat out-of-place on Linux. It's very ugliness probably makes it easier to find. If the default icon is changed, current users will have more trouble finding it again.
Seems like a lot of fuss over a few trivial details:
- The Wine system icon is ugly (I'm all in favour of changing it, but
you make a BIG fuss over it) 2) If the icon is changed, it should be done in time for Ubuntu 9.10. (I have BIG issue with this. Wine is not exclusive to Ubuntu [...]
Not sure about this. If someone is planning a major release, it's nice to get little things in place for it, especially a "branding" item like this.
- The glass is the wrong shape. Is it really THAT important? If
anything it makes Wine distinguishable from the beverage. Do we get any outraged wine enthusiasts posting on wine-users or the forum telling us that we use the wrong glass in our logos?
Agreed.
2009/4/17 David Lee Lambert davidl@lmert.com:
On Thursday 16 April 2009 20:19, Ben Klein wrote:
2009/4/17 Scott Ritchie scott@open-vote.org:
A user submitted a bug report to launchpad complaining that the Wine icon is not Tango compliant: [...]
In short, it means the Wine icon looks very out of place [...]
In short, it's ugly, but our real goal here is usability. [...]
-1
Consistency != Usability
I completely disagree.
Consistency in icons gives the user a visual clue as to what something does. For example, the configuration icon. Having the Wine-specific icons be consistent with Tango means that they are easier to locate (i.e. you don't have to read it - you can "see" it).
[off topic] Windows has design guidelines for how to position controls on dialogs. These guidelines also cover things like the shortcuts to use for specific actions (like file open). This can impact usability -- Lotus notes uses F5 (refresh) to log the user out; this is *really* annoying and counter-productive, because it is not consistent with Windows.
The things like using the correct system colours are there for people who use different colour schemes (especially people using the High Contrast colour schemes). The Haskell Hugs program does not do this for Window text, meaning that if you have a black window background, you cannot see the text! [/off topic]
Sure, it might look out-of-place, but Windows applications are somewhat out-of-place on Linux. It's very ugliness probably makes it easier to find. If the default icon is changed, current users will have more trouble finding it again.
So are Mac applications like iTunes running on Windows or Linux. There are things that we can do to improve the bits that Wine has control over. For applications that conform to the Windows guidelines, it should be possible to give the best experience to the user that we can.
Yes, I know that Windows is inconsistent with itself, and that Microsoft products like Office and Windows Media Player don't fit in either, but that's not the point. Look at Firefox 2 vs 3 running on Linux+Gtk (or Mac, or Windows XP or Vista).
As for the default icon changing -- it is not like the icon for Wine itself is changing *that* much -- it is still recognisable. As for the others, I see them as an improvement (no offense to André Hentschel): they look professional and are high-quality. They are not moving from their location in the menu, they are not changing their menu name.
Seems like a lot of fuss over a few trivial details:
- The Wine system icon is ugly (I'm all in favour of changing it, but
you make a BIG fuss over it) 2) If the icon is changed, it should be done in time for Ubuntu 9.10. (I have BIG issue with this. Wine is not exclusive to Ubuntu [...]
Not sure about this. If someone is planning a major release, it's nice to get little things in place for it, especially a "branding" item like this.
Sure, Wine is not exclusively run by Ubuntu. That does not matter -- Gnome/Tango are used in a lot more distros than just Ubuntu. I for one applaud their contribution. Yes, they may not be making many contributions to the kernel code, but they are actively working on improving the look and usability of downstream components. This is Ubuntu's focus, so if they are willing to get designers and graphical artists to improve the visuals, then let's welcome them.
There is the question of how this should work with other frameworks and OSs -- KDE/Oxygen, Mac/Cocoa, Enlightenment and others. The same applies to theming support.
It may be necessary to have projects separate from Wine that allow them to hook into the native theming logic and provide the icons and other visuals/branding. This would allow wine-kde to use the Qt API and wine-cocoa to use the Objective-C API. Wine would provide a default look that is more Windows-like (using freedesktop.org standards wherever possible). Not sure how workable this is at the moment.
- Reece
2009/4/17 David Lee Lambert davidl@lmert.com:
Sure, it might look out-of-place, but Windows applications are somewhat out-of-place on Linux. It's very ugliness probably makes it easier to find.
The problem is, IMHO, that lately windows applications have got pretty nice icons. But wine icon looks more "windows 95"-style. It looks outdated, not modern. Thus wine icon produces pitiful expression.
If the default icon is changed, current users will have more trouble finding it again.
No problem with new users. And with old users it will be only one-time issue. Also, if new wine icon will be distinguishable enough, this won't be of any problem.
Also, current wine icon has some technical problems, at least in kde: it's png version has non-transparent shadow, so, on darker backgrounds you can see white outline around it's shadow.
Scott Ritchie wrote:
Meanwhile, I'll try drumming up some artists to see if I can get a few different Tango-compliant icons for us to chose from.
Apparently my work has already been done! There are some beautiful icons originally made for Ubuntu Studio that have give me everything I asked (tango-compliance and not looking too fat).
