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It would be great if KDE came with a set of official icons for use as plasma activity icons.

Mockup sketch: (click to see larger version)
(Note: Don't attach too much value to the look/layout of this mockup, it's just a schematic draft. The idea is about the icons themselves, how they will be presented is of subordinate importance.)

____PART 1: Standard Activity Icons____

Here's a list of "standard activity icons" which I think should be created and shipped with KDE:

(EDIT: Note that the names printed in bold are the icon names, NOT the actual activity names (those are of course chosen by the user!).
Each icon represents a concept which might apply to many different actual activities. For example, a student might create two activities called "Homework" and "Lab Report Writing", and use the Writing activity icon for both. She might create another activity called "Research", and give it the Web activity icon, and a forth activity called "Facebook", using the Social activity icon.)


The following two specific-purpose icons could also be added to this list, due to the popularity of the activity concepts they represent, even though they are in theory already covered by some of the more generic icons above:


For many typical (i.e., non-tech-savvy) personal computer users, these 13 standard icons will most likely already cover all potential activities they might want to use.

____PART 2: More Specialized Activity Icons____

For all activity concepts not covered (or not covered specifically enough) by the above-listed standard activity icons (e.g. activities only relevant for specific groups of people), a more inclusive and extensible icon collection called "more specialized activity icons" should be made available, which would allow adding icons for every conceivable activity concept in the future, and categorizing them according to a to-be-developed "activity taxonomy".
This collection could either be shipped with KDE as well, or be made available through KHotNewStuff, or part/part.

Here's my preliminary take at the aforementioned "activity taxonomy" (still very incomplete, I know), including some icons I would like to see in the collection:

(EDIT: Again, the icon names are printed in bold, with the icon description following in brackets. The italic terms are the categories defined by the taxonomy.)

• Art:
  • "Graphics" (any activity relating to graphics design (icons/leaflets/websites/...), digital painting, ...)
    
  • "Audio" (music composing, sound mixing, ...)
• Science & Engineering:
  • "Science" (generic icon for science-related activities)
    
  • "Astronomy" (think KStars)
    
  • "Cartography" (think Marble)
• IT:
  • "Development" (software development)
    
  • "Web Development" (think Quanta)
    
  • "Translating" (translating apps, websites, ...; think Lokalize/QtLinguist, etc.)
• Education:
  • "Learning" (for any learning-related activity; think edutainment software, flash card programs, ...)
    
  • "Teaching" (e.g. for activities for teachers/tutors/etc. to collect their teaching-related stuff)
• Business:
  • "Finances" (managing personal or business finances; think KMyMoney/Skrooge, etc.)

____UI Considerations____

Currently, if you click to change an activity's icon in the plasma activities bar, the standard KDE "Select Icon" dialog pops up, allowing you to choose from all Oxygen icons (or an icon file from disk).

This should be replaced by a custom dialog or floating widget, which prominently features the "Standard Activity Icons" (see mockup above), and after that (potentially collapsed by default) the More Specialized Activity Icons collection, and at the very end a button called "Custom Icon" or so that opens up the standard KDE "Select Icon" dialog.


################################################################################################
____Rationale____
(read on only if you're not yet convinced this idea makes sense... )

As of right now, the only option for choosing plasma activity icons is to collect half-fitting icons for your activities from all the existing application / mimetype / categories / etc. icons, or external sources.
For example, for "software development" you might use categories/applications-development, for "managing photos" you might use apps/digikam etc.
However, this isn't satisfactory, because:

• 
  
  • Finding a fitting icon for a specific activity among all existing Oxygen icons takes a lot of time, especially for KDE newbies.
    
  • For some (common) activities, you just won't find an even remotely fitting icon among the existing Oxygen icons.
    
  • Misusing an application icon to denote a real-life activity that might encompass much more than just this single application feels kinda wrong.
    
  • The icons might change in the future and suddenly not convey the meaning you intended for your specific activity anymore.
    
