Hey,
For some time I have considered advocating for the adoption of http://test.pdfreaders.org/graphics/pdfreaders-f.svg as the MIME type icon for PDF files on systems where a free PDF reader is present. However, several people I have told about this idea have told me that the text "PDF" is too small to be of use. Thus, I could welcome some help from the Designers team.
If you would be so kind to help me out, please take a look at the attached screenshots (screen1.png is the default size on my Arch Linux + XFCE + Thunar system, probably 16x16 icon). Is the text "PDF" too small? Would you recommend going with it anyway? If not, could you please alter the linked SVG and produce an icon more suitable for the proposed use case while maintaining maximum resemblance to the current one? Please note that if a modified icon is adopted then we will most likely allow anyone to use it without no usage restrictions to identify PDF documents.
Thank you for your input.
P.S. Do not drop me from the to-line. I am not subscribed to the list.
Cheers,
The text actually *is* too small to use it that way. That is why most icons come in different varieties at different sizes, adapting to each resolution at low dimensions. (16px 24px 32px ...)
Concerning your pdf icon I don't just see the text as problematic, but also the curved lines. While you can choose to just discard the text at low resolutions the curves almost get sucked up during the scaling process.
My hint would be: large sizes - leave as it is medium sizes - remove the text small sizes - remove text and add extra thickness to the curved lines (maybe even widen the loops a bit to retain the characteristic of the curves)
maybe Tango project has some more information you're interested in: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project
Robert
On 28/01/13 13:55, Heiki "Repentinus" Ojasild wrote:
Hey,
For some time I have considered advocating for the adoption of http://test.pdfreaders.org/graphics/pdfreaders-f.svg as the MIME type icon for PDF files on systems where a free PDF reader is present. However, several people I have told about this idea have told me that the text "PDF" is too small to be of use. Thus, I could welcome some help from the Designers team.
If you would be so kind to help me out, please take a look at the attached screenshots (screen1.png is the default size on my Arch Linux
- XFCE + Thunar system, probably 16x16 icon). Is the text "PDF" too
small? Would you recommend going with it anyway? If not, could you please alter the linked SVG and produce an icon more suitable for the proposed use case while maintaining maximum resemblance to the current one? Please note that if a modified icon is adopted then we will most likely allow anyone to use it without no usage restrictions to identify PDF documents.
Thank you for your input.
P.S. Do not drop me from the to-line. I am not subscribed to the list.
Cheers,
Designers mailing list Designers@fsfeurope.org https://mail.fsfeurope.org/mailman/listinfo/designers
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Hello everyone,
repentinus@fsfe.org said:
could you please alter the linked SVG and produce an icon more suitable for the proposed use case while maintaining maximum resemblance to the current one?
mail@mray.de said:
large sizes - leave as it is medium sizes - remove the text small sizes - remove text and add extra thickness to the curved lines (maybe even widen the loops a bit to retain the characteristic of the curves)
maybe Tango project has some more information you're interested in: http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project
I would like to give it a try. I'll have a look into the Tango Project and get back to you by next week. Unless you're already in the process of creating new icons.
Regards,
Phil
Dear Philipp,
On 30 January 2013 11:06, Philipp Kammerer philipp@p3k-design.de wrote:
repentinus@fsfe.org said:
could you please alter the linked SVG and produce an icon more suitable for the proposed use case while maintaining maximum resemblance to the current one?
mail@mray.de said:
large sizes - leave as it is medium sizes - remove the text small sizes - remove text and add extra thickness to the curved lines (maybe even widen the loops a bit to retain the characteristic of the curves)
I would like to give it a try. I'll have a look into the Tango Project and get back to you by next week. Unless you're already in the process of creating new icons.
I am sure that PDFreaders.org Team would appreciate any designs you can come up with. I definitely would! Thanks a lot.
Cheers,
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Hello designers and pdfreaders.org people,
I uploaded a sort-of-draft for you to see what could be done.
http://p3k-design.de/files/pdfreaders.org-icons/
I think the green coloured spot works nicely. But it probably won't fit into any existing theme. Well. I don't really know how to proceed from here. For me the icons work. But in this matter I'm rather frugal and happy to see a different icon every now and then.
What do you say Robert?
Would you want them to be proposed to the Tango! icon theme? They're missing a default application/pdf icon...
Well. I hope this is remotely what you anticipated. Any feedback is highly appreciated.
Kind regards,
Phil
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Hi there,
I updated the pngs for sizes 32px and 48px. I also added an alternate way of installing. But any vigilant user might get this by themselves.
So I aligned the borders and lines to the pixelgrid as good as possible. But the text "PDF" doesn't quite fit. So the text gets rendered a little unsharp. In order to have a crispy text I would need to alter the font for it to fit into the pixelgrid.
So; for size 32px the png looks still a little unsharp. Better results delivers the according svg.
If it is okay for you to alter the font a little bit, I can give it a try and see how much sharper the text gets when rendered to png.
Kind regards,
Phil
* Philipp Kammerer philipp@p3k-design.de [2013-02-17 13:31:59 +0100]:
If it is okay for you to alter the font a little bit, I can give it a try and see how much sharper the text gets when rendered to png.
From my side it would be ok for the icons, to change the font a bit.
Thanks a lot! Matthias
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Good day again,
On 18/02/13 11:24, Matthias Kirschner notierte:
From my side it would be ok for the icons, to change the font a bit.
I played around with the font a little bit and my conclusion is: Rendering pixel fonts at such a low resolution is just a pain.
So I uploaded a few new things to
https://p3k-design.de/files/pdfreaders.org-icons/
- Two compressed archives. One with pngs (slightly altered font). Another one with svgs (font as it was)
- All the files from the archives, so you don't need to download a whole archive when you only want to look at one file.
- A compressed archives which contains the sourcefiles of altered font
I tried using the svgs instead and they work significantly better than the pngs. They just look sharper, regardless of how much I try to align the characters to the grid.
So regarding the state of this all: The svg version is about as best as it gets. The png version still looks dull. My advice is: Fonts should only be used on big icons (48 px and more).
How do you want to proceed?
Leave it as it is at the moment (perhaps some minor modifications)? Remove the text from all icons smaller than 48 px? Try a completely different approach? (Perhaps no text at all?)
Ideas and thoughts?
Kind regards,
Phil
Dear Philipp,
On 8 March 2013 12:06, Philipp Kammerer philipp@p3k-design.de wrote:
I played around with the font a little bit and my conclusion is: Rendering pixel fonts at such a low resolution is just a pain.
It is possible that the original icon uses a vector font because the letters "PDF" seem to scale better with that one.
I tried using the svgs instead and they work significantly better than the pngs. They just look sharper, regardless of how much I try to align the characters to the grid.
The SVGs look very good. My personal favourite is still 48x48, and it also scales very well for me at 32x32 except there is no white margin on the right-hand side of the text at that resolution. The text is still useful so I will personally stick with 48-SVG for 32 for time being. For lower resolutions I used the other SVGs you provided and I love them.
However, I think we should show them off on screenshots from a file manager – they do not look as impressive in the browser where rest of the page is white.
Can you write a short installation script and add it to the packages? The theme can be reloaded by calling "xdg-icon-resource forceupdate". A LICENCE file licensing them either under CC0 or releasing them into public domain would also be immensely useful.
Unless Hannes objects, we should add them to the PDFreaders.org graphics section and write to the developers of some free readers asking them whether they would be interested in distributing the icons.
Thank you.
Cheers,
