Appreciation and some suggestions

Thank you so much for working on this icon collection. I previously used the Chicago95 icon pack for about a year, but your work surpasses it in every way. I appreciate how you took a lot of icons from Windows 2000 rather than Windows 98, which look way nicer and more polished while also remaining faithful to classic '90s design, while simultaneously updating many icons to higher resolutions.

If I may, however, I'd like to suggest a few improvements that I've already done myself to the pack. Pretty much all of my suggestions are just matters of personal taste, but you might be interested in applying some of them yourself.

1. I didn't really like the smiley face used as the icon for the "Help" and "About" options (the one in actions/*/help-about.png). I personally replaced it with the 'winhelp' icon from Windows 2000 - see the attached file.
   
   I think it looks more consistent with the other updated icons and also just looks a little less silly than a smiley.

2. Again for the sake of consistency, I think it would be better to use the MS Office 2000 icons rather than those for MS Office 97. Aside from the fact that I personally think they look nicer, especially in how they look like they belong to the same set rather than having each a different look from the other, they would also be more fitting in an icon pack that feels closer to Windows 2000 rather than Windows 98. You might want to use the icons collected here if you feel like adding them (link here).

3. I noticed that some generic files that should be using the mimes/*/blank.png icon default to the ordinary icon because they're meant to use the "application-x-generic.png" icon, which is missing in this pack. Merely adding a link to blank.png with this new name solves the problem. This is IMO the only thing among the suggestions I've made that should really be added.

4. I'm going to nitpick a little bit here, but I wouldn't mind seeing a Firefox icon that feels closer to the classic Firefox icon but with a classic Windows style to it. Likewise, a Thunderbird icon that feels like a classic Windows version of the current one would also be welcome. Still, I do understand this would take a bit of work though, and besides, the current ones are nice enough as is. (EDIT: I've noticed you've added a poll about this very issue, so I've added my own vote to it)

5. Some final bit of nitpicking - given that I sometimes handle source files written in Assembly, I created an icon for them that's similar to the ones used for C and C++ source files, only with a large 'S' this time around. Making it work would require adding a custom mimetype for Assembly files however, so this is probably something that I should just keep for myself. Still, I've attached the icon I've created to give you an idea.
   

For everything I mentioned above, If I do a good enough job doing the required work myself (and remember about it) I'll gladly share it here for anyone who might be interested.

Anyway, keep up the good work! As an enthusiast both of retro-computing and Linux, combining this pack with the Redmond97 or Chicago95 theme feels like a dream come true to me.

[nestoris]

Thank you for participating! More reviews like this! As you can see, I am not leading this project alone, I will be glad if you join. You can make a fork, make changes to it and send commits, which, if everything is fine, I will add to the project.
About MS Office 2000... I'm not a fan of the 2000 style, but someone asked me to add sparkling computer and network icons from Windows 2000. I created switch scripts for this. Basically, Dejweed and I discussed the Office 2000 icons. Perhaps I will add them as an alternative. In general, I need a preference setting utility! At least written on Python. But I'm not a coder.

1. Yes, but this is the '95 style... I have an idea to make it a little gradient like in 98, maybe then I'll replace it.
2. Yes, I know where to download Office 2000, so I can pick out icons from it.
3. Already done.
4. I can’t say anything about Thunderbird, but with Firefox the situation is as I described in the survey.
5. It would be nice, I think, to come up with a template for the source codes. Perhaps a flat paper icon will be useful for this... But I absolutely do not want to make it 16-color, like in Windows 95. I really like the 256 color palette from '98.
   In any case, I will be glad to see you as an active participant in the project. If you are ready, fork it, change it to your liking and suggest changes. And if you are a member and do this, don't forget to update it usually from upstream so that the commits are always compatible.

Thanks for your reply. Sure, I could think about making a fork with some of the changes I've done. The only thing that's making me hesitant is the fact that I have no clue how to do those really well done upscales to the original icons that you've been regularly doing for this pack. The original icons seem to have a maximum resolution of 48x48. If the process is not too complicated, however, I could give it a shot myself.

As for coding, my experience is sadly mostly limited to some fairly small hobby projects with C/C++ and a little bit of scripting, mainly with Bash, so I don't know how useful any of that could be.

Oh, and thanks for correcting me about this being mainly based about Windows 98 (which I also like anyway). I was misled by how some icons looked like their Windows 2000 counterparts, such as the folder icons. This explains some of your icon choices pretty well.

[nestoris]

As for coding, could you create a python script (based on Chicago 95) that would choose alternatives to SMOOTH/SHARP and win98/win2k for some icons? And possibly for installation in /usr/share/icons (for sudo), ~/.local/share/icons and ~/.icons
For alternatives, there needed a regular expression search function, or a blob *_SHARP.png with further copying, or creating a hard link of the original to this file. And the installation script is probably needed for those who would like an easy installation method, who do not understand the intricacies of Linux.
Also, as a C/C++ coder, could I ask you to finalize the Windows XP-style boot splash screen? I can send you materials, there you need to make progress instead of a trambler (plymouth is written in C and there are options with progress when the track is filled with squares instead of them running).
Maybe it's a hard task, so if you can and have some free time, I will be glad to see it.

As for up-scaling, everything happens quite mechanically. There are a number of programs for Windows that work well under Wine for editing icons. A good program is IconLover, it allows you to create icon projects in which each format has several layers (it is possible with transparency and shadow). I just take the icon, upscale it, and then I bring it pixel by pixel into a beautiful view. If there are diffuse gradients there, I use Photoshop 7, in which I can make them and translate them into indexed color using the Microsoft98 256-color palette, which I have on the Reference page. Then I make a copy-paste of this piece into the project and save it in the ico using this palette. I wrote a small utility that exports png from ico directly to the icon theme (and saves setting of export of each ico-file), but I haven't corrected the install-instruction yet so that it can earn from anyone. But if anything, I can tell you how to install and run it.

I'm definitely more comfortable with scripting rather than doing anything C/C++ related. I am a bit rusty however, so I can't make any promises for the time being - I'll check out the scripts that already exist and see if I can make any contribution, however.

On the other hand, the process of upscaling icons does not seem to be too complicated. I'll likely make some attempts at creating some myself. Other than the ones I've already mentioned, there are many third-party apps that could benefit from a Win98-ified look. I'll fiddle around with some icons and if I'm satisfied enough with the results I'll be happy to share them!