Re: GUI without X11 / Artist Help

[Olivier Migeot]

Le Mardi 8 Février 2005 21:17, jesse@jesseross.com a écrit :

> As another direction (and maybe this is going too far or me being more of
> a designer than a programmer), but would it be possible to do PNG/JPG
> mockups of what we'd like to see as the future direction of the GUI (per
> the competition I mentioned earlier), pull the best features and ideas,
> and use that as the template for building the components we would need?

Doing mockups before the actual thing is, IMHO, really important indeed. Now 
that we're talking about GNUstep look, I'd like to put a few things...

As some of us stated before, there are some people that enjoy the current 
GNUstep look. And there are people wanting things to change. It's very 
unlikely that one group will manage to convince the other. So I think there 
should be (at least) two themes bundled with GNUstep:

* the nextish look we all now. But I don't think it should be the default one, 
it should be more something like a "tribute to NeXT" theme.
* some new one. And I think some discussion (and mockups, and maybe even a 
design contest) is highly needed for this to succeed. So I'll try to throw 
some raw ideas, do what you want with it:

First, I think we should clearly define what is covered by a "theme". IMHO, it 
should at least describe controls, titlebars, menus and font. Probably icons, 
too.

Then, if we want to bring a "NEWstep" (bad pun intended) theme, we should 
brought up some "visual identity" for GNUstep, i.e. some things that would 
unlikely change even if we decide to change the default theme. The goal is 
that someone seeing GNUstep on a friend's computer or - even better - in a 
movie (let's dream a bit, will ya?) could recognize it quickly and tell "hey, 
I know that thing, it's GNUstep, it's so cool, ...". It's more or less like a 
brand.

Some exemple of a "visual identity", according to my personal taste, so you're 
all free to think it's crap:

* Grey is important. I know "outside" people are criticizing the grey touch a 
lot, but I think it's the first thing you notice about it. "Hey, that thing 
is  ... grey, isn't it?". Most of modern computer GUIs are using white 
things, so it would be a nice way to "think different". And keeping grey 
controls would allow us to make icons more important, by making them much 
more colourful.

* The controls are maybe a bit too square, but maybe we shouldn't make them 
round like an Apple. There should be some compromise.

* Different kinds of fonts may be used, like in a typed text: "sans serif" 
fonts for captions, "serif" ones for longer text, and fixed weight one for 
console text (for example).

Those were just examples, but I really think we should build some set of rules 
like this.

Just a last word about the fonts: I think a theme should be bound to a set of 
font. The Vera set may be the best fit, since it high quality and opensource 
compliant. But I'm not sure whether it's providing asian character sets, 
which can be a problem for a "default" font.

Well, good night all.

-- 
Olivier Migeot