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kiwidude · 07-13-2012, 01:02 PM

@theducks - I haven't seen any screenshots of the old icons, but I can imagine

. I've had years of pain as a developer agonising over whatever limited icons I had to hand trying to pick one for a feature, and plugins have made that a million times worse given the hundreds of features I've ended up implementing. I've been trying to re-use calibre icons for plugin features which are similar to the main UI, so I've looked at calibre's current set pretty closely far too many times. Hence my awareness of their inconsistency in appearance sticks out particularly to me. It isn't the fault of the original icon developer that calibre has had a load more features since then that developers have had to come up with random icons for - like any type of development graphics need ongoing effort/contribution.

So I don't want in any way for users who are considering contributing a set of icons to calibre to be put off. Which is why the utter stupidity of luketheobscure's comment pissed me off so much. Of course there is no guarantee someone's new set will be accepted as appropriate to be the new calibre standard. Does every calibre user want a Star Trek theme or whatever - we have no idea what someone will come up with until we see it. But at the very worst users would have another set they could choose from and install for themselves.

Risking theducks wrath here, sorry mate!

- just in case others leap in support of the "but UI is less import than an xyz feature". Too many UI threads in these forums have descended into a procession of those sort of statements. In my opinion they don't add any value - we know the UI doesn't matter to some people (particularly longer term users), just like it does matter to others. This isn't a contest or a public vote situation dictating what Kovid or the other developers spend their time on. Remember we are for the most part unpaid and working on it in our spare time in evenings, weekends and holidays. As developers we will work on things that give us the most interest or satisfaction - be it eliminating bugs, adding features often in response to ideas mentioned in the forums or just working as a team with Kovid/chaley to test some new components/features before they hit the public eye.

I want to see ideas, suggestions and contributions - not just criticisms. If an idea is good enough and you can't do it yourself, someone out there will probably take it on. If it is a really good idea, then depending on the effort required it may well be Kovid himself that does it. That has been proven over and over again in these forums - whether it is the incremental improvements every week to the main calibre, or the myriad of plugins. How many applications do you have installed that have an update every week? To say that the calibre community resists change is just complete and utter nonsense.

07-13-2012, 01:02 PM	#10
kiwidude Calibre Plugins Developer Posts: 4,730 Karma: 2197770 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kindle Oasis	@theducks - I haven't seen any screenshots of the old icons, but I can imagine . I've had years of pain as a developer agonising over whatever limited icons I had to hand trying to pick one for a feature, and plugins have made that a million times worse given the hundreds of features I've ended up implementing. I've been trying to re-use calibre icons for plugin features which are similar to the main UI, so I've looked at calibre's current set pretty closely far too many times. Hence my awareness of their inconsistency in appearance sticks out particularly to me. It isn't the fault of the original icon developer that calibre has had a load more features since then that developers have had to come up with random icons for - like any type of development graphics need ongoing effort/contribution. So I don't want in any way for users who are considering contributing a set of icons to calibre to be put off. Which is why the utter stupidity of luketheobscure's comment pissed me off so much. Of course there is no guarantee someone's new set will be accepted as appropriate to be the new calibre standard. Does every calibre user want a Star Trek theme or whatever - we have no idea what someone will come up with until we see it. But at the very worst users would have another set they could choose from and install for themselves. Risking theducks wrath here, sorry mate! - just in case others leap in support of the "but UI is less import than an xyz feature". Too many UI threads in these forums have descended into a procession of those sort of statements. In my opinion they don't add any value - we know the UI doesn't matter to some people (particularly longer term users), just like it does matter to others. This isn't a contest or a public vote situation dictating what Kovid or the other developers spend their time on. Remember we are for the most part unpaid and working on it in our spare time in evenings, weekends and holidays. As developers we will work on things that give us the most interest or satisfaction - be it eliminating bugs, adding features often in response to ideas mentioned in the forums or just working as a team with Kovid/chaley to test some new components/features before they hit the public eye. I want to see ideas, suggestions and contributions - not just criticisms. If an idea is good enough and you can't do it yourself, someone out there will probably take it on. If it is a really good idea, then depending on the effort required it may well be Kovid himself that does it. That has been proven over and over again in these forums - whether it is the incremental improvements every week to the main calibre, or the myriad of plugins. How many applications do you have installed that have an update every week? To say that the calibre community resists change is just complete and utter nonsense.