  • Even if you find a fitting icon for each of your activities, the icons will most likely not fit very well with each other (i.e. very inhomogeneous look & feel, due to mixing application / category / mimetype / etc. icons, or even third-party icons)

The idea is to have a dedicated, visually consistent, easily availably set of icons, each of which represents a certain activity concept very well, without interfering with existing application/etc. icons.

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EDIT [Feb 26]: added mockup; added "Reading" and "Email" activity icon entries; restructured standard activity icons list into graphical list

@ivan, or any other plasma devs:

Do you think this idea has a chance?
Or does the plasma team already have completely different plans? (In which case it won't make sense to put more thought into this idea...)

You should probably send me a message with links to posts that are @ivan I might have missed this thread.

The default set of icons was (is) in plans, but Nuno didn't make them yet. (he wanted to make them look like bubbles, so the latest version of identicons was made round)

As for the proposed UI, it looks awesome, but I don't expect it to be implemented (at least not soon) - the standard KDE's icon chooser dialogue is not embeddable in plasma (maybe if someone wanted to redevelop it from scratch).

The only thing I find illogical about the proposal is the tooltip for the icon - if the icon is not descriptive enough, so that you need to show the user when it can be used, then the icon is bad.

So, this was a +1 vote from me.

+1 great write up

ivan wrote:The default set of icons was (is) in plans, but Nuno didn't make them yet.

So it has already been decided what icons exactly will be made?
Is the planned icon set similar to the set of 13 standard icons I proposed above, or completely different?

If it is still being discussed, maybe someone could make the team aware of this thread so that they can consider the suggested icons...

ivan wrote:As for the proposed UI, it looks awesome, but I don't expect it to be implemented (at least not soon) - the standard KDE's icon chooser dialogue is not embeddable in plasma (maybe if someone wanted to redevelop it from scratch).

What about a simple icon view that only shows the standard activity icons and nothing else? With a button below that optionally launches the normal KDE icon chooser dialog?
That's what I tried to show in the mockup...

But I guess it will be easier to just add a new "activities" category in the normal KDE icon chooser dialog instead.

Anyways, these are just implementation details which the developers will have to decide.

ivan wrote:The only thing I find illogical about the proposal is the tooltip for the icon - if the icon is not descriptive enough, so that you need to show the user when it can be used, then the icon is bad.

You might be right here, the tooltip in the mockup is probably overkill.

I just thought it might be nice to explain the exact concept that the icon is supposed to represent, so that users will have a sense of security in that they known they're using an icon that's actually indented for the exact concept they're using it for (and all future versions of the icon, how different they may be, will still perfectly represent this concept).
For example, let's say the "Planning" icon contains a clock symbol, but in a future version of the icon, the clock is replaced by a calendar symbol. People who "misused" the icon for activities that relate to "clock", but not to "planning" (e.g., let's say, software developers using it for a "benchmarks" activity), will suddenly find themselves with unfitting activity icons after a KDE SC upgrade.

But if Nuno creates the icons, it's safe to assume they will be spot-on and self-explanatory - and of course really awesome, visually...

smls wrote:So it has already been decided what icons exactly will be made?

TBH, I don't really remember - I don't think there was a specific list, but rather a general throw-in the ideas.

smls wrote:If it is still being discussed, maybe someone could make the team

Gonna post it on IRC.

smls wrote:
What about a simple icon view that only shows the standard activity icons and nothing else? With a button below that

That was one of the ideas. Personally, I don't like it since it would mean having two different UIs for the same thing. And, if the 'level 1' was implemented, adding all the features of the standard icon chooser would be rather easy.

smls wrote:
for a "benchmarks" activity), will suddenly find themselves with unfitting activity icons after a KDE SC upgrade.

That is a risk with every icon in general - people using the media-record (or whatever the name is) for an airplane bombing game (it looks like a 'country' logo ) etc.

But it doesn't produce problems often. Maybe once in 5 years - which is something that can be lived with I think