GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 687931
Symbolic icons for new evince toolbar
Last modified: 2014-03-11 15:54:39 UTC
Created attachment 228495 [details] Evince toolbar We are working on a new toolbar for evince, similar to epiphany and nautilus new designs. I'm attaching a screenshot of the current state. We are currently using our own custom icons, see: http://git.gnome.org/browse/evince/tree/libview/ev-stock-icons.h?h=gnome3-style#n35 but it would look nicer using symbolic icons. So we would need at least a symbolic icon for: zoom-fit-height zoom-fit-width view-page-facing (this is for dual mode) view-page-continuous and a new icon for dual mode with odd pages on the left (or new icons for both dual page options, I don't know). All other icons used in the toolbar already have a symbolic icon in gnome-icon-theme-symbolic You can try the new toolbar using this branch: http://git.gnome.org/browse/evince/log/?h=gnome3-style Thanks!
Some of this stuff is quite difficult (or even impossible) to render in symbolic style in a clear way (thinking about dual mode with odd pages on the left for example, which I don't think it's possible in any style in 16x16 or 24x24), it would be better to have a nice text string. Are you working on a specific design for evince?
Hey Lapo, they don't necessarily have to be symbolic icons, maybe just improved versions of the current ones (and a new one for the dual page with odd pages left) that look better with the other icons. The design we are working on is the screenshot I attached.
Ok, here's a challenge for you, rephrase "dual mode with odd pages on the right" in just two words in a way it's clear enough for anybody what it is about. See what I mean? :-) Not doable really, I'd try something different like having [ continuous | dual mode ] and a way to invert pages somewhere. Anyway there's a series of things in that screenshot which could be simplified imho, if you need some design help ping me on #gnome-design on gimpnet, since I don't think exploiting this bug is the best way to discuss it :-)
(In reply to comment #3) > Ok, here's a challenge for you, rephrase "dual mode with odd pages on the > right" in just two words in a way it's clear enough for anybody what it is > about. not possible :-P > See what I mean? :-) Yes. > Not doable really, I'd try something different like having [ continuous | dual > mode ] and a way to invert pages somewhere. We discussed it a bit when the feature was introduced, see bug #444587 and in the end I decided to use two different modes, but I'm open to new proposals. > Anyway there's a series of things > in that screenshot which could be simplified imho, if you need some design help > ping me on #gnome-design on gimpnet, since I don't think exploiting this bug is > the best way to discuss it :-) The screenshot is just the current status, I don't have much time to work on it, so I'm just playing with some ideas when I find some time. Today I changed the page selector, for example, see the screenshot: http://people.freedesktop.org/~carlosgc/ev-page-selector.png I asked in the IRC channel before opening this bug, but got no response so I opened the bug that worked much better. Thanks for your help.
I've just moved the odd pages left option for dual mode to the view menu as a toggle option only available in dual mode, see the screenshot: http://people.freedesktop.org/~carlosgc/ev-toolbar-symbolic.png this means that now we only need symbolic icons for zoom-fit-width view-continuous view-dual
Hmm now that we will have automatic modes for both zoom and page layout I'm not sure we can render those with an icon metaphor. I am leaning toward removing icons from both the zoom menu and the layout options. Most of the zoom items don't have icons anyway.
(In reply to comment #6) > Hmm now that we will have automatic modes for both zoom and page layout I'm not > sure we can render those with an icon metaphor. We would only need one for the auto fit zoom mode. In the toolbar we can keep only continuous and dual mode, which the the only two real modes. > I am leaning toward removing icons from both the zoom menu and the layout > options. Most of the zoom items don't have icons anyway. Icons in the zoom control allow you to know which zoom mode is currently activated, depending on the window size it might be obvious if zoom mode is best-fit or fit-width, but not always.
view-continuous and view-dual pushed to gnome-icon-theme-symbolic, see 2b1cfb1376da0fb00b31b97d417e6c9e90cef52d.
(In reply to comment #7) > Icons in the zoom control allow you to know which zoom mode is currently > activated, depending on the window size it might be obvious if zoom mode is > best-fit or fit-width, but not always. The text will tell you better than the icon can though. Filed bug 690102.
Yes we have always used the text, but it has two problems: labels are very long in some languages making the combo box too long an wasting toolbar space, and you can't see the actual zoom level in fit-width or best-fit. For both reasons I moved to use icons, that tell you also which zoom mode is active.
We shortened the string in the pending patches. This should help. If space is a problem I don't think we should rely on the zoom in the toolbar at all. We really can't rely on symbolic metaphors for these things. There is no way an icon is going to describe these things very well. Showing the actual zoom level in the "logical" fit modes is not what we should be doing. If I select Fit Width I expect that value to stay put. It changing underneath me looks broken. If you want to convey the numerical value used perhaps you can add it to the tooltip or something. I don't think I would have these on the toolbar at all anyway. I would default to the automatic modes and then just perhaps just have a zoom in and zoom out buttons. This matches the user's desire better. In the sense of: "I can't read this. It is too small. I should enlarge it. Ok, I'll hit the [+] button."
Evince seems to be doing doing fine without all these zoom icons with non-obvious metaphors. Closing as obsolete.