The Final Zone project

English 2012 is over, 2013 has begun.  I recently accepted to take over Design Spin from Fedora Project and immediately worked on packaging overhaul for Fedora 19 Release taking advantage of Gnome Shell features like. The goal is to set Design Spin as a nearly professional free and open source suite. Martin awoke Echo Icon project with some revamped iconset. Task will be challenging but it can be done. Français 2012 est terminé, 2013 a débuté. J'ai récemment accepter de saisir Design Spin du Projet Fedora et immédiatement effectué des changements d'empaquetage en prenant avantage du bureau Gnome Shell pour la sortie Fedora 19. L'objectif est d'établir comme une suite infographique professionelle que possible en utilisant les logiciels libres. Martin a réveillé le projet Echo Icon avec des icones redesinées. La tache sera hardu mais surmontable

Fedora Artwork released a new version of echo-icon-theme. One of noticeable change is the coverage of System -> Administration level from the default desktop. Please test them on both Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 . The tar version is available on Echo website . Fedora Artwork a lance une nouvelle version d'echo-icon-theme. Un des changements visibles est la couverture du niveau de menu Systeme -> Administration du bureau par defaut. Veuillez les tester sur Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 . La version tarball est disponible le site Echo .

Traduit du blog original . La version Beta est proche, nous voulons avoir des commentaires sur l'art qui sera inclus dans Fedora 10. Nous commençons par le thème d'icônes Echo puis les versions traditionnelles tels que décors, etc. Thème d'icônes Echo Echo-icon-theme a été approuvé comme caractéristique de Fedora 10 sous condition de réaliser une couverture suffisante. Premièrement, nous voulons savoir ce qu'est cette couverture suffisante en considérant l'écart de la version actuelle sur le Spin Desktop Live. Martin a démarré Fedora 9 Live et examiné les icônes necéssaires. Basé sur la liste en question , près de 89% est le but réquise comparativement à la version courante. Nous avions concentré nos efforts à remplir la barre de menu Gnome avec la complétion du premier niveau du menu et du second niveau dans le menu Système. L'amélioration du Système -> Administration est enorme puisqu'il y avait trois ou quatre séries d'icône différentes et plusi...

English (update) echo-icon-theme 0.3.2.1 has been released for Fedora 8 and 9 on fedora-test-update repository with new and updated icons on the first level of Gnome menu. The tarball version is also available from Echo icon website . Français (mise a jour) echo-icon-theme 0.3.2.1 est sorti pour Fedora 8 et 9 sous le dépôt fedora-test-update avec des nouvelles icones (incluant les versions revisees) au premier niveau du menu Gnome. La version tarball est aussi disponible a partir du site d'icônes Echo .

Le thème d'icône Echo a maintenant une identité. Echo-icon-theme now has an identity.

Winter session is almost over. I have been busy tuning some assignments for Graphic Design class. I have learned a lot from the making of logo, magazine, art history (from Art Nouveau to Contemporary styles), printing procedure, and advanced typography. Ironically, I had indirectly know the process before inside Fedora Project especially the making of the logo. Working on creating the set of Echo icon is quite fun but the lack of time, due to class and the development of Fedora 9 art theme ( shoowa as candidate), prevent me to progress to the point it won't be ready for Fedora 9. The big challenge is to make sure the guideline is easily comprehensive. The lesson on that project is a better planning. Speaking about Fedora 9 theme, it looks like Waves is the preferred for the development due to its organic shape opposed to Shoowa with its geometrical version. The difficulty is to incorporate those geometry that won't necessarily distract desktop users but subtle. Now that th...

