[Dextrose] CPU/Memory resource indicator (the sad/normal/happy computer face)

[Bernie Innocenti]

[cc += dextrose]

On Sun, 2011-01-16 at 06:19 +0000, Gary C Martin wrote:
> Hi Sascha,
> 
> Sorry I missed you later on IRC. Attached are the four svgs, and a
> screen shot taken on an XO-1 of the tweaked icons in the frame (I just
> quickly replaced the neighbourhood, groups, and home icons to test so
> they are in black and white on the frame grey, rather than in a nice
> set of user colours). Here's the screen grab:
> 
> 
> The computer-happy, computer-normal, computer-sad are the only svgs
> with changes, computer-error (not shown above) is identical to the
> file you pointed me to (I'm just attaching it for completeness). The
> changes made to happy/normal/sad were:
> 
> * replaced all eyes with clean circle fills to avoid previous filled
> and stroked path (using two arcs) which could overlap and show a
> second inner circle with a central dot in certain resolutions
> 
> * re-aligned sad face eyes, nose, and mouth so it matches happy and
> normal positioning (it used to jump to the left and also due to
> sub-pixel rendering would render slightly differently)
> 
> * adjusted computer-happy so that it uses the same fill and stroke
> order as the other svgs so that its stroke and fill colours are not
> inverted vs. the others, note that I kept the happy star emote with
> the fill colour so it is in contrast to the sad crying tear/sweating
> emote
> 
> On a philosophical point I think it is still a shame we have the busy
> computer state represented by a sad computer icon, rather than a
> 'working hard' or 'very busy' metaphor, but don't want to be a blocker
> if you promise me you are indeed getting good feedback about it.

I agree. In tch's original idea, there should have been a drop of sweat
behind the head, a typical metaphore used in anime to express fatigue.

Perhaps we could have a "~" shaped mouth (strained) or a "pacman ghost"
wavy mouth (troubled). What we want to communicate is that something is
making the laptop work very hard. It's up to them to decide whether this
is ok or not.

We may want to keep the sad face for when we get close to invoking the
OOM (remember, there's no swap on the XO).

> 
> Anish: Apologies for tinkering with your original artwork, hope you
> don't mind the tweaks while you are away from the internet!

FWIW, I loved all your changes.

-- 
   // Bernie Innocenti - http://codewiz.org/
 \X/  Sugar Labs       - http://sugarlabs.org/