[ubuntu-art] My idea for Edgy (warning, lots of ranting!)

[Michiel Sikma]

Viper550 wrote:
> Now that Dapper is behind us, I've got big plans and ideas for Edgy's 
> artwork, Originality is just one of them:
> 
> We all know that the first "theme cycle" of Ubuntu is over. Dapper and 
> the Human Level is done with, so we need a new color scheme. My proposal 
> for the new color scheme of Edgy is what I like to call: Frozen.
> 
> I know the following statement will also effect the future of Ubuntu, 
> but what I'd really like to see is the next Ubuntu themes to be based 
> off the 5 elements of Japanese philosophy. These 5 elements are Earth, 
> Water, Fire, Wind, and Void. Warty to Dapper have covered Earth (a.k.a. 
> Human), so the next item in the order of the elements would be Water. 
> But, Mark didn't go with blue by default because he wanted to 
> differentiate Ubuntu from the rest with a unique color scheme (Brown). 
> Going along with that, I decided to still go with Water...but in a 
> different form: Ice. Attached is my mockup of what this Frozen theme 
> would look like (using Ubuntulooks and Human Metacity).
> 
> But, my goal for Edgy is to make an entire suite of ORIGINAL artwork to 
> be there by default. Except for the Ubuntulooks Engine (which should 
> stay, because we like it and all), I want every piece of artwork in Edgy 
> to be original, not based off anything, built from scratch. I've been 
> concerned that the Ubuntu installations have not had 100% original 
> Artwork. On the first version, we used Industrial and a theme based off 
> Glider, 5.04 at least used the ClearLooks engine, but still that 
> Metacity theme stayed! Now for Dapper, we do have an original Theme 
> engine (based off ClearLooks), we have a brand new original icon set 
> (built from scratch!), but now your "Human" metacity is based off 
> ClearLooks 2 Metacity. Why can't we have 100% original stuff?! And I can 
> even tell the difference between Human Metacity and ClearLooks 2 
> Metacity (slightly different buttons). Even worse, we had several GREAT 
> metacity suggestions on the wiki that we completely ignored!
> 
> There, now that my rant is over, let me catch my breath...
> 
> Viper550
> 

It's nice to see that you're ready to start working on Edgy full time. 
I'm anxious to begin as well, and feel that there's a lot of work to be 
done for Edgy. I do also have plans concerning originality, like you, 
but I first and foremost believe that we should think of a way to 
document plans such as yours before we begin to criticize them.

There are two phases in brainstorming. One in which you think things up, 
and one in which you criticize those ideas. Maybe we should, given the 
fact that Dapper isn't even released yet, hold back on responding to 
plans such as this one until we get ourselves organized. Before you know 
it, this will be a discussion on the mailing list and that will evolve 
into different art discussions.

I'm not saying you shouldn't post your ideas here -- that's what this 
mailing list is for -- but I think that before we get into more detail, 
we should straighten things out concerning the meeting and the wiki.

In any case, I'm glad to see you're all ready to work.

Michiel