On Thu 04 Apr 2013 10:53:30 AM EDT, Bill Nottingham wrote:
I understand your desire to have input into how the logo is used. My
point
is that if the logos provided *as the only logos that software in Fedora
can use* aren't suitable to use as is, it amounts to merely playing
"GOTCHA!"
with people who are trying to use the right thing that the design team
has already provided them.
It's not just a desire to have input into how the logo is used. If you
don't understand the logo usage guidelines (and experience has taught
me that very few people actually take the time to read and understand
them) it is very easy to misuse the logo, whether or not you use
'approved' artwork. It's not about trapping people into making a
mistake, it's about using the logo correctly.
If fedora-logos doesn't provide an actual version of the logomark that
corresponds to the guidelines, it's not the fault of other groups for
using the only version that's there.
Bill, I think you missed my point.
It is simply not possible - even if every single logo graphic file in
fedora-logos was vetted and approved (and I'm pretty sure they have
been) by the folks in charge of the logo as being appropriate for their
current usages - for us to say that packagers can use any file in that
package and not have to worry about breaking logo usage guidelines. We
have no way of knowing ahead of time the specific contexts those
packagers mean to use the logos in.
For example, some of the logo files in fedora-logos have no padding
whatsoever around the logo. The logo has a clearspace guideline that
dictates a bare minimum margin around the logo in any usage. The
version of the logo without any padding was created for a specific
usage in which the application calling the logo added the necessary
margin in the application code. Someone could very easily come along
and use this padding-less version of the logo and be violating the logo
usage guidelines if they didn't consult the guidelines or talk to
somebody familiar with the logo's usage who could have advised them of
the appropriate padding to use or of an alternative file that has the
padding pre-included. This happened quite recently in the reverse - the
Fedora logo mark + word mark was shoved in the upper left corner of the
GNOME 3 panel in GDM, and even though that panel is approx. 22 pixels
tall, the logo literally displayed as somewhere between 7-9 pixels tall
- because a version of the logo that was padded was used in an instance
where an unpadded version of the logo would have been more appropriate!
Just because a version of the logo is 'approved' and meets the
guidelines, doesn't mean it's approved and meets the guidelines for all
possible usages, nor is such a thing actually possible. Logo usage is
far too contextual to just slap a bunch of graphics in a package or a
repo and be guaranteed when anybody uses them that they'll be used
correctly. I gave you the greyscale version of the logo as a specific
example of how this might be so: the guidelines do state that you
should be using the color version of the logo, but there are specific
scenarios in which your usage of a greyscale logo would be approved, in
which case you could use the greyscale version. If we put a greyscale
version in fedora-logos, though, that certainly opens the possibility -
if we let any packager use any graphic in that file however they want -
of violating the logo usage guidelines, because without consulting with
the folks maintaining the logo and/or reading and understanding the
usage guidelines, it would be quite possible to use the greyscale logo
when the more appropriate logo to use would be the full-color version.
~m