Bug 369614

Summary:	Inkscape Icons are hard to distinguish and break common standards
Product:	[Plasma] Breeze	Reporter:	unfa <unfa00>
Component:	Icons	Assignee:	visual-design
Status:	RESOLVED INTENTIONAL
Severity:	normal	CC:	kainz.a
Priority:	NOR	Keywords:	usability
Version First Reported In:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Mint (Ubuntu based)
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description unfa 2016-10-01 17:18:18 UTC

I'm using Mint 18 KDE 5 64-bit.

1. The Color Picker icon resembles a Blur Tool icon from GIMP - why break the convention of using an eyedropper symbol?

2. Layer stack - layer visibility icon - the standard for this is an open/closed eye symbol. The current icon represents stack of layers, and become crossed over when a layer is hidden - please get back to eye symbol.

3. Spiral tool icon - it has a strange double edged path drawn there? Why not a single-edged but maybe a wider stroke instead?

4. Path corners and endings icons - again, the double-edge of the drawn curvers make it unreadable, also the knee is very small, I can hardly see any difference between the corner type icons. The differences are hardly visible.

5. Bounding box snapping modes icons - they are readable, but also the differences are minute and very hard to notice at first glance. The green square is so tiny and the color blends with the bright background making it difficult to spot. (that's also a problem I have with Synaptic icons used for package state (Installed/Updatable/Install/Update/Remove etc. - they differ so slightly I need to stare for 2 seconds each time to know if a package is already installed or not.)

I have many years of experience working with Inkscape and it's an essential part of my daily job but this icon set makes me feel like I'm just making my first steps. The usability was sacrificed for aesthetics in my opinion, and my productivity is badly reduced because I can't recognize the tools and buttons that were always there.

For example GIMP installed and is using it's own icon set - and I have no problem with that. But I can't force Inkscape to fall back to the default icon set and that's really frustrating, especially when some tools have been given icons that break standards so baldy like the eyedropper replaced with an ink droplet. I know it looks cool, but it makes me work 5 times slower.

Reproducible: Always

Actual Results:
An experienced user feels lost in the Inkscape GUI, becasue of the new icon set, not resembling the standard set.

Expected Results:
The Inkscape icons may be stylized t fit the overall system theme, but without altering them beyond recognition.

Comment 1 andreas 2016-10-01 18:22:36 UTC

5. Bounding box snapping modes icons
I NEVER, NEVER understood the bounding box icons from inkscape. As I have some years of experience in AutoCAD I had a look at there icons.

I will have a look at your sugestions, thanks for reporting.

Comment 2 unfa 2016-10-04 15:00:08 UTC

(In reply to andreas from comment #1)
> 5. Bounding box snapping modes icons
> I NEVER, NEVER understood the bounding box icons from inkscape. As I have
> some years of experience in AutoCAD I had a look at there icons.

I understand this, but I for example learned these icons, knowing no AutoCad and the change is difficult for me to see what is what. Maybe more poeple can relate to that.

I have more suggestions:

The Add/Remove path node icons are totally different. I'd make them identical, but give one a green + symbol and the other one a red - (minus) symbol.

Comment 3 andreas 2016-12-25 22:42:30 UTC

as I didn't get any additional informations from other users I'd like to remove this bug report.

Comment 4 andreas 2016-12-25 22:42:54 UTC

I mean close not remove.