New GNOME Icon's In Natty?

[Vishnoo]

On Mon, 2011-03-28 at 17:16 -0700, Jono Bacon wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Some of you may have seen http://jimmac.musichall.cz/log/?p=1145 - some
> fantastic work on the icon theme going into the next GNOME release.
> 
> I wanted to see if there is any possibility of bringing those icons into
> Natty?
> 
Hi Jono,

Some of those icons were available since GNOME 2.30, and they have been
in development for a very very long time (I know because I've done a few
of the other hi-res ones ;-) ).

Some of those icons displayed in that blog entry are _not_ from
gnome-icon-theme, they are included in the apps themselves as part of
the app's own branding for GNOME 3.0. Like the icon for Empathy,
Deja-dup, Transmission,etc,. This 'push' for hi-res icons is a recent
drive(more on that below).

We've had the gnome-icon-theme package with 256px icons uploaded in
maverick. But we dropped a few folders of the large icons since the
package was huge and increased the CD iso size.
The 256x256 icons are rendered png files and they do not compress as
well as the previous scalable svg files.

We discussed this during maverick cycle in #ubuntu-desktop and I had
suggested a few "safe-to-drop-icon-folders" since they are least likely
to be used as of now and the desktop team dropped only those folders. 
/256x256/emblems 
/256x256/emotes 
/256x256/status

Other 256px icons are included. They are in :
/usr/share/icons/gnome/256x256/

> I know we have hit UI Freeze, but I just think those icons will add a
> lot of sheen to Natty.

Actually no, We dont use those icons anywhere in Ubuntu Natty.

The 256x256 icons are used only in places which require atleast 64px
icon size or higher.
Last time i checked, the max size we use is the 48px icon in Unity dash
and everywhere else, and these 48px sizes will not use the hi-res icons.
So, we dont use these 256px icons anywhere in Unity, including them
would not be useful to us, apart from that most of them are in the
application's own packages meant for GNOME 3.0.

There was no concrete plan for those 256px icons until recently. 
Even Shell dint need these 256px icons until a couple of months ago.
Earlier, the Shell Overview was crowded and used only 48px icons , so I
had suggested that we can make use of the hi-res icons and use them
atleast at 64px size, jimmac liked the idea and decided to use the icons
at 256 px itself. Hence the recent drive for hi-res application icons.
And, even if we make Shell available for Oneiric or any future release,
the 3 folders I had suggested earlier would still be "safe-to-drop"
without affecting GNOME Shell too. 

-- 
Cheers,
Vish