[sugar] icon assistance/validation

[Gary C Martin]

On 18 Mar 2008, at 18:20, Eben Eliason wrote:

>> ** Much as I like a SMOOTH strobe effect, the XO as I understand it  
>> is
>> really poor at transparency processing (HW can support it, but like  
>> so
>> many things, the SW support isn't there yet). So it's slow to the
>> point that the strobe effect had to be dialled down to the current
>> jerky flick book effect, making the machine look even slower (though
>> activities do launch slightly faster for the change). Is there  
>> perhaps
>> a more efficient, less hacky way to provide a 'launching' visual
>> metaphor (at least until sugar gets HW transparency and a compositing
>> API). Is a simple blinking effect at 1 or 2Htz between un-launched  
>> and
>> launched colours a possibility? Or is that too much like a potential
>> activity attention/notification type effect (say a person joins a  
>> non-
>> front chat session, or someone takes a new photo in a non-front  
>> shared
>> record session)?
>
> Valid concerns.  This is mostly a subjective decision.  Mostly, we
> designers refuse to believe that we can't find an efficient way to
> pulse a 55px square...and so we haven't given up hope there yet.

Not that I'm an expert on X windows and GTK+, but working on moon  
activity I got the distinct impression that the views were all using  
allocated colour palettes (a blast from the past to the days before we  
all had 24bit colour displays). Could an old school colour cycle  
effect be used for a cpu efficient pulse (though that would make  
transparency a no go area, and you'd need to cycle you antialiased  
colours also)?

G