Open Source Icons for Mac OS X

Jeff Stys writes "Xicons.com has launched a new Open Source section of its website. The idea is to aid the Open Source software community by providing high-quality sets of toolbar icons and other user interface graphics for their Open Source programs." Many of them are very nice, indeed, and are specifically geared for use in Mac OS X.

Reading between the lines

[ObviousGuy]

We are currently soliciting toolbar and other interface icons from the design community. This will enable developers to concentrate on making great software by offloading the creation of interface elements to skilled artists.

Or...

We are fed up with the amateur hour entertainment provided by the Gnome and KDE crews. We've taken it upon ourselves to gather up all the crap out there and find those few nuggets of gold buried within lumps of clay.

All I need

[watchmaker1]

Is a way to edit OSX .icns files in Gimp. Or at least convert them to PNG. There are some spectacular icons for those of us who run KDE or Gnome. I currently use several icons from xicons on my KDE3 desktop, unfortunately, to get them I had to grab OSX screenshots and cookie-cutter them out.

Re:All I need

[mbbac]

You are a tool.

It has already happened: Iconographer [mscape.com].

Re:All I need

[Anonymous Coward]

If you open the *.icns files in Preview, select File/Save As, and press enter you'll have a TIFF whith the same name as the original file. You could probably write an applescript to simplyfy the process if you have a lot of files.

Re:All I need

[mbbac]

Iconographer (there's a link to it at xicons.com) will allow you to export Mac OS X's .icns files to several other formats including Photoshop and I believe PNG.

I can't look

[[e-mail]]

Those flashing "IF THIS GIF IS FLASHING (WHICH OF COURSE THERE'S NO REASON IT WOULDN'T) THEN YOU ARE A WINNER" banner ads drove me away within seconds.

Do site owners not consider the effects of the advertising on their image and usability?

Re:I can't look

[byjove]

Ditto. You'd think the site would have some advertising guidelines like: Don't do anything that loses customers.

Re:I can't look (OT)

[belbo]

Use privoxy

http://www.privoxy.org/

Works great in MOX (and Linux and Windows and ...) and is easy to configure (i.e. requires no configuration for about 95% of all sites) via a slick browser based interface.

b.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

off topic, but has to be said

[GutBomb]

People that run web sites do not normally create or even choose the banners they have on the pages. they aspply to be members of "ad networks", companies that have a pool of ads that you can display on your site (you do not choose. it serves up the ones it wants to show). In turn the webmaster gets paid by the click/impression... The webmaster has 2 choices. Run the annoying ads, or pay for hosting out of his pocket instead of having his ad-money pay for it.

Is it too much to simply resize the window a bit (if you have to) and scroll down a bit? jeez. And if you get a headache from a tiny banner, you should see a doctor about it, not bitch about it on slashdot.

Re:I can't look

[Voline]

I've been to that site numerous times and never been bothered by the ads. Thanks to iCab's excellent ad-filtering feature, I've never seen them.

same deal here

[jjshoe]

i did a quick look for icons but didnt find any, when they're drop down box failed i'd had enough of the flashing banners, its to bad that they're site will probly fail because of this

Re:same deal here

[mbbac]

The icons for Open Source aren't there yet, because there aren't any yet. However, if you want to see some samples of what current icon artists are doing all you have to do is *gasp* go to the frontpage [macnn.com] of the site.

Emacs gnu

[psxndc]

I think the Emacs [apple.com] Gnu is great looking. It fits right in with the rest of the apps in the dock. It's good to see others want this kind of quality in even the little things like icons.

psxndc

Re:Emacs gnu

[psxndc]

*sigh* Why do I bother?

Is Emacs bloated? Yes. Do I use it for 75% of the things it can do? No. Can I use one text editor on every OS I work on easily and productively? Yes, and that's why I use it when I do.

Though this isn't justifying bloat in any sense, we're in the days where a 60 gig drive is standard on a machine. Isn't a 50 MB functional text editor just as good if not better than a less functional 830K text editor back in the days of 1 gig drives? They take up the same space ratio wise. It's 50 megs. That is nothing compared to most drives today, or even most programs. Geez, Diablo II takes up a gig and a half!

psxndc

Re:Emacs gnu

[marktwain]

Good comment. It reminds me of all the stuff said about Office, but there's a difference. Plug-ins. With Office it's all in your face. You can cut a piece out here and there and customize it and blah blah, but EMACs (hmmm...think it took Stuffit Expander longer to unpack it than it did to download it :)...isn't as bloated from the get go. The user controls what plug-ins and features are added. Freakin' Office. :( (And I looked all over that Xicons site, which does have some cool icons, and all I found are the Mozilla icons...nice...so I can't figure out what everyone is talking about. There's info on the "new initiative but the GNU/Linxe icons must be buried with all that other stuff).

Re:Emacs gnu

[Molz]

Not at my OS X box right now, but what is diffrent about that download from the one that comes with the OS? Does it have the Quartz patch to allow it to operate outside the terminal?

Re:Emacs gnu

[psxndc]

It is completely a stand alone app. It doesn't need the terminal at all. Just click the gnu and emacs opens up. As with all things mac, "it just works".

psxndc

Re:Emacs gnu

[Zaaf]

Yeah, it works here too.

But I got one issue with it and that is that I cannot compile from within emacs and use C-x ` to go to take me to the line in error.
It seems to me that all processes run from within emacs don't get to an end.
If you know a work around, then that'll be great!

Question:

[funkhauser]

Somewhat on topic: Is there a linux program to decompress these .sit.hqx files?

Pretty icons... but where's the PNG? Ugh. If they're so supportive of Open Source, why do they make it so difficult to use these icons in Linux? Pfft.

Re:Question:

[mbbac]

Ugh, if you're so into Open Source you wouldn't be whining because every little thing wasn't done for you already!

The site caters to Mac users. Therefore, the Open Source icons cater to Open Source Mac developers.

If you want to use them with something else find a program to extract the images!

Re:Question:

[mbbac]

You must've also missed the fact that they're asking submissions be submitted in .icns and .tiff formats.

But that's beside the fact. They're mainly interested in people porting free software to the Mac and beautifying some of the horrible designs along the way. Therefore, they don't need to supply the icons in PNG since they'll be used as .icns anyway.

Re:Open Source?

[0x0d0a]

My thoughts exactly. "Open Source" has become hideously misused on one of the very places where it should be properly used -- Slashdot.

"Open Source" could reasonably be used to refer to an image, I suppose, if it was in some sort of format that also stored a fully log of everything done to produce the image. Newer versions of Photoshop, for example, do this. A simple .png does not cut it.

"Free Media" makes more sense than "Open Media".

If it isn't about making the blueprints openly available, then it isn't "open source".

OK, I'm a total idiot

[ellem]

How do I change my Icons in OS X?

I have been clicking Show Info of the ico I want then Edit->Copy

Then I got to the program I wan the copied Icon to represent.

I click Show Info, and several variations of Paste.

It never works.

Help me.

Re:OK, I'm a total idiot

[mbbac]

If it doesn't paste in there it is because of a bug. The next time you reboot the icon should have been replaced.

I only have this happen with a very few files.