256x256 px icons

[Andy Koppe]

On 27 July 2011 22:11, Warren Young wrote:
> On 7/27/2011 2:04 PM, Andy Koppe wrote:
>>
>> - The 16x16 has white dots in the corners.
>
> That was a feature.  But you no like it, I make go 'way.

Thanks.

>> - There are black edges around the icons. Those need to be transparent.
>
> Why?
>
> I purposely redrew the edges in the smaller icons for contrast and clarity.
>  (Among other things.)  Because the Konsole icon edges are black, I made the
> semitransparent pixels you get from simple downsampling pure black.  If all
> you want is the blurry mess you get from a direct downsample, there's no
> point in having the smaller icons at all.
>
> Maybe a dark gray would make you happier?  Something that approximates the
> appearance of a thin black line blending into the background the icon is
> being matted on, without trying to make use of alpha blending?
>
> My old skool heritage is showing.  I've been trained not to use alpha
> blending a 32 px and below.  When I was a boy, all we had was 8 bpp with one
> color reserved for yes/no transparency, AND WE LIKED IT.
>
> Is this outmoded?  Will XP do the right thing with RGBA for 16 px icons?  Is
> that a good idea regardless, or is old skool the only skool?

I don't know about that. What I do know is that the Konsole icon looks
fine to me, including at 16px, and that I haven't had any complaints
about it.

To me, the black/grey border just looked like something went wrong
with transparency during the conversion. Also, at 16px, the left and
right sides of the terminal screen's frame have actually gone.

>> - Contrast and saturation are rather low. I think it would be better
>> to overlay the Cygwin symbol on top of the terminal rather than
>> blending them.
>
> Here it is:
>
>        http://etr-usa.com/cygwin/mintty-icon/no-text.ico

That looks a lot better, thanks. Nice work removing the prompt. Did
you go back to the original SVG to do that?

> It also has the gray edges on the smaller icons instead of black, and
> transparent corners in the 16x16.
>
> I had to remove the text, which makes the result not as clearly a terminal.
>  At 256 and arguably at 48 px, you can figure out that it might be a
> terminal, especially if you've seen the icon in its previous incarnation.
>  At 32 px and below, I challenge anyone to honestly tell me that there is
> any sense of "terminal" left in this version.

Fair point.

> One could make an argument for going back to the plain old Konsole icon.
>  Maybe one icon cannot serve two masters.

Just to be clear: I'd be happy with the modernized Cygwin icon too. I
still prefer both that and the Konsole icon over the combined one
(even ignoring the issue with the non-transparent border).

Thanks again for putting in this effort to have something tangible to
compare with.

Andy