Re: RFC: Designing Logo of Pandoc

[Kolen Cheung <christian.kolen-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w@public.gmane.org>]

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On Wednesday, December 14, 2016 at 8:45:41 AM UTC-8, BP wrote:

To a normal user (I.e. you aren’t a Pandoc contributor or filter author) 
the AST is an implementation detail which you don’t interact with. The 
normal user experience is pandoc -f markdown -t html`, i.e. you input a 
document in one markup format and get (a file) in anotheir markup format 
(possibly zipped together with sundry other files) as output, without any 
intermediate file or files. There is no point in creating a false 
impression that there always must be an intermediate file. In fact that may 
scare off potential normal users. To them the thing which sets pandoc apart 
from other light markup processors is that it supports conversion back and 
forth between multiple markup formats, and the logo should emphasize that. 
The logo needs to be intelligible and meaningful to the less geeky users 
which hopefully are in majority.

/bpj

It certainly is another possible perspective. So let me illustrate more on 
my perspective:

   1. 
   
   There are countless examples of expectation from end-users (including 
   me) that originated from the misunderstanding of what pandoc is and what 
   pandoc does. Rather than trying not to “scare off potential normal users” 
   (which is unlikely to happen from a logo alone, since they won’t understand 
   the nuance in it at first sight), may be we should set the expectation 
   right as early as possible, so that they won’t be disappointed later on, 
   and will not waste time to use pandoc for the wrong task.
   2. 
   
   The logo having arrows pointing to a common element representing AST 
   will not make a real difference on first sight. But it would be a great 
   “entry point” to talk about the philosophy behind pandoc. Having a 2nd 
   layer of sophistication means intelligible and meaningful to me. (i.e. at 
   first sight you get something, but there’s a deeper story behind it.)
   - To further illustrate on this point, at first glance, pandoc seems 
      very similar to some other tool, e.g. MultiMarkdown. But as one pushes the 
      tools further, they will realize pandoc is much deeper than what it seems 
      like at first glance. So, if the logo can have layers of meaning, it 
      represents pandoc better. 
   
I don’t mean it has to be done this way. I mean if there’s arrows, arrows 
pointing to a common element is more correct and deeper, and doesn’t really 
scare off people (may actually attract the right people), and is a path 
worth explore. But if no design makes this looks good and natural, we need 
not to force it.
​

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