Icons for windy weather
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Authored by cblack on Oct 10 2019, 5:30 PM.

Details

Summary

There are now icons to represent windy weather.

BUG: 412718
FIXED-IN: 5.64

Test Plan

Diff Detail

Repository
R266 Breeze Icons
Branch
windy-weather-icons (branched from master)
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Unit
No Unit Test Coverage
Build Status
Buildable 17667
Build 17685: arc lint + arc unit
cblack created this revision.Oct 10 2019, 5:30 PM
Restricted Application added a project: Frameworks. · View Herald TranscriptOct 10 2019, 5:30 PM
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cblack requested review of this revision.Oct 10 2019, 5:30 PM
cblack edited the test plan for this revision. (Show Details)Oct 10 2019, 5:30 PM
ngraham edited the summary of this revision. (Show Details)Oct 10 2019, 6:06 PM

Nice!

Looks like there are some gaps in the windy overcast icon:

Also I wonder if the wind gust lines might look better if they were moved two pixels to the right. When there are clouds, the right-most edge lands right on top of the right-most edge of the clouds, which muddies the display a bit IMO. Like so:

(You can kind of see the gaps here too)

Finally the SVGs themselves have some extra shapes used for scratch work beyond the bounds of the frame. Those should probably be removed.

Also one more thing, sorry: -wind should go before -night in the night versions.

kossebau added a subscriber: kossebau.EditedOct 10 2019, 6:35 PM

Thanks for the icon work. I fear some info here though has been lost: what is needed is an icon which describes "windy weather" in general, where we have no other info about whether it is cloudy, sunny or not.
At least by what I understood from D24483, the info provided by the weather service is "Breezy"/"Windy". Whose meaning might depend on the context of the area & season. I have seen this e.g. with New York forecast from NOAA. So to handle this in a generic way, as context might be hard to pull in, having an icon which just states "windy" would be good to have, not referring to clouds etc.

That was my impression too, but upon further examination, the noaa_i18n.dat file has strings that indicate windyness in addition to other conditions, and if I add a complex conditional to the data engine, I can see that the windy + cloudy condition is getting hit (it is in fact windy and partly cloudy today, lucky me):

So I think this is fine. For the case where all we get back is "windy", we can probably assume a clear sky like we do for the "hot" condition, because if there were any clouds, they would have been mentioned.

ndavis added a subscriber: ndavis.EditedOct 11 2019, 8:21 AM

That cyan looks odd. It sticks out way too much and AFAIK, it isn't commonly used to represent wind. Gray on more gray is going to be tricky as well though, especially when you've got partly cloudy vs cloudy. What if the wind was a bit more monochromatic? Wind is invisible, so it only really has shapes that are associated with how it moves around objects to represent it. Perhaps we can use darker colors for lighter backgrounds and lighter colors for darker backgrounds then? Here's an idea for an alternate shape type, but you don't have to use it:

ndavis requested changes to this revision.Oct 11 2019, 8:21 AM
This revision now requires changes to proceed.Oct 11 2019, 8:21 AM

Nice! We use the Breeze weather icons in KDE Itinerary too, based on api.met.no data, but so far didn't make use of the wind information in there yet.

Nice! We use the Breeze weather icons in KDE Itinerary too, based on api.met.no data, but so far didn't make use of the wind information in there yet.

In case you want to make use of the wind information also when it comes to directions, the wind arrow icons currently only exist as Plasma theme icon pack, at
https://phabricator.kde.org/source/kdeplasma-addons/browse/master/applets/weather/wind-arrows.svgz

Perhaps something to make normal icon theme icons as well, if there is interest.

kossebau added a comment.EditedOct 11 2019, 3:46 PM

BTW, when it come to weather status icon, I dream of the possibility to simply compose the current status from base elements, instead of having pre-rendered icons.

