GNU bug report logs - #62170
29.0.60; the default tool bar icons are ugly to modern users and are not customizable

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From: Jim Porter <jporterbugs <at> gmail.com>
To: Po Lu <luangruo <at> yahoo.com>, Spencer Baugh <sbaugh <at> janestreet.com>
Cc: 62170 <at> debbugs.gnu.org
Subject: bug#62170: 29.0.60; the default tool bar icons are ugly to modern users and are not customizable
Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2023 12:36:15 -0700

On 3/13/2023 5:52 PM, Po Lu via Bug reports for GNU Emacs, the Swiss 
army knife of text editors wrote:
> Spencer Baugh <sbaugh <at> janestreet.com> writes:
>> Alternatively, we could just throw out the current icons and replace
>> them with a minimal and abstract design which hopefully would have
>> mass appeal.  But maybe there are people who really like the current
>> icons and would be upset about that?
> 
> I do.  Every supposedly ``modern'' set of icons proposed lacks color
> contrast, making them indistinguishable from each other.

Agreed. I think a good general guideline is this: for icons which are 
always in the same spot (e.g. the navigation buttons in your web 
browser), color probably isn't that valuable, and possibly a 
distraction. As a user, you'll quickly internalize where, say, the back 
button is anyway.

However, Emacs toolbars change according to the mode of the active 
buffer, so they're likely to change many times in a session. Here, some 
color is very useful for letting you tell at a glance what all the 
buttons are.

Still, I think I agree with the overall request: the current icons could 
use some improvement, partly just to make sure they all feel like they 
belong together. (This is worse on GTK builds, where some icons come 
from GTK and have one visual style, but others come from Emacs and look 
totally different.)

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