Ubuntu users can install the ubuntustudio-icon-theme package and look inside /usr/share/icons/UbuntuStudio/scalable/apps for the icons. There are 5 of them: wine.svg, wine-notepad.svg, wine-winecfg.svg, wine-uninstaller.svg, and wine-winefile.svg
If you're not on Ubuntu you can download the package and open it up like it were a tar file: http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/ubuntustudio-icon-theme
I've mirrored the icons here: http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-notepad.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-winecfg.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-winefile.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-uninstaller.svg
Any comment on these?
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
2009/4/17 Scott Ritchie scott@open-vote.org:
Oh, that's nice!
Pity it's not tilted - I think of the Wine logo as being tilted. I assume there's something in the Tango guidelines against that?
- d.
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Scott Ritchie scott@open-vote.org wrote:
Scott Ritchie wrote:
Meanwhile, I'll try drumming up some artists to see if I can get a few different Tango-compliant icons for us to chose from.
Apparently my work has already been done! There are some beautiful icons originally made for Ubuntu Studio that have give me everything I asked (tango-compliance and not looking too fat).
Ubuntu users can install the ubuntustudio-icon-theme package and look inside /usr/share/icons/UbuntuStudio/scalable/apps for the icons. There are 5 of them: wine.svg, wine-notepad.svg, wine-winecfg.svg, wine-uninstaller.svg, and wine-winefile.svg
If you're not on Ubuntu you can download the package and open it up like it were a tar file: http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/ubuntustudio-icon-theme
I've mirrored the icons here: http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-notepad.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-winecfg.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-winefile.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-uninstaller.svg
Any comment on these?
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
I may be being a bit too picky here, but shouldn't the Winefile icon use an icon similar to the Windows File Manager? Like the cabinet icon used for Nautilus? Also, perhaps Wine apps should automatically get the Wine icon emblem set to them when they are installed and icons converted into Linux .desktop launchers.
2009/4/18 King InuYasha ngompa13@gmail.com:
On Thu, Apr 16, 2009 at 9:24 PM, Scott Ritchie scott@open-vote.org wrote:
Scott Ritchie wrote:
Meanwhile, I'll try drumming up some artists to see if I can get a few different Tango-compliant icons for us to chose from.
Apparently my work has already been done! There are some beautiful icons originally made for Ubuntu Studio that have give me everything I asked (tango-compliance and not looking too fat).
Ubuntu users can install the ubuntustudio-icon-theme package and look inside /usr/share/icons/UbuntuStudio/scalable/apps for the icons. There are 5 of them: wine.svg, wine-notepad.svg, wine-winecfg.svg, wine-uninstaller.svg, and wine-winefile.svg
If you're not on Ubuntu you can download the package and open it up like it were a tar file: http://packages.ubuntu.com/jaunty/ubuntustudio-icon-theme
I've mirrored the icons here: http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-notepad.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-winecfg.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-winefile.svg http://yokozar.org/blog/content/icons/wine-uninstaller.svg
Any comment on these?
Thanks, Scott Ritchie
I may be being a bit too picky here, but shouldn't the Winefile icon use an icon similar to the Windows File Manager? Like the cabinet icon used for Nautilus? Also, perhaps Wine apps should automatically get the Wine icon emblem set to them when they are installed and icons converted into Linux .desktop launchers.
That's what it already has. It looks like File Manager on an old Windows system. The argument is, to make it integrate better into the host system, that it needs icons that look more host-system-ish. And I agree, though my favourite colour is blue, so maybe I'm biased :)
2009/4/18 André Hentschel nerv@dawncrow.de:
Hi, thanks for your work, its great. i just patch my wine with it ;) The only negativ point would be the color for me. i rather would see it in "Windowsyellow" just to keep a bit of the look and feel.
Making the icon(s) configurable would be a bonus.
2009/4/18 Reece Dunn msclrhd@googlemail.com:
Yeah, AlphaBlending is not supported (hence the diagonals look jagged) -- theming is also affected.
NOTE: I have seen this happen on other Windows apps running on Windows. You need to have the image support an alpha channel - which I'm not sure icons do. I'm not sure of the API calls that are required, though, so it may require some changes to the static control support to render the bitmaps using alpha (in addition to keyed) transparency.
I believe *some* versions of the ANI/CUR/ICO formats support alpha channels, but I couldn't tell you where to look. Out of interest, what format do Vista/Windows 7 icons use, and do they support alpha channels? (I seem to recall some transparency effects on Vista icons, could be wrong).
2009/4/18 Ben Klein shacklein@gmail.com:
2009/4/18 Reece Dunn msclrhd@googlemail.com:
Yeah, AlphaBlending is not supported (hence the diagonals look jagged) -- theming is also affected.
NOTE: I have seen this happen on other Windows apps running on Windows. You need to have the image support an alpha channel - which I'm not sure icons do. I'm not sure of the API calls that are required, though, so it may require some changes to the static control support to render the bitmaps using alpha (in addition to keyed) transparency.
I believe *some* versions of the ANI/CUR/ICO formats support alpha channels, but I couldn't tell you where to look. Out of interest, what format do Vista/Windows 7 icons use, and do they support alpha channels? (I seem to recall some transparency effects on Vista icons, could be wrong).