So there would be iconic elements for "cloud", "rain cloud", "snow cloud" etc. as well as "sun" & "moon" (later could be even rendered to match moon phase). And those would be composed on drawing :)

Even more cool would be the option to animate all those, e.g. on status change :) That's what QtQuick is for, pre-rendered icons are so 1980 :) (edit: actually, even then things would be composed & animated, hello C64 sprites : ) )

Sadly the weather applet is pretty low on my interest, actually would be happy to have someone take over maintainance/care.

BTW, when it come to weather status icon, I dream of the possibility to simply compose the current status from base elements, instead of having pre-rendered icons.

So there would be iconic elements for "cloud", "rain cloud", "snow cloud" etc. as well as "sun" & "moon" (later could be even rendered to match moon phase). And those would be composed on drawing :)

I think plasmashell can do that already, but it's just not any better than making an icon for every state. You'd have to move the elements around the screen in the code to keep them all visible, but you'd be showing basically the same thing that we already show with pre-made icons.

Even more cool would be the option to animate all those, e.g. on status change :) That's what QtQuick is for, pre-rendered icons are so 1980 :) (edit: actually, even then things would be composed & animated, hello C64 sprites : ) )

That would be cool for some things and the weather widget might actually be a good place to use animated icons, but not for most things. It would just be distracting and make Plasma use significantly more resources.

Sadly the weather applet is pretty low on my interest, actually would be happy to have someone take over maintainance/care.

I might be interested in taking over the widget itself (can't say the same thing for the data engine though).

That cyan looks odd. It sticks out way too much and AFAIK, it isn't commonly used to represent wind. Gray on more gray is going to be tricky as well though, especially when you've got partly cloudy vs cloudy. What if the wind was a bit more monochromatic? Wind is invisible, so it only really has shapes that are associated with how it moves around objects to represent it. Perhaps we can use darker colors for lighter backgrounds and lighter colors for darker backgrounds then? Here's an idea for an alternate shape type, but you don't have to use it:

I think cyan is an appropriate choice considering that people tend to associate air with shades of blue, even if air is transparent and that's just the colour of the sky. The shade could be changed if necessary, but I personally think it looks fine.

cblack updated this revision to Diff 67874.Oct 14 2019, 1:49 AM

Shift wind emblem to the right, clean scratch work, and rename night icons

I think cyan is an appropriate choice considering that people tend to associate air with shades of blue, even if air is transparent and that's just the colour of the sky. The shade could be changed if necessary, but I personally think it looks fine.

It just sticks out way too much. I know you like bold color choices, but it really bothers me. If you must pick a color, pick blue. As you said, shades of blue are associated with air. Blue also fits in better with the rest of breeze-icons.

I don't mind the cyan myself, though I'll admit my wife (who is an artist) commented on it negatively when I showed it to her. Perhaps make it a bit bluer and then we can get these nice icons in. I'd rather not bikeshed for too long on them. :)

cblack updated this revision to Diff 68008.Oct 16 2019, 2:37 AM

Colour changes

cblack updated this revision to Diff 68009.Oct 16 2019, 2:39 AM

Remove excess icon

ndavis accepted this revision.Oct 16 2019, 6:30 AM

I'm fine with this blue.

This revision is now accepted and ready to land.Oct 16 2019, 6:30 AM
ngraham accepted this revision.Oct 16 2019, 1:49 PM

Shipit!

GB_2 added a subscriber: GB_2.Oct 16 2019, 1:52 PM

Can you clean the SVGs a bit?

With the blue color, I like these icons. Please remember to update images in the test plan when you make changes such as this color change, they're very helpful for judging things e.g. on a phone.

cblack edited the test plan for this revision. (Show Details)Oct 16 2019, 7:50 PM
cblack updated this revision to Diff 68079.Oct 16 2019, 7:50 PM

Run icons through SVG cleaner

This revision was automatically updated to reflect the committed changes.
kossebau added a subscriber: spstarr.EditedOct 17 2019, 1:39 PM

Good work with the icons.

Seems there is also need for snow + wind, @vkrause & @spstarr can and hopefully do tell you more.