48x48 input-device 48x48 utilities-terminal Available draft icons . Utilities-terminal has shadow added while input-device is new. They will soon be published on the trunk of hosted.fedoraproject.org/hosted/echo-icon-theme/

It was my first even conference on Virtual FUDCon which greatly saved time and money. In summary, echo-icon-theme will not be ready for Fedora 8 given the time constrains. Its guideline needs a rewrite started by Martin Sourada. The icons are now residing on echo-icon-theme repository which facilitates the access for contributors looking to add/update the icons. It also means the wiki page for EchoDevelopment will no longer upload icons and will serve as reference. The mouse cursors are not in the repository yet but will be available shortly. Mairin, Fedora Artwork team leader, suggested to use Tango guideline for icons smaller or equal than 24x24 while keeping the isometric view for 32x32 and above. Demitri Glezos thanked the team for the use of icons on his Transifex project . The set of icons is roughly 40 percent complete and users of other desktop environment like KDE are encouraged to test them and provide ticket to track issues. Be in mind the echo-icon-theme division tea...

It was time to say goodbye to Zod after backing up all my home data. Its soul is still in a DVD so I can retrieve it with Virtual Manager on Moonshine. The installer has a very good artwork. I feel like the layout could be improved. I have not gotten the opportunity to do it but I will prepare it for Fedora 8. One thing I wish to see on the installer is the size of package. Other than that, the installation was uneventful. The new desktop itself is very impressive with its fast-user-switch. It is now possible to switch session while keeping activities from the original. The icons on the upper panel still uses Bluecurve. It should be normally replaced with the default theme which is Mist. I have seen some users complaining about the absence of Echo icon theme, rest assured it is available on the repository. There were new icons added since then, it should be available soon. The blog was written with the LiveCD version that also provides the ability to easily resize Logical Volume Manage...

I spent time to clean svg icons from echo-icon-theme. The reason for the theme not set by default is due to librsvg 2.16.1 bugs found on some icons. I already modified some of them like audio-volume-high with a nice wave effects. The modified svg are already published on the wiki . As a result, creation on new icons is temporally on hold. Next week, I will go to Montreal for Libre Graphics Meeting . Flight ticket and hotel reservation are done. It will be my first time in five years. I have installed a sugar edition of Helix Player. Currently, it does not have a plugins to be played from a browser. I also tested Flash but playing a Youtube clip is jerky. I am now used to type from the XO machine. I intend to display that machine on a mall or small computer store in order to give some attraction about OLPC project.

I am writing this blog from the LiveDesktop Fedora 7 Test 3. I noticed the Echo icon is based on the old version as there is no new icons yet like Browser, Mail. It appears the index.list from Echo tarball is not updated. At this time, I am working on creating a flat keyboard icon close to the OLPC XO version. Some models are available on fedora-art-list . Note that the perspective is not correct which will be fixed later. I will use this model as the base of other variant like character input, keyboard shortcut to name few. On EchoDevelopment wiki , I noticed there is no name like shutdown. In that case, I will create a name for these new icons. Stuck with daily working life, the team is doing in best to complete the base stock icons along with the new cursor.

A rare long blog post. A page has been created to track the development of icons necessary to be include on the stock release. The list seems overwhelming at first but creating some icons like shutdown and bluetooth are trivial. Complex icons like preferences-desktop-theme will be dealt later and I am considering using mask as referred by Paul Frields or a stamp of color as suggested by Ben Arnold . Both Ben and Martin Sourada are also working on a new Echo cursors intended to replace the old Bluecurve version. Overall, the whole echo-icon-theme seems to move slowly but still remains active in a hope to be available for Fedora 7 scheduled to be released on May. The goal is to make available for Fedora 7 Test 4 for evaluation purpose. Fedoraproject.org is now using Echo icons following fedora-fr.org which gives a sign of encouragement to the project. For now, here is the new icons I did recently,

Months has passed since the creation of icons for Echo. Since the theme is available on Rawhide, there were no much activities especially on holidays. Now that the deadline for feature freeze is published, it looks like Artwork is still in lethargy which I wish there will be some extensiion. Sure there is more work to be done on the current theme, it is better to act now than waiting for tomorrow.