From: http://www.telegraphics.com.au/svn/icoformat/trunk/dist/README.html "The ICO format has an inherent 1 bit transparency mask (0 = opaque, 1 = transparent), called the AND bitmap." which is the older format icon. and: "In PNG (Vista) format icons, the alpha channel is simply stored as part of the PNG. There is no separate mask."
http://www.rw-designer.com/windows-xp-icon http://www.rw-designer.com/vista-icon
According to these, you can store the images as PNG in Vista instead of BMP+mask, allowing you to preserve the alpha channel. Vista also supports 256x256 icon images (according to the information above).
http://www.axialis.com/tutorials/tutorial-vistaicons.html http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511280.aspx
Have some more information. From the MDSN article, it appears that toolbar images (and other images stored in image lists?) only support a 1-bit alpha mask.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc546571.aspx
Has information on the new format. Note that PNG can be used in place of DIB image data.
It shouldn't be too difficult to use something like libpng to handle the images and produce a bitmap from it. This would need support on the resource compiler side as well.
IIRC, Wine *does* support AlphaBlending, but it is very slow.
- Reece
From: http://www.telegraphics.com.au/svn/icoformat/trunk/dist/README.html "The ICO format has an inherent 1 bit transparency mask (0 = opaque, 1 = transparent), called the AND bitmap." which is the older format icon. and: "In PNG (Vista) format icons, the alpha channel is simply stored as part of the PNG. There is no separate mask."
http://www.rw-designer.com/windows-xp-icon http://www.rw-designer.com/vista-icon
According to these, you can store the images as PNG in Vista instead of BMP+mask, allowing you to preserve the alpha channel. Vista also supports 256x256 icon images (according to the information above).
http://www.axialis.com/tutorials/tutorial-vistaicons.html http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa511280.aspx
Have some more information. From the MDSN article, it appears that toolbar images (and other images stored in image lists?) only support a 1-bit alpha mask.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/cc546571.aspx
Has information on the new format. Note that PNG can be used in place of DIB image data.
It shouldn't be too difficult to use something like libpng to handle the images and produce a bitmap from it. This would need support on the resource compiler side as well.
IIRC, Wine *does* support AlphaBlending, but it is very slow.
- Reece
AFAIK - Windows has supported icon transparency since XP - or even before. In the case of XP, transparency was supported simply through 32-bit bitmaps, which is what I've used in my patch.
This works fine in XP, and you can see it in action, because many icons have subtle drop-shadows and the like. I believe in that case, the transparency mask would be unused, or maybe be set as a simple transparency = (alpha==0) value by the authoring app as an attempt at backward compatibility.
32-bit uncompressed (or RLE) works fine for small icons - even up to 48x48, but these days high resolution is becoming more and more common, and we're seeing icons containing images up to as large as 256x256px. But in 32-bit uncompressed that's a quater megabyte, which is enough to make most engineers wince, hence the introduction of PNG!
Making the icon(s) configurable would be a bonus.
Yes I'm not this will be possible in the first instance, because icons have to be compiled into the DLL resources at compile time. In the long run, it might be possible for some of our dialogs to use theme icons instead, but we'll still need a no-theme fallback of some kind. Also, the end result will likely be a mixed because even if our dialogs use themes, app code will often still load icons by parsing DLL resources, which can't be dynamic.
2009/4/18 Joel Holdsworth joel@airwebreathe.org.uk:
Yes I'm not this will be possible in the first instance, because icons have to be compiled into the DLL resources at compile time. In the long run, it might be possible for some of our dialogs to use theme icons instead, but we'll still need a no-theme fallback of some kind. Also, the end result will likely be a mixed because even if our dialogs use themes, app code will often still load icons by parsing DLL resources, which can't be dynamic.
Maybe some kind of configurable "icon override" or even "iconset override" values stored in wine registry? Specify there dll, icon id and path to override icon. However it might get complicated...
On Sat, Apr 18, 2009 at 8:50 PM, Joel Holdsworth joel@airwebreathe.org.uk wrote:
Making the icon(s) configurable would be a bonus.
Yes I'm not this will be possible in the first instance, because icons have to be compiled into the DLL resources at compile time. In the long run, it might be possible for some of our dialogs to use theme icons instead, but we'll still need a no-theme fallback of some kind. Also, the end result will likely be a mixed because even if our dialogs use themes, app code will often still load icons by parsing DLL resources, which can't be dynamic.
Making the icon(s) configurable is not that hard but it should be done the Windows way. Windows XP has one set of stock icons compiled into the shell / commond dialog dlls or so but all (?) icons can be overridden by theme files (.msstyles). That's the way it should work on Wine as well. I would prefer to have the Tango icons be the stock icons.
Roderick
I've just heard some good news on the Tango list. The Tango icons are now public domain, which makes using them a much easier proposition.
I might see if I can improve the state of the shell32 icons at some stage.
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Ben Klein -
David Gerard -
David Lee Lambert -
Igor Tarasov -
Joel Holdsworth -
King InuYasha -
Reece Dunn -
Remco -
Roderick Colenbrander -
Scott Ritchie