The document background is indicating that the icon is not an application, action, or device, but a mimetype, a document. Other icon themes also use this approach to distinguish between applications and files, so Lila is no exception to this.
Lila does not need to have effects applied to them which make the icons monochrome, because they can natively be converted into such, which would be a color mod. This is possible for SVG files and being worked on. (at least, to some degree. I know the color mods for lila-gnome are slightly outdated, but there is a white color mod, which only has to be a little more refined to make everything just black and white.)
I guess if you've got the shapes from inside too, like it is in the color mod, then you don't need an extra conversion doing it wrong by just looking at transparency.
The vast majority of the document icons in this theme have the same paper background. Aside from wasting space, and aside from providing unnecessary visual clutter around the important identifiable bit of the icon, it also causes most icons to have an identical silhouette.
Try this: take all the document icons, turn all transparent pixels solid white, and all opaque pixels solid black, so that you have a monochrome image. Now, you should *still* be able to identify all of the icons. You can't, though, because most of these document icons have the same paper-shape. It's fine if you can't distinguish between, say, GIF and PNG and SVG icons (its fine for them to have the same shape, they're all images, which is all most users need to know), but you *should* be able to easily tell the difference between an image, a word processor document, and so on, based on the shape alone.
The human brain is far better at distinguising shapes, especially outlines and silhouettes, than it is at distinguishing colors and text and fine-detail. Icons are supposed to help a user. Icons that are built to capitalize on how the human brain works help the user the most.
In most cases, I think you could easily jsut take the picture you have the paper background and use that as the entire icon. That would make this icon theme a *lot* nicer.
oops, I hit the wrong link for replying - it's no child post of this one now. anyway, see further down for an answer why I think we should keep the document backgrounds.
First off, a "default" implies that there is a choice. Second, Gentoo already puts its branding in all sorts of places. For example, in Gnome, there is a Gentoo splash screen.
Ratings & Comments
9 Comments
The document background is indicating that the icon is not an application, action, or device, but a mimetype, a document. Other icon themes also use this approach to distinguish between applications and files, so Lila is no exception to this. Lila does not need to have effects applied to them which make the icons monochrome, because they can natively be converted into such, which would be a color mod. This is possible for SVG files and being worked on. (at least, to some degree. I know the color mods for lila-gnome are slightly outdated, but there is a white color mod, which only has to be a little more refined to make everything just black and white.) I guess if you've got the shapes from inside too, like it is in the color mod, then you don't need an extra conversion doing it wrong by just looking at transparency.
The vast majority of the document icons in this theme have the same paper background. Aside from wasting space, and aside from providing unnecessary visual clutter around the important identifiable bit of the icon, it also causes most icons to have an identical silhouette. Try this: take all the document icons, turn all transparent pixels solid white, and all opaque pixels solid black, so that you have a monochrome image. Now, you should *still* be able to identify all of the icons. You can't, though, because most of these document icons have the same paper-shape. It's fine if you can't distinguish between, say, GIF and PNG and SVG icons (its fine for them to have the same shape, they're all images, which is all most users need to know), but you *should* be able to easily tell the difference between an image, a word processor document, and so on, based on the shape alone. The human brain is far better at distinguising shapes, especially outlines and silhouettes, than it is at distinguishing colors and text and fine-detail. Icons are supposed to help a user. Icons that are built to capitalize on how the human brain works help the user the most. In most cases, I think you could easily jsut take the picture you have the paper background and use that as the entire icon. That would make this icon theme a *lot* nicer.
oops, I hit the wrong link for replying - it's no child post of this one now. anyway, see further down for an answer why I think we should keep the document backgrounds.
Great to see gentoo is really getting its own style and identity. Is this theme default for the distro yet ? if not it should be !
Gentoo will not get a "default" theme, because it's all about choices ;)
First off, a "default" implies that there is a choice. Second, Gentoo already puts its branding in all sorts of places. For example, in Gnome, there is a Gentoo splash screen.
bug gedit, save file
I can't see anything wrong there.
excuse was my error, needed to me to update packages.