The Road to KDE 4: Oxygen Artwork and Icons

One of the big visual changes just happened in KDE 4, the transition of kdelibs to the Oxygen Icon set. This transition is still in progress, and it includes a massive icon naming scheme change that affects thousands of files. But, the Oxygen artwork project much is more than just an icon set, it’s a unified way to do artwork for KDE 4. SVG an essential part of Oxygen, so many applications that are now capable of SVG display are also using Oxygen styled artwork. Read on for more…
Please keep in mind that the artwork I am showing today is a work in progress, but shows things that have already made their way into KDE’s SVN as the new default. Oxygen will be the default art scheme throughout KDE 4, but many of the elements can still use some tweaking. If you have constructive feedback on any of the artwork demonstrated today, the Oxygen team would be happy to hear about it in the comments. :)

Back on the first of January, I wrote an article showing some SVG widgets making their way into KDE, thanks in part to Qt’s new SVG capabilities. Some of the artwork shown in that article was placeholders that were produced by the Oxygen team. Since then, there have been improvements to much of those graphics, but the really big visual change that just happened is the inclusion of the new Oxygen Iconset into the KDE libraries as the new defaults.

Oxygen is a far reaching project, and extends well beyond icons. They have a sort of unofficial tagline: “a breath of fresh air for your desktop”, which encompasses the look and feel of the whole KDE environment. They are a team of developers and artists that are dedicated to making things look beautiful. And not just shiny effects either, they are ensuring that KDE has a unified, easy to recognize interface. For example, icons that end up in toolbars all have the same shadows below them to give them a consistent look. Colour palettes have been created for the artwork to ensure that icons don’t clash with one another, and yet are still easily recognizable. All of the icon sources are SVG files create using Inkscape (and other SVG capable programs), and having the sources available makes it easier to make simple tweaks to the SVG files.

We also now have an official icon naming scheme for KDE 4. Previous versions of KDE grew the naming scheme organically as KDE evolved, so it was somewhat random in many places. The Oxygen team was responsible for developing parts of this naming scheme, but they did so as part of freedesktop.org so that there is less confusion about icon schemes between Gnome and KDE (and other environments) in the future.

So, rather than just talk about Oxygen, I have some screenshots to show the icons in action.

Below is a screenshot of Dolphin showing Oxygen icons, and a shot of Konqueror (from KDE 3.5.6) showing the same folder. Many of these mimetypes also have previews available for them, when previews are enabled.

You’ll notice in the Dolphin shot that there are still a few old icons sticking around, even though the Oxygen iconset includes replacements to those icons. One of the biggest changes that happens are part of the Oxygen transition is that many icons got renamed. Old code may be referring to the old icon names, rather than the newly corrected Oxygen names — when the crystal SVG icons are removed from kdelibs, it will become more apparent which names are affected. For those who like the old icons better, they will also get renamed, and be offered as an icon-theme within the KDE artwork package.

As the Oxygen Icons have now been made the default, you will be seeing them in all future articles in the Road to KDE 4 series, and should get a better appreciation of how complete this artwork is. Of course some icons still have room for tweaking, which is easy thanks to using SVG sources. I’m not providing the screenshots of the whole iconset in this article as you can find them in websvn or by building KDE 4 yourself. The next snapshots of KDE 4 will of course include the new icons as they are now considered the default.

But, like I said, Oxygen isn’t just about the icons. There are a lot of other places within KDE where the Oxygen artwork is popping up. Here is a shot of KDE 4’s new logout dialog.

KDE4'slogout screen

One of the biggest advantages to using Oxygen artwork in various locations throughout KDE is that it is (mostly) resolution independent. Which means, certain applications can be made to scale to any size you want, and it will still look good. So, for instance, if you are playing KBounce (from KDE Games), and you want it to be big or small, it just adjusts the size for you.

So while KDE 4 is not a true, resolution independent desktop, and this isn’t necessarily a goal for KDE at this time, some KDE components do now operate on a resolution independent basis.

There is another two elements of Oxygen currently in development, that are not yet complete. These are the Oxygen Widget Style, and the Oxygen KWin Decoration. These have not yet been made the defaults for KDE 4 as they are not yet far enough along. But owing to the fact that it has not yet become the default for KDE, I’ll decline to show it off just yet. Just bear in mind that the Oxygen Icons and related artwork are just a few elements of the Oxygen project. The Oxygen team is making a lot of progress on the Style and Windeco, but this whole project is an enormous amount of work.

There are also other visual elements of KDE 4 underway that do not directly involve the Oxygen team, but will work together with them when required. These are things like KWin’s composite branch, or the Plasma Workspace theming capabilities.

For those that are interested in helping KDE out through artwork, you should visit #kde-artists on irc.kde.org and get in contact with some of the artists there. They are quite friendly, and take constructive feedback from artists and non-artists alike.

Individual KDE projects are also looking for artists: Recently, Carsten Niehaus of Kalzium put out a request for some help producing some kid-friendly icons to represent the elements of the periodic table in an optional kid-friendly layout. Anyone up to the task should visit the #kalzium irc channel.

Also, the Amarok project has recently informed me that they are in need of some artwork for their upcoming 1.4.6 release (for KDE 3.5.x) which doesn’t need to be Oxygen styled, as Oxygen is intended for KDE 4. Join the #amarok irc channel if you’re interested, and talk to ‘markey’.

Editorial aside: I’m glad that so many people are showing interest in KDE 4’s development, but please try to provide constructive feedback to help improve KDE 4. Many of the developers read the comments on the dot and implement things that users request if they are well-reasoned. For example, Peter Penz implemented the Tree View in Dolphin, and Rafael Fernández López made changes to the Job Progress Manager based on your constructive feedback. Your feedback is very welcome, but as last week’s article has shown, when the comments get out of hand, it becomes harder to sift through them for the constructive ones. On the flip side, that article absolutely demolished the previous dot.kde.org comment records. Hopefully we can break those records again one day as the interest in KDE 4 grows. - kde.news