Re: FVWM: Icons / Icon Colors (was Re: Splitting the Fvwm Package)

From: Charles Hines <>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 1996 12:08:47 -0400

>>>>> "eli" == e <eli> writes:

ch> Also, I'm contemplating pulling out a lot of the icons into a separate
ch> tar file, and leaving just some "essential" ones (which would be the
ch> only ones that the sample rc file would use). I might do the same

>> I don't think that it's worth the effort. A zipped tar file of 600
>> kB is not very large nowadays. Many other freeware packages suffer

eli> This brings up several points I wanted to discuss. First of all,
eli> the icons subdirectory is a real mish-mash of pixmaps. k.xpm and k2.xpm
eli> are two PICTURES of somebody's kid. Not exactly useful as icons.

Those are pictures of Rob Nation's child. One (k2) used to be used
for FvwmBanner. They are not useful as icons, no, but I haven't had
the heart to remove them. Perhaps now is the time.

eli> Also, there are a number of duplicate icons (rbomb, bomb; rterm,
eli> xterm) and xpms that I don't think should be in there
eli> (doom*,xboing,xjewel,etc).

The dups should probably be cleaned up, yes, and some of those others
removed. I've been thinking about doing this for some time, just
haven't bothered yet.

eli> I'm in the midst of integrating all of the semi-useful icons from
eli> the fvwm distribution with my own collection, which is currently broken up
eli> into 5 directories: mini, small, medium, large, and misc. mini has all the
eli> 14x14 xpms, small has the 32x32s, medium has 48x48, and large has 64x64.
eli> misc gets all of the leftovers, mostly 32x48 (?!).
eli> Does anyone want to argue for saving the 16x16 xpms? My thought
eli> is that 14x14 works for menus and buttons, 32x32 works in FvwmButtons,
eli> and the larger xpms are suitable for icons.

The 16x16 might also be useful as titlebar buttons, depending on the
size of the font you use in the titlebar.

eli> Chuck -- if I do this, do you want to replace the current icons
eli> directory with it? It looks as though the result will still be smaller
eli> than the existing icons distribution.

I would certainly like to see the result and I might perhaps replace
the current icons directory with it, yes.

eli> Also, I took a look at the mini.* pixmaps last night. README.mini
eli> says they use a total of 14 colors. This is no longer the case, but it
eli> could easily be.

The README.mini is from the initial mini xpms contributed, which some
others have been contributed since then by other people.

eli> I looked through them all, and there are 10 common colors: blue,
eli> cyan, magenta, red, orange, yellow, green, black, gray, and white
eli> and 17 uncommon colors. I can EASILY fix the files to use the
eli> same set of colors, but I'd like to add a FEW more to the set of
eli> 10 common colors. What I need to know is how many.
eli> Is 14 colors good? Should that INCLUDE black and white? Do people
eli> care what I do? :-) I definatly want to add 2 more shades of
eli> gray, but I haven't decided which. I'd also like gold (between
eli> yellow and orange), a darker green, a better shade of red, and
eli> another blue.
eli> Adding those brings the total color set to 16, 14 w/o black & white.
eli> I think this would bring the mini pixmaps back into line with the
eli> original intention of a unified colorset. And, at least 11 of the
eli> colors (maybe more) match colors mentioned in colormap.xpm

I've been meaning to reduce the colors of all the xpms to a limited
amount. I was thinking that 32 might not be bad. It's not too large
a number, but should be able to contain enough of the standard colors
to enable the xpms to still look good.

I have two programs contributed by list members to reduce the number
of colors, and have had discussions of this type before. An idea for
a reduced colormap is in the file utils/xpm-reduced-rgb.txt,
contributed by Dan Espen. His xpm color reduce program is in there as
well. I know he spoke with Romano Giannetti who wrote another color
reduction program 'pixy' which I have here. I meant to put it (or at
least a reference to it) in the last release, but forgot. I believe
it can be found at:

          ftp://sirio.iet.unipi.it/pub/romano/pixy3.2.tar.gz

He includes some sample colormaps as well in his distribution,
both 16 and 32 colors. I imagine that they'll be pretty close to what
would be good...

So, I was going to get to this eventually, but if you're feeling
ambitious, go ahead.

eli> And finally, I plan to clean up some of the uglier pictures in
eli> an effort to make them look nicer.

This might be subjective, but lets see what you come up with.

eli> Originally, I thought that pixmaps in menus and buttons would be
eli> silly, but they have the potential to look really good, if the
eli> pixmaps themselves look good.
eli> I guess that what I want to know is whether there is any sort of
eli> legacy associated with the pixmaps in the icons directory that says they
eli> shouldn't change?

The only thing I would like is for them to use actual named colors
instead of #rrggbb type specifications.

Chuck

*******************************************************************************
Charles K. Hines <chuck_hines_at_vnet.ibm.com>
IBM Logic Synthesis developer [BooleDozer (TM)]
Martial Arts Instructor [Modern Arnis, Presas Style Filipino Martial Arts]

IBM Internal email: "Go back to sleep, Chuck. You're
  hines_at_cold.fishkill.ibm.com, just havin' a nightmare--of course,
  HINESC at FISHKILL, HINESC at FSHVMFK1 we are still in Hell." Gary Larson
*******************************************************************************
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Received on Wed Apr 17 1996 - 11:06:56 BST

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