Máirín Duffy wrote:
The design team has enough time pressures on it wrt to theme as is. This puts an additional, difficult burden on us to get the theme out even sooner.
You need to do that anyway. The systematic late tagging of the entire artwork which happened the last few releases is not acceptable. It also puts a lot of pressure on us KDE maintainers because we get to come up with KDE implementations of your theme concept in a very short timeframe because we don't even have any artwork to work with at the point where the artwork is supposed to be final (final devel freeze). A few of us (primarily jreznik and me) are willing to work on KDE artwork, but we're no artists, we're developers, we really need actual artists coming up with concepts in time for us to actually do the implementation work.
I'm sorry, but the design team will have to work with the same freezes as all the other teams, the current situation is not tenable.
This issue has been the subject of a lot of frustration on our (KDE SIG) side.
So, while I'm not convinced this idea of working with KDE upstream on artwork is going to really work out (count me as one of the remaining scepticists), the scheduling issue remains there in any case.
If the Fedora KDE spin would like to branch off and take its own approach to the artwork and not use the design team's artwork, then that is a different conversation.
Of course there's also the possible option to work ONLY with upstream KDE's designers and ignoring Fedora's theme entirely. However, this will not lead to a consistent Fedora experience. :-( And at that point I guess we could just ship upstream's original artwork and not ask for their help at all. The idea of upstream's plan is to design something which is a blend of upstream and downstream design elements. How well that'll work out is something we have yet to see (and that's one of the reasons for my scepticism).
Besides this, there are some fundamental issues with the proposal:
- Are these themes going to match oxygen AND tango?
These themes will be for KDE only (Plasma wallpaper, KSplash, KDM, possibly also a Plasma theme, the main focus from upstream right now in this trial phase is on wallpapers, which would be used both on the Plasma desktop and as part of the KSplash and KDM themes), there are no plans for KDE to use Tango and I think upstream would not be happy if we change the default KDE icon theme away from Oxygen. The whole reason they're doing this artwork plan is that they're unhappy about distros changing too much of the artwork (they even complain about distros changing the menu button from the KDE logo to their logo as we're doing, if we change the whole icon theme, they'll most likely just stop working with us entirely).
- How is the production of these themes going to line up with X distro's
release cycles? Who gets to be the one with the stale theme?
The themes will be designed for each distro. That said, the theme will certainly be stale in that it will be based on e.g. KDE 4.3 artwork for F12, but F12 updates will most likely have KDE 4.4 and 4.5. (They certainly won't be willing to work on 3 themes for every Fedora resp. KDE release to cover all the combinations.) The idea is to blend the latest upstream KDE artwork with the artwork for the upcoming distro release.
- How do you produce a set of artwork that doesn't clash with X distro's
individual branding styles??
I have no idea how upstream plans to do that. That's why I'm sceptical. ;-)
- What kind of SLA does the KDE artist team assure us with this service?
Most likely none, they're just volunteers just like you.
- How much say does the Fedora design team get in the wallpaper design?
That's also something which remains to be seen, though it certainly also depends on how willing you are to talk with the upstream designers about things. If you just send us your designs and we forward them to upstream with no direct communication between the artwork designers, then of course upstream will do whatever they want with your design. ;-) But I don't know how much influence you can have on the design if you're willing to discuss things with upstream. The idea is new, so there are no returns yet.
Kevin Kofler
On Monday 22 June 2009 07:22:42 Kevin Kofler wrote:
How much say does the Fedora design team get in the wallpaper design?
"Sharing" and "Building Brand Together" imply cooperation. Why not ask the KDE artist themselves, instead of guessing on this list?
Anne
On Monday 22 June 2009 10:40:24 Anne Wilson wrote:
On Monday 22 June 2009 07:22:42 Kevin Kofler wrote:
How much say does the Fedora design team get in the wallpaper design?
"Sharing" and "Building Brand Together" imply cooperation. Why not ask the KDE artist themselves, instead of guessing on this list?
I've already talked to KDE artists and yes, it's about cooperation. From one point of view, it looks like wonderful idea but I'm skeptic about actual implementation - I said the same to Pinheiro what Kevin pointed out... We can work as catalyst, details have to arrange designers themselves ;-)
Jaroslav
Anne
On Monday 22 June 2009 09:51:25 Jaroslav Reznik wrote:
On Monday 22 June 2009 10:40:24 Anne Wilson wrote:
On Monday 22 June 2009 07:22:42 Kevin Kofler wrote:
How much say does the Fedora design team get in the wallpaper design?
"Sharing" and "Building Brand Together" imply cooperation. Why not ask the KDE artist themselves, instead of guessing on this list?
I've already talked to KDE artists and yes, it's about cooperation. From one point of view, it looks like wonderful idea but I'm skeptic about actual implementation - I said the same to Pinheiro what Kevin pointed out... We can work as catalyst, details have to arrange designers themselves ;-)
I'm convinced that it's an idea worth exploring. As long as a suitable schedule is possible, so that neither side is left frustrated, it's worth a try, the only way to know whether it could be a satisfying way to work. A quick and dirty mockup would soon give you an idea of feasibility, wouldn't it? That way neither side spend too much time until they are sure it would be worth it. WDYT?
Anne
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Anne Wilson -
Jaroslav Reznik -
Kevin Kofler